The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, refuses to see mixed toilets appear in Quebec schools. A decision that he bases on his “intimacy expertise”.
“Imagine a secondary school. We have young girls of 13, 14, 15 years old. I imagine the scene: a young girl who begins to have her period, for example, and who leaves the cubicle. Then there are boys, next door, 13, 14 years old who look at her,” he said Tuesday during a press scrum.
The elected official from the Coalition Avenir Québec gave as an example the D’Iberville secondary school, in Rouyn-Noranda, which decided to transform its bathrooms into a mixed sanitary block, reported Radio-Canada at the start of the school year. “We think that the school must indeed rectify the situation,” said Mr. Drainville a few minutes before question period.
What expertise does he rely on to make this decision?, a journalist asked him. “On expertise [d’]privacy, sir,” he responded promptly. “At some point, boys and girls have the right to have their space. »
In the morning, Tuesday, the leader of the Parti Québécois, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, associated the arrival of mixed toilets in schools with the rise of ideologies “coming from the radical left” in Quebec schools. “For me, therefore, these kinds of questions, the toilets [mixtes]pronouns, new theories of inclusive writing, must be debated here, in the National Assembly,” he said.
A few days after members of the Conservative Party of Canada called for limiting access to medical sex reassignment remedies, the elected representative of Camille-Laurin therefore suggested the holding of a formal parliamentary commission on the gender identity and these “new theories”.
“I see a lot of ideology coming from the radical left that [sont] imposed, and that’s where I have a challenge. When we impose concepts, ways of doing new programs in the education system without any prior democratic debate,” said Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon.
Mr. Drainville and his colleague responsible for the Status of Women, Martine Biron, claim to be “considering” questions of gender identity. “We want to give ourselves a framework. Now which one? “, the Minister of Education wondered aloud.
The co-spokesperson for Québec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, called on his political opponents to “leave these children alone.” “Trans children are eight times more likely to commit suicide than other children. That’s not the ideology of the radical left, it’s a fact,” he said, in response to Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon’s comments.
Further details will follow.