You can’t have it both ways
Doug Ford’s government took a page straight out of Donald Trump’s now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t playbook last week.
That’s when lawyers defending the provincial government’s repeal of the 2015 sex-ed curriculum claimed in court that teachers can still use it as a resource to talk to kids about consent, transgender issues and homophobia.
The fact is, that’s exactly the opposite of what Ford has been saying for months now.
And just as Trump can’t pretend he didn’t say Mexico would pay for a border wall — it’s on tape, for heaven’s sake — the premier can’t pretend now that he didn’t outright order school boards to adhere to a sex-ed curriculum resurrected from the last century.
In fact, he went further than that. He even threatened teachers, warning them that if they didn’t toe the line by teaching the 1998 sex-ed curriculum they would face consequences.
“Make no mistake, if we find someone failing to do their job, we will act,” he said last summer after establishing what amounted to a “snitch line” for parents to complain about any teachers who dared to cross into verboten territory from the 2015 curriculum.
It’s hard to say how this out-of-the-blue, if not imaginary, argument from government lawyers will play out with the panel of three judges who will decide the case against the province’s repeal of the modern day syllabus, launched by the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
But so far it isn’t impressing anyone on either side of the political sex-ed divide. In fact, the lawyer’s assertion in court floored them.
Take the social conservatives within the Progressive Conservative party, who Ford was trying to appeal to when he promised to repeal the 2015 sex-ed curriculum if he was elected.
Tanya Granic Allen, president of Parents As First Educators, termed the province’s court argument a “betrayal.”
Meanwhile, teachers’ leader Sam Hammond said he was “absolutely surprised” by the lawyer’s assertion that teachers could use the 2015 sex-ed syllabus as a resource. If the premier, and government, had made that clear at the outset, he said, “we wouldn’t be here today.”
But they didn’t. In fact, every time there was any hint that teachers could even dip their toes into the 2015 curriculum to make sure kids were kept safe from cyberbullying and understood issues surrounding consent and gender identity, Ford quashed it.
Indeed, at one point last summer, when Education Minister Lisa Thompson and Deputy Premier Christine Elliott both suggested in the legislature that those issues could somehow be included in the old curriculum the province was readopting, Ford made them “clarify” — as in completely walk back — their statements.
Not that there’s anything clear about what the province’s lawyers are arguing in court now.
Even as he was suggesting teachers could use the 2015 curriculum as a resource, lawyer Zachary Green told the judges: “It’s not a blank cheque. I can’t stand here and say teachers can say whatever they want.”
So how are teachers supposed to know what they can and cannot teach kids from the 2015 curriculum — if indeed they can? Beats us. As NDP education critic Marit Stiles said after last week’s court hearing, this is an example of the “ongoing chaos and confusion” that the Ford government has created around sex-ed.
The bottom line is Ford can’t have it both ways — and shouldn’t even be trying to do so for a promise that should never have been made in the first place.
It’s time the government reverted to the 2015 curriculum before one more day — at taxpayers’ expense — is wasted in court.