Home > Releases > GSA Call to Action

GSA Call to Action

March 23rd, 2011

On Monday, March 21st, Rosario Marchese, the Education Critic for the Ontario NDP, asked Premier Dalton McGuinty a question we have been asking of Leona Dombrowsky, the Minister of Education, for quite some time now — Why hasn’t the Liberal government been properly enforcing its Policy/Program Memorandum (PPM) No. 145, which explicitly mandates the support of Gay-Straight Alliances? In response, McGuinty noted that while the Liberals “require every single school board in Ontario to adhere to [the policy],” it is ultimately up to the individual school boards to find “different ways to ensure that they adhere to those policies,” which may or may not include the establishment of GSAs.

This is, needless to say, a rather contradictory position to take given that the Policy itself explicitly states that School Boards “must also help school staff to give support to students who wish to participate in gay–straight alliances,” which one might logically assume means helping students establish a GSA in their school. But this is apparently not the case and McGuinty fails to elaborate on the form that this ‘support’ is to take, exactly. Such an equivocal response is absolutely unacceptable and unbecoming of a progressive leader — and much less of a self-proclaimed ‘Education Premier,’ who supposedly has the best interests of the province’s students in mind.

As such, we encourage everyone to continue to sign our petition calling on the Ministry to enforce it’s Policy and we’ll continue to work on this issue.

With the Premier’s refusal to enforce his own Policy, we have decided that we will be looking at asking the Ontario Human Rights Commission for it’s read on the Policy and the Premier’s position. We will post updates to our work on the issue as they arise.

Comments are closed.