Smith Government’s Anti SOGI Culture War Bill Coming Soon to Alberta Schools

Teachers and advocates are sounding the alarm about a bill that will require teachers to report students who change their pronouns.

Bill 27, expected to pass before December 5th, targets Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity 123 (SOGI 123) on a number of fronts. Beyond demanding teachers to report pronoun changes, it will turn sexual education into an opt-in process for parents, rather than one they can opt out of. 

It will also require teaching materials regarding human sexuality to be reviewed by the Ministry of Education, despite those materials having already been vetted and approved by school boards.

The bill is getting pushback from parents, school boards and teacher organizations.

As the fall session wraps up, education is shaping up to be a major front in the culture war for Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party government.

Bill 27 will have a detrimental effect on classrooms for both students and teachers, says Alberta Teacher’s Association President Jason Schilling. 

Schilling says the bill will complicate the relationship between students and teachers, reducing trust.

“There are a lot of concerns by my members that they would have a struggle around gender identity, that they would turn around and tell the schools, who will turn around and tell parents with a formal process,” Schilling told PressProgress. “Our concern then as it is now is that we need to ensure kids feel safe at school, yet Bill 27 undermines that.”

Also being targeted are the materials teachers use to inform their lessons. SOGI 123 is a set of resources and procedures for dealing with human sexuality in classrooms aimed at education and creating safe environments for students. It has been widely adopted, and has shown to decrease bullying for students across the spectrum of gender and sexual orientation.

Under Bill 27, the permissibility  of these materials for teachers will be at the whim of the governing conservatives.

Schilling says it’s redundant and risks censorship in the classroom.

“Things like SOGI 123 or other materials that are used by, say, a health nurse to teach on human sexuality have already been looked at by school boards, so those materials have already been vetted. We’re worried it will be a way to censor what’s coming into schools, and that students will miss out on instruction when it comes to STI’s and pregnancy,” Schilling said.

“We’ve seen a systemic underfunding that’s having a profound effect on schools. We don’t have enough resources. It’s a question of ‘what is the problem we’re trying to fix?’ Parents already have the option to opt out.” 

Smith’s government and Education Minister Dimitry Niccolaides are following through on an agenda set forth by the party membership. During the party’s annual general meeting in early November, all 35 proposed policy resolutions passed.  Among the most common were regressive measures surrounding education and gender identity.

Citing typical far right talking points, the policies call on the party to limit spaces in sports and bathrooms to “biological females” and make gender transitioning more restrictive in general.

Fae Johnstone, Executive Director of the advocacy organization Queer Momentum, says Alberta is using far-right culture war issues around gender identity and the LGBTQ2SA+ as a diversion.

“We know that kids benefit when they are able to learn about diverse families and healthy relationships and it’s really concerning to shelve off what is a critical role of education in teaching these things,” Johnstone told PressProgress.

Johnstone is organizing across Canada to push back against far-right efforts to roll back trans rights.

“Instead of addressing affordability and health care, Premier Smith is trying to distract Albertans on quote-unquote social issues. I think she’s catering to a fringe minority of far-right conservatives who want to impose their will on the Alberta public,” Johnstone said. 

“Parents of trans kids and trans kids themselves deserve freedom. So it’s disappointing to see this hypocrisy from a Premier who once defended the rights of LGBTQ+ people.”