Will parents see Brown lobbying against the province's sex-ed curriculum as PC leader?
In his first post-election interviews he's made it clear that the sex-ed curriculum is one of his priorities.
Toronto Sun reporter Antonella Artuso probed which of the typical social conservative issues we could expect to see him move forward on. He said that while he would not make opposition to abortion or gay marriage part of his platform (he mentioned he has attended Barrie's Gay Pride parade in the past), he had advice for the premier on sex education.
When parents are willing to go to the length of withdrawing children from school, as thousands of parents across the province did last week to protest the curriculum, you have a serious problem, Brown said.
He said he thought the government should start over with the sex-ed curriculum: "I have been very critical of the government on sex education ... We have parents pulling their kids out of classrooms to the point of - in Kathleen Wynne's own riding - you saw record numbers of students pulled out by their parents. I think the premier should go back to the drawing board. If I were premier, I'd go back to the drawing board ... Let parents decide what's age appropriate for children."
In a television interview with
CTV May 12 Brown was asked how would he change the sex education curriculum in Ontario.
By re-drafting the curriculum to address parental concerns, he said.
This is the second time parents have revolted against the curriculum, after all. Brown said it was time for the government to have the consultation promised by former premier McGuinty in 2010
when an almost identical program was widely condemned. In his words:
The reality is I think the government tried to sweep it under the table and say that there's only a few people that were upset.
Clearly, with some Toronto schools almost empty last week and other boards in the province experiencing 10-20% higher-than-average absences the first day of the strike, the broad popular opposition is getting harder and harder to dismiss.
For evidence of significant opposition Brown pointed to a petition with well over 70,000 signatures (the PAFE petition has almost 60K online and 10K signatures on paper):
That's not a few. You know parliamentary petitions sometimes get 50 signatures, 100 signatures. 70,000 starts to get into quite a significant number.
He said he thinks the province needs to sit down with concerned parents:
I think those that have concerns - you actually need to sit down, you actually need to have a dialogue of respect and certainly I would go back to the drawing board and say 'how do we get everyone to the point that you are comfortable that we can have everyone in the classroom.'