As families and students get prepared to return to school for another year, the LGBTQ+ community is coming under undo scrutiny once again.

Over the summer, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan provincial governments changed their policies regarding notifying parents of a student’s wish to change their pronouns or assigned name from birth. Here in Ontario, the Minister of Education Stephen Lecce voiced support for the policy and opened the door to Ontario making a similar change to its policy. This of course kicked open the hornet’s nest of public debate with those on the right arguing for the policy under the guise of ‘parental rights’. LGBTQ+ advocates, unions, and education professional organizations have stated that this policy would in fact harm students who wanted to change their pronouns. All of this comes under the umbrella of an Ontario government that is desperate to change the channel on its ongoing Greenbelt scandal.

We thought it would be prudent to discuss the politics and practicalities of what a change in this policy might have on Ontario schools and students. To that end, we invited to the podcast the Hon. Kathleen Wynne to discuss the matter. Ms. Wynne is a former Toronto School Board Trustee, Ontario Minister of Education, Canada’s first openly gay Premier, a mother and a grandmother. We thought her expertise on the topic would be invaluable.

She joins us today.

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Nicholas Paul: sound editing.

The Quadrafonics: fantastic opening and closing tunes!