Alberta premier says legislation on school pronouns coming after September

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says her government will introduce legislation on pronouns in schools after classes begin in September.

Smith said the new policy requiring parents to consent before children under 16 can change their names or pronouns in schools will be proposed in the fall legislature session that begins in late October.

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"I don't want to presuppose what the outcome of those deliberations would be, but there will be lots of time to be able to get the policies in place and to implement them, so we have to make sure we have that robust discussion," Smith told an unrelated news conference on Thursday.

Her comments come about three weeks before most kindergarten to Grade 12 schools open their classrooms.

Smith said she intends to bring legislation forward for a suite of policies she first announced in January.

Those include restricting transgender youth access to gender-affirming health care, banning transgender participation in female sports, and requiring parental consent or notification on sex education and changes to pronouns and names in schools.

"Once you've passed legislation, regulations have to be implemented," said Smith, who did not offer specifics about what enforcement would look like.

LGBTQ+ advocacy groups Egale Canada and Skipping Stone Foundation have said if Alberta moves ahead with the proposed changes, they would bring legal action.

Before Smith spoke on Thursday, the province’s two largest school divisions — the Edmonton Public School Board and the Calgary Board of Education — said they weren’t clear on what the province will implement and when those changes would arrive.

On Wednesday, Alberta Teachers’ Association president Jason Schilling told The Canadian Press that his colleagues are incredibly worried about a chilling effect of new pronoun rules, even if the policy remains in limbo.

"It does definitely have a bit of a dark cloud hanging over things," he said, noting many teachers worry about being put in the position of having to decide whether to violate the trust and confidence of a student.

"They don't want to jeopardize the safety of a student who might trust them enough to share the struggles that they're going through," said Schilling.

The issue has raised questions over whether Smith’s government would ultimately follow in the footsteps of Saskatchewan's government.

Saskatchewan invoked the rarely used notwithstanding clause to override sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Saskatchewan's Human Rights Code for its pronoun legislation last fall.

Schilling said if the Alberta premier did that, it would be "a sledgehammer approach," and tone deaf.

More pressing worries for teachers are a lack of educational assistants, and ballooning class sizes, he said.

Critics have called Smith's moves an act of appeasement to her far-right United Conservative Party base ahead of a leadership review in early November, but Smith has said the issue of "parental rights" is important to her government.

She has said she believes there’s nothing wrong with parents wanting to protect their "child’s innocence as long as possible on issues of sexuality."

Following Smith's announcement Thursday, Kristopher Wells, a Canada Research Chair for the public understanding of sexual and gender minority youth at MacEwan University in Edmonton, wrote on social media that the premier's "obsession" with the transgender community is "beyond weird."

"The fact that she ignores our crumbling health-care system to obsess over what parts people have in their pants is deeply disturbing. This trans panic she is manufacturing is hateful, hurtful and needs to stop," Wells wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Saskatchewan passed a law in October preventing children under 16 from changing their names or pronouns at school without parental consent. Dozens of teachers signed an online petition calling on school divisions not to follow the law. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission has said invoking the notwithstanding clause significantly affects the rights of minors.

Heather Kuttai, a former Saskatchewan human rights commissioner, resigned over the legislation, saying it assaults the rights of gender-diverse children.

A report from Saskatchewan's child advocate said it violates rights to gender identity and expression.

With files from Jeremy Simes in Regina