An Anglophone East district councillor says that a letter from education minister Bill Hogan asking the DEC to repeal their supplemental policy to the education department’s Policy 713 was “incredibly vague”, and after getting legal advice, the DEC has voted to turn down the minister’s request.
“There was nothing in the letter that said which parts of our policy are in contravention of the minister’s own policy,” says Cavoukian. “So there was not a lot to go on there.”
Although it didn’t explicitly say so, Cavoukian says Hogan’s letter seemed to call for a complete repeal of the DEC’s policy, which passed this summer shortly after Hogan made a second revision to the government’s policy.
The Anglophone East policy requires staff to consult with transgender or non binary students of any age to determine their preferred first name and pronoun, and then use those consistently. That offers a stronger protection for students than the province’s revised policy, which requires teachers to get parental consent before using a name requested by a student, if they are under 16 years of age.
The province’s policy specifies that districts may create supplemental policies that are “consistent with, or more comprehensive than,” the provincial policy. Cavoukian says the Anglophone East DEC based their policy on advice in a report from the Child and Youth Advocate Kelly Lamrock, which was designed to beef up protections, without contravening the Department of Education’s policy. But Hogan seems to think they didn’t succeed, and so has asked for a repeal.
“We fundamentally disagree, factually, with the minister,” says Cavoukian. “We do not believe that anything that we’ve passed is in contravention of Policy 713.” Cavoukian says the DEC consulted a lawyer to make sure they were on solid ground, legally. The decision to decline Hogan’s request was made unanimously at the DEC’s October meeting.
Policy 713 came into effect in 2020, and was revised by Hogan this summer after he claimed he had received hundreds of complaints about the policy. But Hogan has only ever produced three emails featuring generalized complaints calling LBBTQ curriculum un-Christian, and denying the existence of trans people. In August, UNB professor Melissa Dockrill Garrett told The Canadian Press that a freedom of information request she filed showed that no parents had complained to the province about not being told about their children’s preferred name or pronouns.
Cavoukian says that so far this year, the district still hasn’t heard any issues or complaints over the policy.
“This applies to a tiny, tiny number of kids in our province,” says Cavoukian. “It’s entirely likely that some schools will never, or not in the near future, encounter any issue for which policy 713 will be applicable.” But the size of the minority just accentuates the vulnerability of those involved, says Cavoukian, and their need for protection.
“I think that while most teachers and principals will probably not run into a policy 713 related issue this year, for those that do, it’s so important to have the District Education Council provide them with a roadmap forward,” says Cavoukian. “And that’s why we’re very proud of what we have done. We stand by what we’ve done. And we feel that protecting some of the most vulnerable kids in our school system is a very, very important cause and one that we stand behind 100%.”
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