CALGARY — A bill that has raised the spectre of Alberta parents hauling teachers before human rights tribunals is an offensive attempt to placate ultra right-wing conservatives, says the man whose legal crusade forced the province to rewrite its human rights legislation.
Inthis 1998 file photo, Delwin Vriend, right, gets a congratulatory kiss from partner Andrew Gagnon at a rally in Edmonton. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Mr. Vriend's favor forcing the Alberta government to amend its human rights to include sexual orientation.
Inthis 1998 file photo, Delwin Vriend, right, gets a congratulatory kiss from partner Andrew Gagnon at a rally in Edmonton. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Mr. Vriend's favor forcing the Alberta government to amend its human rights to include sexual orientation.
This weekend, Alberta's teachers slammed proposed new rules that would give parents sweeping rights to pull kids from classes on touchy subjects, and be notified in advance when lessons focus on religion, sexuality or sexual orientation.
The new measures were included as part of Bill 44, which enshrines gay rights in the province 11 years after they were imposed by the Supreme Court of Canada in a case that caused an ugly backlash in Alberta. In an interview yesterday, Alberta Culture and Community Spirit Minister Lindsay Blackett admitted that the provincial caucus wrote the school provisions into the bill as an olive branch to religious groups and conservative voters who might be offended by the province's move to codify gay rights.
"It doesn't hurt to have some balance on what you're bringing forward, so you can get some support from both ends of the political spectrum," he said.
The controversy is stark evidence of how the debate set off by Delwin Vriend continues to stir tension in the province today. In 1991, Mr. Vriend was fired from his science teacher job at Alberta's King's College, a Christian school, for being gay, at a time when sexual orientation was not included as grounds for discrimination in provincial legislation. He sought to change that and, when the Supreme Court ruled in his favour in 1998, it ensured that Alberta gays would receive protection from discrimination.
Yet for Mr. Vriend, who served as the most public face of the battles to modernize Alberta's human rights rules, the school provisions in Bill 44 run counter to much of what he fought for. The province's government had a chance to make a statement with symbolic importance, he said.
"It could have shown that Alberta is part of the modern world, that Alberta isn't the far south of the U.S. Unfortunately when we start to talk about being able to pull kids out of class for various reasons, including talk about gays and lesbians or evolution, that definitely points to a very backwards people," he said from Paris, where he now lives and works as a software engineer.
"That is so extremely damaging. It's abhorrent. It's unconscionable," he said.
On Saturday, Alberta's teachers voted their agreement, passing a resolution that stridently opposes Bill 44. Provincial rules already allow students to be exempted from sex education and "religious or patriotic instruction," but educators across the province - a group that includes the Alberta School Boards Association, the Alberta School Councils' Association and the College of Alberta School Superintendents - say the bill would bring a chill over classrooms.
The controversy is not a constitutional one, and teachers will not likely be able to rely on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to bolster their effort.
"You couldn't frame it in terms of the teachers' right to freedom of speech, because they can say what they want. It's just that the parents can say, 'Well, our kids aren't going to listen to it'," said Annalise Acorn, who teaches in the University of Alberta's faculty of law.
But the teachers hope enough has changed in Alberta since Mr. Vriend's case that a public campaign can convince the government to change course. Their concern is that wording in Bill 44 gives parents the right to be notified before any classroom "instruction" on potentially offensive subject matter. That means a classroom discussion that unexpectedly veers into delicate territory could land a teacher in hot water from parents who have not been notified, said Alberta Teachers' Association president Frank Bruseker.
"We're going to have all kinds of teachers in front of human rights tribunals instead of in front of kids," he said.
The government, however, said the legislation is intended to provide notice to parents solely when curriculum or a planned lesson delves into sensitive material. Still, the province is considering amending the bill before it becomes law, Mr. Blackett said.
"We will make the tweaks and accommodations to make sure that it's clear what the intent is," he said. "Because you can't be the thought police and try to determine what someone's going to say."
Mr. Bruseker is skeptical. "The view from our legal counsel is that this is not salvageable if it's just tinkering."
Mr. Blackett, however, dismissed the controversy as overwrought. It has been many years since Mr. Vriend was fired, and Alberta parents today will overwhelmingly leave their kids in class even if they are allowed to pull them out, he said. "We're the most tolerant province in the country," he said.
