Gender identity policy hits the New Brunswick campaign trail

Despite dominating political conversation for 18 months and spurring a caucus revolt within the Progressive Conservative Party, school gender identity policy had been mostly missing from the campaign trail in New Brunswick’s election, apart from a few allusions from PC Leader Blaine Higgs.

“It’s children learning from their parents, it’s parents knowing what their children are doing,” Higgs said during his campaign launch in Quispamsis on Sept. 19.

But that changed this week with a blitz of PC advertisements on social media, specifically targeting Liberal Leader Susan Holt’s stance on the issue.

The party has also circulated a statement from former education minister Bill Hogan on the issue.

“We believe parents are the experts when it comes to raising kids,” he said.

“Blaine Higgs and the PCNB team will maintain current policies that respect parental involvement in education. We will also not put the system in a position that requires them to hold back information from parents.”

In 2023 the governing Tories changed a policy they had implemented in 2020, to require parental consent for students under 16 wishing to use a name or pronoun different from their birth gender. The change was panned by the child and youth advocate and LGBTQ2 stakeholders, who say it may put in harm’s way some children who live in unsupportive homes, or keep them in the closet.

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The changes are also being challenged in court by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which alleges the changes breach the Charter rights of children.

Political scientist Jamie Gilles says the arrival of the issue on the campaign trail may be an attempt to find a spark as election day approaches, but he says the approach is not without risk.

“I think they’re trying to remind voters of that issue, if it’s salient for them to come out and vote,” he said.

“But to finish with an issue that is not on that many voters’ radar as the top issue, or even top three or four issues, strikes me as maybe a little bit of desperation.”

Both the Liberals and Greens have committed to following the recommendations of the child and youth advocate, allowing name changes without parental consent for children as young as 12 who are deemed capable of making the decision.

Green Leader David Coon says ultimately the issue attracts outsized amounts of attention.

“We’re talking about a small number of young people who haven’t felt comfortable talking to their parents yet compared to the large number of young people who are transgender, who feel comfortable talking to parents and their parents who are supporting them,” he said.

“It’s a tiny number of people and a tiny amount of parents and there weren’t any complaints before all of this blew up of parents saying ‘I didn’t know,’ no complaints.”

Holt similarly says the issue is a distraction tactic used by Higgs to paper over his lack of progress on other key issues.

“If you talk to parents about what they want for their kids, they want a teacher for their kids’ classrooms, they want clean air in their kids’ school, they want healthy food available to help them make ends meet,” she said.

“We have had a premier distracted on trying to create wedges and start political fires.”

The PCs are not the only group advertising on the issue. Campaign Life Coalition, an anti-abortion group that has also begun advocating against gender-affirming care, has attracted attention for sending mailers prior to the election that read in part that “pushing transgenderism in school harms children” and makes several claims about the use of puberty blockers.

The group registered as a third party for the election and, according to Meta’s Ad Library, has spent $1,327 on advertisements on Facebook over the last week claiming Holt and the Liberals would “push radical Gender Theory in New Brunswick Schools.”