Chris Selley: Grown

Of course it is an extreme position to say that schools must (!), under any circumstances, keep secret important medical information about their students

The question of how to deal with children who want to go by a different gender identity and name at school, without their parents knowing, should never have become the muddy political football that it has. Each child, each family, each community is different, and dedicated professionals ought to be able to work out the best approach in each case unencumbered by some politically motivated blanket policy.

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Alas, leaving it to the professionals doesn’t score either side any points in the culture wars. And despite all the positive media coverage the “don’t tell” side has received, it is losing badly. After some hiccups in New Brunswick, where the issue became entangled in Premier Blaine Higgs’s leadership woes, conservative leaders seem to be landing confidently to the only logical policy available to them: Parents should know what’s going on with their kids. Obviously.

New Brunswick’s Policy 713 on the matter has been in effect since July: “Formal” use of a new name or gender requires parental consent for students under 16. Saskatchewan recently implemented similar rules. And Ontario, too, is drawing a line in the sand. “Parents must be fully involved and fully aware of what’s happening in the life of their children,” provincial Education Minister Stephen Lecce told reporters Monday, uncontroversially. “Often there are health implications, and I think we have to respect the rights of parents and recognize that these can be life-changing decisions.”

Also on Monday, CBC obtained video of federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre saying outrageous things at a Pakistan Independence Day event earlier this month. Outrageous things like, “We want every parent to have the freedom to raise their kids with their own values.” If that sentence were in the Citizenship Guide, no one (outside Quebec) would bat an eyelash.

Former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne called Lecce’s and Poilievre’s comments “disgusting.” “For some children school is the safest place in their lives,” she said. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been just as strident. “Far-right political actors are trying to outdo themselves with the types of cruelty and isolation they can inflict on these already vulnerable people,” he said in June of New Brunswick’s policy.

An Angus Reid Institute poll released this week confirmed what offline, outside-the-bubble common sense ought to have told everyone involved: very few Canadians — 14 per cent — believe in a policy where “parents should neither be informed nor have a say” in a child’s gender-switch.

The unpopularity of such an idea is pretty much universal. Quebecers (11 per cent support) dislike it as much as do Saskatchewanians (11 per cent). Atlantic Canadians supported it most … at a mere 28 per cent. It was most popular among 18-to-24 year olds — the cohort closest to the kids affected by such policies, and recent graduates of progressive-minded public schools — but support was only 28 per cent even among that group.

If it shocks you that 78 per cent of Canadians feel schools should at the very least inform them if their child intends to do something life-altering, and perhaps require consent as well, you really need to get out of whatever bubble you’re trapped in. Of course it is an extreme position to say that schools must (!), under any circumstances, keep important medical information about their students from their parents. Look at that policy for a few minutes. Let it breathe. Go out for a walk maybe, and come back at it again with some better arguments.

Wynne makes the most powerful case for a “don’t tell” policy: a kid who’s miserable everywhere but at school. But it only really works in a frozen moment of time. Having kept and respected the child’s secret, then what? Surely that’s not the end of the school’s responsibilities to a child, and perhaps a family, who need professional help. It’s not as if it’s a foolproof, long-term plan: The more opposed a given community is to alternative gender expression, the more likely it is the news will find its way home anyway — and maybe land like a bomb, when it needn’t have.

You’ll hear it said that children are often allowed to make medical decisions for themselves as “mature minors.” So why not let them be someone else at school and keep it secret?

Well, let’s see. First of all, mature minors are allowed to make medical decisions after consulting with medical doctors, as opposed to, say, Ms. Crosby the art teacher. Also it’s very difficult, as a practical matter, for children to arrange and consent to life-altering medical procedures without involving their parents at some steps. It’s also difficult legally: Quebec, for example, requires parental notification in certain circumstances when a child seeks medical attention independently. And of course, medical doctors in some cases decide children aren’t emotionally mature enough to make certain decisions.

Maybe the worst part of this issue being politicized is that the supposedly outrageous and dangerous policies being passed have perfectly reasonable clauses dealing with the most sensitive cases … only no one wants to know about it. New Brunswick’s policy is to encourage students reluctant to include their parents to discuss the matter with “appropriate professionals” — who might conclude it is indeed “not in the best interest of the student” to share the information. Saskatchewan’s new policy is broadly similar. On Monday, Lecce prefaced his remarks by noting that schools know how to handle “exceptional circumstances” or “situations of potential harm to the child” — i.e., they’re not just going to get on the horn at the first opportunity to rat out trans kids to their intolerant parents.

I mean, of course they’re not. They’re teachers, principals and guidance counsellors, not ghouls — and neither are the policy’s designers. These culture war caricatures do nothing to help kids in crisis. The kids need the grown-ups to act their age. Hopefully they know some at school.

• Email: [email protected] | Twitter: cselley

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