British Columbia’s education ministry is working on a framework to ensure age-appropriate materials are being used in the province’s schools.
Education Minister Lisa Beare says she has directed the ministry to develop “a provincial framework that includes a specific criterion ensuring that age-appropriate materials are in schools.”
Beare made the comments during question period in the B.C. Legislature on March 11, after being questioned by Conservative Party of B.C. MLA Mandeep Dhaliwal about books in school libraries and SOGI, the government’s sexual orientation and gender identity program.
Dhaliwal said that parents in his riding of Surrey North were contacting him “daily” with concern over the issue.
”Their children are seeing books that are inappropriate for their age. Parents want sexual imagery removed from schools,” he said, while asking whether the NDP government would replace SOGI with a new anti-bullying program.
“I absolutely agree with the member that any materials that are provided in school need to be age-appropriate,” Beare responded.
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She said she was committed to ensuring schools and children have access to resources they need in “an age-appropriate manner.”
Dhaliwal said on social media following the session that he would keep pushing the issue until SOGI was removed from schools.
Prior Concerns
Other Conservative MLAs and party leader John Rustad have also brought the issue forward in the legislature in recent years.
In an October 2023 sitting, MLA Bruce Banman read a section from a book that was in school libraries to illustrate parents’ concerns. He recited a few explicit sentences from the book before being chastised by the Speaker for the language.
Banman retracted his words and apologized. He said he understood the language was “deeply disturbing” but said that if the words were deemed inappropriate for the legislature, how could they be appropriate for a child.
Then-Education Minister Rachna Singh responded that public schools are a place of inclusivity. She said that teachers were using age-appropriate resources to create a “safe, inclusive and welcoming” environment at schools.
Singh also said that her children, who were in the public school system, did not encounter anything inappropriate.
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad also raised the issue in the provincial legislature in October 2023, calling on Premier David Eby’s NDP government to replace SOGI. Rustad called the program “divisive, an assault on parents’ rights, and a distraction to student education.”
Eby responded by accusing Rustad of fuelling “division” in the province by bringing the “culture war” to B.C., while making kids “feel less safe at school.” He declined to answer the question.
Rustad responded by saying it was not an attack on any particular group, and that thousands were protesting the SOGI materials. He asked if the education minister would replace SOGI with “a less divisive approach to anti-bullying.”
Singh said she was saddened Rustad was talking about the issue. She said the government was committed to providing safe and welcoming spaces.
Trustee ‘Traumatized’ by Library Book
In August 2023, then-B.C. school trustee for District 33, Heather Maahs, previously told The Epoch Times she had been “traumatized” by content she read in a school library book. Maahs is now a Conservative MLA for Chilliwack North.
She said the book had described the rape of a 7-year-old girl by her father.
“I cannot imagine what that would do to a child reading it, or an adolescent,” she said at the time.
Maahs also raised concerns with her school board about other books, including “Gender Queer, a Memoir,” authored by Maia Kobabe. Kobabe’s book includes detailed drawings of sexual acts between two males.
She said the content “needlessly sexualizes children” before they are mature enough to understand, and that “you can never un-see these pictures.”
Maahs said the books amounted to pornography and could start children on the wrong path in a world where pornography addiction is a serious issue.
Board Chair Willow Reichelt disagreed with Maahs, saying at a school board meeting that teenagers have sex in their lives or on their minds and there was going to be some sexual content in books. Reichelt said trying to ban such content was “illogical.”
Lee Harding contributed to this article.
