Relegate human rights provision to dustbin of history

 
September 3, 2009
 
By Janet Keeping
 
Remember Bill 44? The legislation, passed in May, amended Alberta’s human rights statute. In spite of opposition to parts of the Bill, the provincial government used its massive majority to push Bill 44 through the Legislature. Done deal? Well, you might have thought so.
 
But now, its implementation has been put on hold and, unfortunately, we are back to the confusion which reigned last spring during its controversial introduction.  We may even be back to square one, with questions as to whether it will ever even come into force.
 
What happened?
 
First some background. Bill 44, which included such housekeeping provisions as those renaming the Human Rights Commission and the statute itself, also added one truly important change:  the words “sexual orientation” were added to the grounds of discrimination.  While discrimination based on sexual orientation has been illegal in Alberta since 1998 when the Supreme Court of Canada decided the Vriend case, it took 11 years for the actual text of the province’s human rights law to match the content of that decision.
 
Bill 44’s proclamation, however, is in limbo. What’s holding it up? The same thing that caused the controversy last spring – Section 9  which will require school officials to give parents advance notice “where courses of study, educational programs or instructional materials, or instruction, or exercises . . . include subject-matter that deals primarily or explicitly with religion, human sexuality or sexual orientation.” Parents, upon notification that their children will be exposed to such material, can opt to pull them out of such lessons. If notice is not given, parents can file a complaint with the human rights commission.
 
There were four kinds of objections to Section 9:
 
1) Children are entitled to as complete an education as possible to ensure they are equipped to meet the challenges of modern life. Society as a whole also requires that its citizens are capable of functioning in our complex and highly diverse world. While those in favour of the right of parents to opt-out highlighted the notion of parental rights to control children’s education, many believed that  other rights – especially, the children’s –  got short shrift in the government’s hurry to push through Bill 44.
 
2) Many critics, while comfortable with including a parental opt-out clause in the School Act, could not understand why the human rights commission should be dragged into disputes over school lessons. Many problems currently plague Canadian Human Rights Commissions. Why foist school issues, which have been well-handled in the past by parents working with education officials, onto the Alberta Human Rights Commission, which has yet to solve its other difficulties?
 
3) Questions have been raised as to whether there is any need at all for the parental opt-out. Cabinet ministers conversant with the Bill’s introduction have been asked for even one example of a problem between parents and a school for which the parental opt-out would have been an appropriate solution. None have been forthcoming. The lack of examples goes to the core of the legitimacy of this highly problematic provision. It looks to be a solution in search of a problem.
 
4) Doubts have been raised as to whether it is even possible to implement the parental opt-out. How can any teacher or school official give advance notice of everything that might deal with “religion, human sexuality or sexual orientation?” For example, religion can cover absolutely anything. Even the interpretation given some mainstream religions may be idiosyncratic and thus unpredictable. Other faiths and systems of belief cover, quite literally, anything under the sun. What, pray tell, is a teacher to do? How can he or she give advance notice of anything, or everything?
 
Not surprisingly, given the impossibility of deciding when to give advance notification to parents, its implementation has not been going very well. Negotiations between the Alberta Teachers’ Association and the Department of Education on how to implement the opt-out have bogged down. As a result, the Minister of Education, Dave Hancock, has urged that implementation be delayed until the 2010–11 school year. The Minister responsible for Bill 44, Lindsay Blackett, refused any such delay, but in the face of reality – no plan for implementation – Hancock got his way.
 
A one year delay is good. Better would be to admit the absurdity of the thing and drop this poorly thought-out, divisive and backward provision. The rest of Bill 44 should be proclaimed as soon as possible. The parental opt-out should be chucked into the dustbin of history where really bad ideas belong.
 
Janet Keeping is a lawyer and president of the Sheldon Chumir Foundation for Ethics in Leadership.
 
Published in the Edmonton Journal, Sept. 7, Stony Plain Reporter, Spruce Grove Examiner, Sept. 11, 2009.
 
 

 

 



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