Education Minister Bernard Drainville refuses to see the introduction of mixed toilets in Quebec schools. A decision he bases on his “intimacy expertise.”
“Imagine a secondary school. We have young girls 13, 14, 15 years old. I imagine the scene: A young girl who gets her period, for example, and leaves the cabin. Then there are boys next door, 13, 14 years old, looking at them,” he said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
The Coalition Avenir Québec elected official cited as an example D’Iberville Secondary School in Rouyn-Noranda, which decided to convert its bathrooms into a mixed sanitary block, Radio-Canada reported at the start of the school year.
“We believe that the school actually needs to take remedial action,” Mr Drainville said a few minutes before question time. The only exception: individual bathrooms, which could remain gender-neutral.
What expertise does the minister rely on when making such a decision? a journalist asked him. “On expertise [d’]“Privacy, sir,” he replied promptly.
“At some point, boys and girls have the right to their space,” he added. A claim shared by the interim leader of the Quebec Liberal Party, Marc Tanguay. “The toilets for boys and girls must stay,” the Liberal elected official said.
“Radical Left”
On Tuesday morning, Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon linked the introduction of mixed toilets in schools to the rise of ideologies “from the radical left” in Quebec schools. “For me, such questions are about toilets [mixtes]Pronouns, new theories of inclusive writing must be debated here in the National Assembly,” he said.
Mr Drainville and his colleague on the status of women, Martine Biron, also said they were “looking into” issues of gender identity. “We want to give ourselves a framework. Which one now? “, the Education Minister wondered aloud.
A few days after members of the Conservative Party of Canada called for restrictions on access to gender reassignment medicine, Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon proposed the creation of a formal parliamentary commission on gender identity and these “new theories.”
“I see a lot of ideology coming from the radical left [sont] imposed, and that’s where I’m faced with a challenge. If we impose concepts and ways of implementing new programs in the education system without prior democratic debate,” said St-Pierre Plamondon, who two weeks ago also refused to use the term “Mx” to describe a non-binary teacher.
Those comments earned him some remarks Tuesday from Quebec Solidaire co-spokesman Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois. ” It is [Pierre] Poilievre or Mr Plamondon, who said that? ” he said ironically on Tuesday.
The elected official urged his political opponents to “leave these children alone.” “Trans kids are eight times more likely to commit suicide than other kids,” he said. “This is not the ideology of the radical left, it is a fact. »