Greetings!

It’s been a big year for us. We’ve published 14 new articles, hosted many events, and taken part in numerous interviews. Most importantly, we’ve seen our policy initiatives taken up by government – in some cases, you can draw a direct connection from our advocacy to government policy.

As you read on, you will also find out about our efforts to support local school board elections – and hear about our upcoming first annual Choice Matters dinner.

Happy Reading!

A Year of Success

This past year has been tremendously successful for us. We have seen the Provincial government enact multiple pieces of legislation that are owed in whole or part to our efforts. Here’s a sampling:

• Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s government put an end to secret gender transitions in schools, by requiring schools to obtain parental consent before changing the name or pronouns of students under 16 years old.  We’ve been to court over this issue in Saskatchewan, and we’ve already retained counsel for Alberta. This, like the next two policies, were part of Bill 27.
• In addition, the same legislation required schools to get “opt-in” consent for sex education. Previously, sex education could be “consented” to if parents simply didn’t get the memo – a fact that we wrote about in 2022.
• In addition, legislative changes now restrict the use of third-party resources about sexuality. Any such resources need to be approved by the Minister: which means, at least, we can publicly discuss the materials that can be offered.
• We’re particularly proud that the Provincial government has taken steps to restrict gender reassignment surgery and drugs for minors. In early 2023, we wrote that Alberta not only had a pediatric gender identity clinic akin to Britain’s Tavistock clinic – but that it had announced it would receive referrals from schools without parental notification.  This was passed as part of Bill 26.

In each of these policies, we led the charge. We published stories about the issue, helped community advocates frame advocacy, and specifically advocated for these changes with legislators. We also contributed to other legislative changes that protect children—while we weren’t the prime movers, we advocated in support of these important protections. This included changes regarding transgenderism in sports, as well as changes to the Local Areas Elections Act, and improvements to the funding model for schools – including scrapping the Weighted Moving Average which had badly handicapped growing schools.

To our knowledge, the only other parental rights organization to boast a similar level of success is parentalrights.org in the United States, which successfully advocated for parental rights legislation in Florida and Georgia in 2021 and 2022.

It is true that we were not entirely happy with all legislative outcomes: the legislation on parental consent has some frustrating holes, for instance. And one of the changes to the Local Authorities Elections Act will significantly handicap anybody who is not endorsed by a union. With your help, this is an issue we will be able to expose in the near future.

On balance, however, we are very happy with the changes the Alberta government has made. Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides in particular deserves the thanks of Alberta’s parents. And we can pride ourselves on having gotten better results than any other parental rights organization. Possibly anywhere.

Upcoming Trustee Elections

Union interference in the Alberta school board elections loom on the horizon like a storm coming over the Rockies. During the last school board elections, the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) spent over a million dollars as a third-party advertiser. A consortium of public sector unions spent $1.7 million to control Calgary City Council as well as the Calgary Public School Board –enough money to win a provincial election.

But that’s not the bad news.

During the last Ontario elections, the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation (OSSTF) endorsed candidates for 88 critical seats, and elected 58 of them. They spent $650,000 on advertising to control billions upon billions of dollars of budget. They did this with a professionally-written campaign plan, and additional money set aside to recruit and train candidates. In effect they became a political party.

The ATA is now following the OSSTF’s game plan. They have the professional campaign plan and staff. They are recruiting and training candidates. However, Alberta’s unions have advantages that the OSSTF did not:

• In Ontario, the OSSTF’s spending was capped at $650,000. In Alberta, the maximum spend will be $2,490,000 ($0.50 per person).
• The ATA has already announced plans to “partner” with “community associations,” which pressure institutions to “deplatform” opponents.
• Revisions to the Local Authorities Elections Act may prevent insurgent candidates from gaining access to the elector’s list. This is a tremendous handicap to any campaign, handing a massive advantage to incumbents (who are largely union-endorsed) and union candidates who can take advantage of union lists.

In effect, the ATA plans to function as a political party.

Now, it seems to us that having public-sector unions control the governments they are supposed to negotiate with is a blatant conflict of interest. It’s a form of corruption. In essence, a private organization is trying to control part of the coercive power of the sovereign state. And it’s bought and paid for by your tax dollars. But what can we do? The answer is deceptively simple: train and equip pro-family candidates.

In 2021, we started training candidates to run for school board trustee. We run short courses, and offer additional support as needed. There’s even a textbook. In 2021, 12 of the people we trained ran for office, and 4 were elected. This year, we’ve trained hundreds. We expect to have a lot of parental rights candidates. And we hope that a greater proportion will have success.

There’s room for real hope. The union strategy only works so long as turnout is low. When turnout is low, the union’s ability to get its own members out decides the election. But if the election is hotly contested, and lots of people get out to vote, the unions’ advantage dwindles fast.

By training candidates, we hope to create a situation where good campaigns bring more people out to vote. That will work against unions – regardless of how much money they throw at their endorsements.

You can help, directly. Every dollar you give to a parental rights candidate will make a better campaign. Every hour of time you give a candidate will make a difference. You can help bring people out to vote – directly contributing to the defeat of the unions.

If PCE brings in enough money in donations before the start of May, we will also be able to set up third party advertising to counteract the unions. We don’t need a budget as big as theirs. Our job is political judo: using the unions’ weight against them, by pointing out how much money they are spending. Voters are not foolish: when they see how hard the unions are trying to control school boards, they will be moved to oppose them.

But in truth, the effect of our work depends on you. We’re relying on you to fund and volunteer for local campaigns. We suggest that you take one of our election training workshops, to learn how to become more involved. Please keep an eye on www.parentchoice.ca/training to see how you can learn more. We regularly offer training events in multiple formats: in-person sessions, live online workshops, and pre-recorded presentations.

We can be easily persuaded to hold an in-person workshop near you if you have a group that is interested!

Events

Over the past three years, PCE has begun having small events: speaking tours, and occasional pub nights. If you haven’t seen much of it, that is because we only advertise them to people who are local to them. There have, however, been dozens of such events.

Some of our supporters didn’t include their address when signing up. If you update your account, we can let you know about local events. Just visit our sign-up page, enter the same email this message was sent to, and fill in your address—your record will update automatically, and as a result, you’ll receive notifications of events in your area!

 

This year, we are starting to have larger events. On April 12th, we are having our first annual Choice Matters dinner. This one will take place in Edmonton: while it is largely sold out, we still have about 30 tickets. If you would like to attend, you can purchase a ticket on the website for $120, or $800 for a table of eight. This will be an exciting opportunity to meet many of the wonderful people who either offer school choice or defend school choice in our province.

It will also be an opportunity to network with like-minded people. While we will not share their identities for fear of cancellation attempts, a number of exciting organizations will be joining us.

We also plan to have annual Resource Fairs in both Calgary and Edmonton, so that parents can see what educational options are available for them. We’ll be inviting as many independent schools, homeschooling authorities, tutoring services, and special programs from school districts as we can. The first of these will be done next spring at about this time. If you are interested in helping with a Fair, please let us know.

Media Updates

We have published 14 articles over the past year, and had a number of interviews in the media. Here’s a selection of recent ones:

• The Pashas of Public School was published in the Epoch Times in February. It is a defence of independent schools against the taxpayer-funded special-interest groups that want to defund them.
• Is Wokeness Burning Out? Published in the Western Standard in December, this article looks at how our society is wearying of strident “woke” ideology, as ordinary people mobilize against it.
• Smith Offers School Peace – but the radicals won’t have it looked at the radical education bureaucracy’s response to Smith’s legislation and funding.
• We weren’t entirely happy with Smith’s parental rights legislation. Bait and Switch talks about how poor construction left loopholes in Smith’s bills, which still have not been fixed.
• In an article entitled In Defence of Standardized Testing, we talked about how attempts to abolish standardized testing mask an attempt to institutionalize the class system that undergirds woke ideology.
• Finally, our Executive Director, John Hilton-O’Brien, contributed an article to the Citizen’s Guide to Canadian Politics. This book was created by the Western Standard and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, and is available as a free download.
• The most interesting of our interviews was PCE Executive Director John Hilton-O’Brien’s appearance in front of the National Citizen’s Inquiry. The Inquiry was intended to discuss whether “our children are safe in school.” John highlighted the alarming increase in school violence and the need for stronger protections for teachers. He also covered the apparent systematic underreporting of sexual abuse cases in schools, compared to international benchmarks. You can watch his presentation here.
  
  

Many, many more columns are available on our website. 

Please Give Generously

The work PCE does is entirely reliant on donations from our generous supporters. Your gift helps make real changes happen – awareness, legislative changes, funding for independent schools, and even school board elections. Please give generously!

Thank You

Thank you for supporting Parents for Choice in Education. Thanks to you, we have become one of the most successful parental rights organizations on the continent. No other organization can boast so many direct legislative wins, or such a record of public advocacy. With your help, we hope to do more – much more!