Premier Doug Ford has gone forward with a change in the sex-ed curriculum, as promised in his election platform following this year’s provincial election.
These changes have caused a lot of backfire for the Progressive Conservatives attempting to bring back old curriculums.
Although high school students will continue the 2015 sex-ed curriculum that addresses prevalent issues such as consent, gender and gay marriage, the same cannot be said for primary and middle school students.
Instead, students in grades 1 to 8 will learn from a health curriculum introduced back in 1998. This curriculum does not address issues such as gender fluidity and has a much later start.
In a statement by NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, she expressed her concern that the Ford government is a threat to teachers, and that he is only dragging the education back an entire generation.
She has taken Ford's implementation of the old sex-education curriculum as an elimination of current issues such as consent, LGBTQ families, as well as gender identity.
In response to this criticism from various political figures as well as parents of children enrolled in Ontario schools, Ford has promised to repeal the 2015 sex-ed curriculum and replace it with yet another version after more consultation with parents.
Ford and the Progressive Conservatives have received a lot of negative attention in regard to this change in sex-education, including a possible legal challenge from human rights lawyers.
Earlier this August, human right lawyers announced that they will make use of the Ontario Human Rights Code which protects individuals from discrimination in services. This was announced at a press conference at Queens Park in Toronto, Ontario.
Their main concern is to protect gender expression, identity, and sexual orientation, all of which have been unjustly left out in Ford's implemented sex-education curriculum.
The question now is how long the Ford government will stand by their old curriculum sex-ed before these legal implications become far more than a threat.
