Earlier this week, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley informed us what her opinion of Alberta parents is by claiming that parents knowing what their children were up to at school would be “super-cruel.” Notley believes that government employees have far more love and compassion for students than their parents do, and thus especially charged issues like sexuality should be left to the state.
“Dangerous political rhetoric” is forcing the province to introduce legislation making it illegal for schools to out students who join gay-straight alliances, says Alberta’s education minister.
“These are safe environments for students, and if they choose to stay confidential about participating in a GSA then that should be the case,” David Eggen said in an interview Thursday with CBC Radio’s Edmonton AM.
“We’ve had some dangerous rhetoric from Jason Kenney and other UCP MLAs, suggesting that they would out students who did participate in a GSA, so we would make that illegal.”
Kenny, a United Conservative Party leadership candidate, said in August that “parents have a right to know” when their child joins a GSA, unless there is evidence the parents are abusive.
Again, it’s so important to recognize what is going on here. Notley and Eggen may appear reasonable at first glance—if you don’t consider what it is that they’re really saying. The unavoidable and undeniable insinuation of their statement that keeping parents informed of their children’s activities is “extremist” and “dangerous” and should be “illegal” is that parents actually pose a genuine danger to their own children.
Obviously, abusive parents do exist. That is why Jason Kenney added a proviso concerning genuinely abusive parents. But what Eggen is suggesting here is that all of Alberta’s parents should be kept in the dark regarding the lives and struggles of their children, and that these parents are so potentially dangerous that it should actually be illegal to tell parents what is going on. As John Carpay of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms pointed out, the idea is ridiculous:
On Thursday, Calgary lawyer John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, said Alberta law requires that parents be “fully informed about all aspects of their children’s education,” including their involvement in extra-curricular activities.
“The notion that children have privacy rights in relation to their own parents is false,” Carpay said in a statement. “In fact, parents have a right to know what their children are doing at school. To prohibit parents from being informed, absent exceptional circumstances, violates parents’ legal rights and responsibilities for their children.”
Education Minister David Eggen disagrees:
Current legislation doesn’t have a provision to prevent schools from notifying parents of their children’s membership in a GSA, and that is putting children at risk, Eggen said.
“We’re talking about kids that require protection, that are often vulnerable, and we just don’t want this kind of dangerous rhetoric around outing students that join GSAs,” Eggen said.
“I think the time has come for us to back that up with some legislation.”
Again, listen to what he is saying. He is saying that these children require protection from their parents. He is saying that parents are putting their own children at risk. This is quite frankly disgusting, and Eggen should not be getting away with it.
We need to recognize what Notley and Eggen are attempting to do. Prior to the next election, they plan to relentlessly pursue independent and Christian schools that still teach biblical values and force them to establish clubs that celebrate and encourage a lifestyle that runs contrary to the beliefs of many Albertans. In the meantime, they want to portray any parents who disagree with them as “super-cruel” and potentially violent and abusive, and pass legislation that ensures no Alberta parent has the right to know what their child is doing while in the care of government employees.
In other words, Notley and Eggen want to separate children from their parents in order to teach children a new set of beliefs and values and ensure that the traditions and beliefs of their families are not passed on to the next generation. Why does this all sound so familiar?
Oh. Right. That’s what the residential schools were for.
For anyone interested, my book on The Culture War, which analyzes the journey our culture has taken from the way it was to the way it is and examines the Sexual Revolution, hook-up culture, the rise of the porn plague, abortion, commodity culture, euthanasia, and the gay rights movement, is available for sale here.
Did you have to put that conpletely insane footer at the end of the article? I disagree with your article, which is fine, but to make that comparison is utterly senseless.
If your children trust that you will not flip your lid when they come out to you they will tell you. Ive worked with several kids who’ve come out to their parents; nonabusive parents who thrn decide that their sinfilled child brings shame on their family and can no longer live in their home. YESS in Edmonton has plenty more kids from that situation.
Remarkable that there is such little stir to the profound social engineering of schools; who could have foreseen policies that divide children from their parents. In the midst of real issues around gender and sexually confused children and youth, Minister’s Eggen bulldozes the family as the fundamental unit of society.
It’s literally Nazi policy. It actually goes even further back to Marx. Marx specifically said that the family needs to be destroyed and replaced with the state. It was the only way to remove the capitalist ideas of freedom from future generations.
Look at EVERY socialist or communist society in history. EVERY SINGLE ONE went after the kids to turn against their parents.
Hope I’m still alive when my grandkids get their big settlements because they were alienated from their parents and forced to “assimilate” into the only approved culture of the time.
Unless parents have been shown to be abusive, they have every right to know what their children are doing at school and whom they are involved with.
Did you have to put that conpletely insane footer at the end of the article? I disagree with your article, which is fine, but to make that comparison is utterly senseless.
If your children trust that you will not flip your lid when they come out to you they will tell you. Ive worked with several kids who’ve come out to their parents; nonabusive parents who thrn decide that their sinfilled child brings shame on their family and can no longer live in their home. YESS in Edmonton has plenty more kids from that situation.
Remarkable that there is such little stir to the profound social engineering of schools; who could have foreseen policies that divide children from their parents. In the midst of real issues around gender and sexually confused children and youth, Minister’s Eggen bulldozes the family as the fundamental unit of society.
It’s literally Nazi policy. It actually goes even further back to Marx. Marx specifically said that the family needs to be destroyed and replaced with the state. It was the only way to remove the capitalist ideas of freedom from future generations.
Look at EVERY socialist or communist society in history. EVERY SINGLE ONE went after the kids to turn against their parents.
The government has latterly become the enemy of the people !
Good article, Jonathon!
The comparison with the Residential Schools is most apt. Interesting how the NDP would like to cut it both ways.
Hope I’m still alive when my grandkids get their big settlements because they were alienated from their parents and forced to “assimilate” into the only approved culture of the time.
I love philosophy