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Battle of the bills: Alberta Tories' gay-straight student alliance bill dubbed dirty politics

A strategically-launched bill by the governing Conservative party in Alberta is not sitting well with those who are in support of gay-straight student alliances in schools.

The Tories are being accused of launching their bill on the issue as a means to block the progress of the Liberals’ bill on the very same topic.

“The Conservative bill is touted as addressing the same issue, but I would suggest that it isn’t,” Kelly Ernst, president of the Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association, told Yahoo Canada News.

“It is a very politically cunning bill and I think it was used as a way to squelch the rather popular Liberal bill. From what I gather Bill 202 was gaining a lot of support.”

After the Alberta Liberals introduced a private member’s bill that would secure a student’s right to start gay-straight alliance clubs, the governing Conservatives introduced one of their own.

CBC News reported on the recent tension surrounding the battle of the bills. According to the network, the Conservatives introduced Bill 10 on Monday in response to the Liberal’s own proposal. Procedural delays resulted in Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman not having time to speak to her bill, which she had dedicated to her mother, a former principal.

Now, Bill 10 is expected to reach a second reading before Bill 202 ever sees the light of day.

While the Conservatives claim their bill will address the key issues at hand, questions remain of exactly what is being accomplished.

The Alberta NDP says Bill 10 simply maintains the “status quo” and ensures that school boards can continue banning gay-straight alliances.

“Neither the NDP or Alberta’s LGBTQ community consider a compromise on the fundamental human rights of the LGBTQ community a victory,” NDP Leader Rachel Notley said on Tuesday.

The Liberal’s Bill 202 would allow a gay-straight alliance at any school where a student requests one.

Bill 10 does not do that. Instead, school boards can block the creation of gay-straight alliances if they choose, and the bill creates an avenue for students to appeal that decision.

Bill 10 would also add sexual orientation to prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Alberta Bill of Rights. It would also eliminate Sec. 11-1 from the Alberta Human Rights Act – which is a clause that requires teachers to alert parents when matters of sexual orientation are discussed, and allows parents to remove their children from class.

But Ernst notes that it simply moves that clause to the Alberta Education Act, which results in no legal shift at all.

“It is a cunningly-crafted political bill that uses the issue to put a wedge in there for themselves,” Ernst said. “It continues with a long tradition in Alberta to build fences around Alberta human rights so that gay and lesbian people don’t enjoy the same rights to which everyone else is entitled.”

In his interview with Yahoo Canada News, Ernst said of the two bills, his civil liberties group strongly prefers Bill 202, though fixing inequality in the province would require more than that.

He said Sec. 11-1 of the Alberta Human Rights Act should be repealed entirely, as should Sec. 3, which too broadly infringes on the freedom of expression.

“A good government would focus on ensuring that everyone’s rights are respected and that no group has the right to restrict another group. And it would encourage respectful debate among all people at that school,” he said.