Provincial Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said he does not want to speculate on any upcoming legal challenges to Bill 27.
The Education Amendment Act passed the final stage of debate in the provincial legislature on Dec. 3. Among other changes, parents will now have to opt-in for students to participate in sex-ed. It also requires schools to notify parents if a student asks to use a different name or pronouns and obtain parental consent if the student is 15 or under.
Alberta NDP Education Critic Amanda Chapman said the change to opt-in will add barriers between kids and sexual health education.
“The NDP knows the value of good comprehensive sexual health education. It's outcomes that I've talked about before, but I'm going to reiterate them here, which is lower teen pregnancy rates, lower sexually transmitted infection rates, reductions in gender based violence, delayed timing for first sexual encounters. These are the kind of outcomes that all parents can get behind so when we are not providing a consistency in education to students, regardless of what type of program they're in, we are doing a disservice to those children,” said Chapman.
Nicolaides says there’s no evidence to support the conclusion that people will not receive sex-ed, and south of the border in Nevada over 95 per cent of parents opt in.
“We have a very robust sex education curriculum. We teach about STIs in elementary we teach about safe sex, we teach all of these components, and I'm confident that our robust sex education curriculum will give students the right information that they need, and at the same time, help ensure that parents are involved and help ensure that they have the final decision over their kids’ education,” said Nicolaides.
According to the legislation, the Ministry of Education will be responsible for approving resources used for teaching related to gender identity, sexual orientation or human sexuality.
The bill was amended to exclude resources on the same topics if they are used for religious instruction. “[Faith-based schools] were concerned there could be some issue there, because a lot of those subjects are interconnected and in some of our faith-based schools are presented through the same lens,” said Nicolaides.
