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Bill 44 - Human Rights, Citizenship and Multiculturalism Amendment Act, 2009

Reasoned Amendment

Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the amendment as moved by my colleague from Calgary-Varsity, which is essentially asking that the bill not now be read a third time because the provisions that are in the bill will cause a chill in expression that will adversely affect Alberta’s education system. In fact, that’s what’s happened to us. We started out with a bill that was about human rights and we’ve ended up with a bill that’s about schools and parental rights. Not the same thing.

I think there are a couple of issues that we want to talk about here. The Member for Edmonton Castle Downs actually introduced quite a bit of it. But there are a number of choices that are available to parents in the system now if parents do not like or approve of the public system. They have a number of options, and they were outlined earlier. They could home-school their children if they chose. They could send them to a private school, which used to be the sort of enclave of the truly wealthy, but now since we provide 70 per cent of the funding for that, not quite so much anymore to be able to send your kid to a private school. So that’s the choice that’s available, and of course, we have a number of charter schools that are set up to deliver a very particular kind of education. It is under the school system but is not included in the sections that are included in Bill 44. So already there are choices that are offered to these parents if they do not like the way the public school system operates.

I am the child of a public school system here in Alberta, and more than that, my parents were both teachers in that system. I believe in that public school system and I think it strives for excellence and I think, in fact, it has produced excellence. I appreciate that they tried very hard to give a range of experiences to me as a student and continue to do so, and I think that a public school education should be something that has a value and a standard to it, in the same way that we look at public health care, for example. Indeed, you can opt out of public health care if you want. You can pay cash or you can opt out completely or you can get other kinds of insurance that will cover your health care costs. But that doesn’t mean that we change the quintessential quality of our health care system.

I believe that a public education should stand for something. I am confused, and I have failed to hear a compelling argument about how having different children pulled out of different classes for different reasons over a period of time is going to give us a standard of education that is recognized outside of Alberta as an Alberta education because this kid didn’t do evolution because of some reason, and this kid didn’t do biology, and this kid didn’t do English. I think that what we do is start to create a patchwork in our education system. So that’s my concern about what we’ve created with Bill 44 by adding this in.

We went from talking about a parental opt-out section to a parental rights section – much more muscular talking about parental rights than talking about a parental opt-out section. And, indeed, we had a parental opt-out section. That’s what existed. We didn’t need to put it into legislation. So you think to yourself: why would we? Given the chance, from a government that professes to be of an ideology that wants less government and less legislation, why was there such eagerness to put more legislation in place around this and more rules and more administration around this and put more into something that then had to be dealt with?

Let me move on to talking about: what’s the effect of that on our schools? I touched on that during my earlier remarks. What we’ve done is create a necessity for each of our schools, many of which are dealing with 500, 700, 1,000 students now having to establish a system. Does this happen that each school is responsible for developing their own database and for paying for it and bringing in the IT specialists that are going to help them to run this database, or is this going to be a school-board-wide initiative that has to pay for this?

An Hon. Member: Relevance.

Ms Blakeman: It’s relevant because in the amendment, if you’d care to read it, it talks about adversely affecting Alberta’s education system. I think that having to pay for a computer system and IT support is going to adversely affect Alberta’s education system, particularly because it’s going to pull the money off.

One of the things that we tried to get through as an amendment when we were in Committee of the Whole was an amendment that would try not to have the effect of a teacher hauled before the human rights tribunal, the liability, have to be assumed by the school.

So right there are two things that affect the school very directly. One is having to devote the resources, both the staff resources and the financial resources, to developing and maintaining this database of parental preference around what they want their various children to do. And of course you could be dealing with one or two parents, and you could be dealing with several different children in the school, so this starts to be a complicated database that you’re dealing with.

Secondly is the effect on and the cost to teachers because at the bottom line here what we have created is the ability of a parent to bring a human rights complaint against a teacher for having taught something in a class that would be around – once again I’m going back to the language here – “religion, human sexuality or sexual orientation.” For teaching that or having course materials or instructional materials that possibly deal with that – think poetry, think plays, books, images, science, math, all kinds of ways that this could be perceived as being offensive to someone – for having any material of that material available that somehow, now, is offensive to a parent, now you can end up bringing a teacher before the human rights tribunal and all of the costs involved with that.

This is not chump change, guys. You start to get lawyers involved in this and a number of different hearings, and it can be appealed upwards from the Human Rights Commission into the court system. So you can potentially commit somebody to a significant amount of money for this. When we look at what have we done that could adversely affect the school system, well, I think that’s where the chill on the teachers comes from. Somebody earlier talked about seeing a line being drawn that on one side were parents and on the other side were teachers around how this bill is coming out. I actually think that’s pretty accurate, not to mention the people that this is actually affecting the most because their very beings have now been deemed to be open for discrimination based on what is anticipated under section 9, which is amending the original subsection 11.

I think this is a whole section, an anticipated effect of this bill, that has not been dealt with, and I approve of the amendment being brought forward because I think we do need to deal with this and understand what it’s going to cost in staffing and in financial resources and in an emotional investment for how teachers approach their classrooms, and when you see those teachable moments come by. Well, yes, we’re now supposed to be protected from things that are sort of casual. Sorry. I’m searching for the amendment so I’ve got the right language here, that was supposed to – impromptu things are not supposed to be grounds for bringing a teacher before the human rights, but even that I think could run us into difficulties because we’re not getting a real clear definition of those circumstances.

Frankly, this is all going to play out by test cases. That’s how law is developed and precedent is developed, is by test cases. If we don’t write good, clear legislation on this floor, we end up costing those individuals that get involved in it and the court system and ultimately the taxpayers a fair chunk of change because we weren’t specific enough in what we did on this floor.

Given that, I would recommend very strongly to my colleagues on the floor that you support this amendment, which in effect would result in the bill not now being read a third time because it brought in a whole section that was not originally anticipated and is affecting the school system and teachers and school boards and school councils in a way that was not originally anticipated.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak in favour of the amendment.