Forgotten in Tara Courte’s recent letter is the concern I had raised about the NDP “Government” of Alberta demanding that Christian schools remove faith-based language from its Safe and Caring Policies and replace them with policies created by Alberta Education, devoid of respect for their religious beliefs or parents’ rights and responsibilities concerning their own children.
Once one cuts through all the verbiage and spin in MLA Cam Westhead’s response to my letter, it is abundantly clear that he proudly supports the Government through Education Minister David Eggen threatening to defund and shut down schools which do not remove religious content from their policies (akin to Justin Trudeau’s ideological purity test to determine who will qualify for a Canada Summer Jobs grant). For that, according to Ms. Courte, MLA Westhead deserves “kudos.”
Education Minister Eggen wants private Christian schools, which, by the way, Ms. Courte has a choice not to send her kids to, to remove references to “truth,” “God created mankind as male and female,” the Bible, and other religious references. Is this what Ms. Courte had in mind as being a school environment that insists “they meet bigoted criteria?” One has to ask, who is the real bigot?
Time and again we hear the mantra from Eggen about “safe and caring schools” as if repeatedly saying so makes it so and any criticism of Government policy puts one, as Ms. Courte suggests, in the realm of having shameful “sentiments” opposed to “safe and caring schools”.
As far as the government ensuring “safe and caring schools” absent from parental involvement, a recent Alberta Court of Appeal hearing alarmingly revealed that children in one GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) were removed from school property – without parents’ consent or knowledge – during class time by an adult “facilitator” who is not a staff member at the school. In another case, again without parental consent or knowledge, a 13-year-old boy who was a member of a GSA was taken off school grounds to a GSA conference where the boy watched a demonstration on how to put a condom on a banana and was given over 100 condoms and a disturbingly graphic 50-page ‘how-to’ sexual flip book.
Is this what Ms. Courte had in mind when lauding the government (‘Big Brother’) as “protecting our school children?”
Ron Voss
