The government has launched a dedicated website, called
Fortheparents.ca, where parents can report any concerns about what their children are being taught — something critics have likened to a snitch line. And if they feel like a teacher is “jeopardizing their child's education by deliberately ignoring Ontario's curriculum,” parents are being told to call the Ontario College of Teachers’ investigations and hearing’s department or file a complaint online.
Going beyond sex education in the consultations is aimed at reforming what children are taught in school, Ford added.
“We promised to deliver an education system that puts the rights of parents first while getting back to the basics when it comes to teaching fundamental subjects like math,” the premier said.
There was no schedule provided for the consultations, which Ford has promised would “criss-cross this province to 124 ridings.”
Ford and his ministers have repeatedly defended the government’s decision to scrap the 239-page, 2015 health and physical education curriculum — which includes sex education — in favour of the 42-page version from 1998, which was in place before social media and the legalization of same-sex marriage.
The Progressive Conservatives said parents were not properly consulted before the updated 2015 curriculum was implemented. It includes the teaching of the proper names for body parents and genitals in Grade 1, a change child-abuse investigators have long recommended.
In Grade 3, the new curriculum, for which development started in 2007, introduces the concept of same-sex relationships with lessons on puberty and the need to be careful online coming in Grade 4. The topics of consent, healthy relationships and masturbation are raised in Grade 6, and Grade 7 lessons include warnings about “sexting,” sexually transmitted diseases and on oral and anal sex.
The New Democrats have accused Ford’s government of being in the pocket of social conservative activists like former Progressive Conservative leadership candidate Tanya Granic Allen and Rev. Charles McVety, who helped Ford win the party’s leadership race.
“Instead of moving Ontario forward, he (Ford) is denying the realities of 2018 by failing to teach consent, cyberbullying, gender identity and sexual orientation,” NDP Leader Andrea Horwath charged last month.