The first major test of new premier Jim
Prentice's leadership came early. He failed it.
Prentice said last week there is
“clearly no consensus in Alberta on the constitutionality or the
wisdom” of Bill 10, the government bill which would have (sort of)
allowed the creation of student-led gay-straight alliance clubs in
publicly funded schools.
Therefor, he has instructed the speaker
of the legislature to delay third reading of the bill until after the
New Year, which is really a tactic to kill the bill entirely.
Well enough that bad legislation should
be delayed, forgotten and replaced with something better. As the
premier said at a press conference, balancing competing rights in
legislation is something that “should not be done in haste.”
That begs a couple of questions: if
haste is wrong in the creation of legislation that attempts to
balance the competing rights of Albertans, why was the bill drawn up
so quickly, and why was closure invoked to see that it passed two
readings in the same day?
Doing that wouldn't have had anything
to do with the embarrassment of using whipped votes to down Liberal
MLA Laurie Blakeman's private member's bill, Bill 202? Well, would it?
Bill 202 would have obliged
publicly-funded high schools to allow the creation of student-led
gay-straight alliance groups on their campuses, as a means to stem
harassment and bullying of non-straight students.
Having these alliances seems to
accomplish just that, in the experience of schools in other
jurisdictions.
Here's a sampling of how badly Bill 10
was drafted: it would have allowed individual school boards to deny
the formation of these student clubs, on religious grounds. Students
in this position would then have needed to take their school board to
court to get the local ruling quashed.
Do you wonder how bullying and
harassment of students is reduced by forcing teenagers to sue their
school boards for the right to form an association in which they
could feel more safe and accepted?
A lot of people wondered exactly that.
So somewhere before closure was enforced on second reading, an
amendment was made, releasing school boards from the threat of
lawsuits and allowing students to appeal directly to the education
minister for a decision to allow an end-run around legislation he
just helped to create.
Apparently, government members can read
a tweet while they pursue the onerous burden of governing a province.
Except they didn't read the full 120 characters of the social media
debate that exploded in their faces.
It happens that among the many
accomplishments that qualify our education minister (and they are
indeed genuine) is that the minister, Gordon Dirks, is also an
evangelical pastor whose theology says homosexuality is a sin.
If you were part of a committee comprised of a handful
of teenagers, just how would you word your appeal for him to overturn
a lawfully-made school board decision?
When you think about it, you would need
to suggest that the minister look past his personal religious
convictions, to his wider responsibilities to a diverse society
governed by the Canadian Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
When you think about that, you would
need to realize that school boards, even school boards that are
religiously-based, should be able to do the same.
Now, as it became quite evident that
the Alberta public is able to think more clearly than the provincial
cabinet, the premier pushed Bill 10 to the trash can.
When football players in Calgary can
hold off celebrating their Grey Cup victories to ridicule a proposed
law that thwarts its own premise — the right to a safe,
publicly-funded education in Alberta — it's time to toss this one
out of bounds.
“Rights are never absolute,” said
premier Jim Prentice at a press conference.
Hmmm... was he thinking about the
rights of religious-based school boards that accept a great deal of
tax money from a diverse, secular society, or the rights of
individuals, whose claim to personal safety may be at cross-purposes
to the decisions of those boards?
It takes a lot of one's time, figuring
out a way to keep the government budget from sliding down a blocked
pipeline, while not resorting to predictable and stable revenue
sources available to every other government on earth.
But somebody needs to be paying
attention to the kids. Having a place of acceptance and comradeship
helps keep teenagers more focussed on positive things in their lives.
Otherwise, we find they sometimes think about killing themselves.
That trumps party politics, or even
religious dogma.
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