Gender identity politics hits New Brunswick campaign

Despite dominating the political conversation for 18 months and spurring an uprising within the Progressive Conservative Party, school gender identity politics was largely absent from the campaign trail in the New Brunswick election, with the exception of a few allusions from PC leader Blaine Higgs .

“It’s kids learning from their parents, it’s parents knowing what their kids are doing,” Higgs said during the launch of his Quispamsis campaign on September 19.

But that changed this week with a series of PC ads on social media specifically targeting Liberal Leader Susan Holt's stance on the issue.

The party also released a statement from former Education Minister Bill Hogan on the issue.

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

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

In 2023, the Conservatives in government changed a policy they had implemented in 2020 to require parental consent for students under the age of 16 who wish to use a name or pronoun different from their birth gender. The move has been criticized by child and youth advocates and LGBTQ2 community stakeholders, who say it could endanger some children living in unsupportive homes, or keep them in the closet.

The changes are also being challenged in court by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which claims the changes violate children's Charter rights.

Political scientist Jamie Gilles says the issue's arrival in the campaign could be an attempt to find a spark as election day approaches, but says the approach is not without risk.

“I think they are trying to remind voters of this issue if it is relevant for them to vote,” he said.

“But ending up with an issue that’s not on many voters’ radars as the top issue, or even the top three or four issues, seems to me to be perhaps a little desperate.”

Both the Liberals and the Greens have committed to following the recommendations of the advocate for children and young people, allowing name changes without parental consent for children aged 12 and over who are considered capable of making the decision.

Green leader David Coon says the issue ultimately attracts too much attention.

“We are talking about a small number of young people who are not yet comfortable talking to their parents, compared to the large number of young people who are transgender, who are comfortable talking to their parents and who support them,” he said.

“It's a tiny number of people and a tiny amount of parents and there were no complaints before this all blew up, from parents saying 'I didn't know', no complaints.”

Holt similarly says the issue is a distraction tactic used by Higgs to cover up his lack of progress on other important issues.

“If you talk to parents about what they want for their children, they want a teacher for their children's classrooms, they want clean air in their children's school, they want healthy foods available to help them survive ,” she said.

“We had a distracted prime minister trying to create barriers and start political fires.”

PCs aren't the only group trumpeting the issue. The Campaign Life Coalition, an anti-abortion group that has also begun advocating for gender-affirming care, attracted attention for sending out mailers before the election that said in part that “promoting transgenderism in school harms children” and made 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, spent $1,327 on Facebook ads over the past week, claiming that Holt and the Liberals would “promote radical Gender Theory in New Brunswick Schools.”