NDP pushing for gay-straight alliance legislation

Saskatchewan’s NDP is pushing for the government to enshrine support for gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in the province’s schools into legislation, but the minister of education said he doesn’t know what that would achieve.

The NDP brought Cat Haines to the legislature on Wednesday — she’s the program director at UR Pride. Standing next to the leader of the Sask. NDP, Haines explained to the media that GSAs are important.

“A GSA really provides a safe space and community within (students’) school where they can feel supported and where they can feel like they can really be themselves,” Haines said.

She said that, in schools where the clubs have been successful, they tend to make the entire school safer, not just for those in the club.

The provincial government has a policy on GSAs right now but Haines said she’s heard from students who’ve had problems starting clubs, or who don’t feel safe starting one in their schools.

She said taking the support and putting it into legislation would takes things further than the policy does.

“It’ll provide students who don’t necessarily feel supported at school or at home more of a clear path about how they can go about resolving these kind of issues if they arise,” Haines said.

However, Education Minister Gord Wyant said he doesn’t see what legislation would do to protect the kids. He said the policy is more flexible, and can be more easily amended to go along with changes in the government’s approach.

Wyant said the policy was developed with the help of school divisions, teachers, and members of the LGBTQ+ community, and has already been adopted by all the school boards in the province.

According to Wyant, in the little over a year he has been on the education file, his office hasn’t heard any complaints regarding GSAs from students — but if there are, then he wants to hear about them.

“My responsibility is to ensure that students are safe in their school environments, and if there are people that have had examples given to them where students aren’t safe, where they don’t feel comfortable in reporting their inability to create a GSA in a particular school, we need to know about that,” said Wyant.

There is an online reporting tool for such things.

Wyant pointed to Alberta in his arguments, saying that it has legislation but some schools haven’t complied with it.

NDP Leader Ryan Meili told media he doesn’t think, during Question Period that day, the opposition got the affirmative answer it should have from the government on GSA legislation.

He said the province should make it clear to students there are supports for them, and to do that with legislation. Meili said the vagueness of the current policy makes that difficult.

Meili also said legislation would communicate how important GSAs are.