Juno News - October 25, 2022A growing anti-woke movement in Canada’s schools
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Summary
The latest Ontario municipal elections were a pretty sleepy affair, in terms of big-ticket questions about who's going to be the next mayor of Toronto, things like that, but one of the angles that many people picked up as being noticeable was school trustee races, where there was a whole slate of candidates in different cities and parts of Ontario who were running as anti-woke candidates.
Transcript
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The latest Ontario municipal elections were a pretty sleepy affair in terms of
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big-ticket questions about who's going to be the next mayor of Toronto, things like that.
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But one of the angles that a lot of people picked up as being noticeable
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was school trustee races. And there's a lot of contentious stuff, a lot of conversation,
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excitement perhaps about those races, because there was a whole slate of candidates in different
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cities and different parts of Ontario who were running as anti-woke candidates, candidates who
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were frustrated with a progressive ideology being forced on children through curriculum or through
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things that individual schools or school boards are doing. Some of them were particularly upset with
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a transgender ideology being pushed on kids excessively. And they were talking about that
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during their campaign. This got a lot of people talking. There were news articles out there that
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quite frankly were almost semi-libelous about some of these candidates, one particular CBC feature.
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Regardless, the conversation began. And what was the result of it at Monday night's elections?
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Well, they didn't fare too well. I would say by and large, most of those candidates
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did not succeed, did not go on to be trustees. If anything, something of a step backwards.
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We saw a prominent Twitter doctor, Dr. Nillie Kaplan-Mirth. She won her seat to be
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an Ottawa area school trustee. She has said that children need to keep wearing masks at all times.
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She said just actually a few days ago, she posted she plans to keep masking forever. Forever? That was
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her phrase. So you can say, okay, well, that wasn't really a step forward for people who want
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to sort of liberate kids from these sort of issues being pushed upon them. But what I think is the
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most interesting takeaway is that the conversation happened. That people step forward to run as
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trustees under a sort of anti-woke platform. And that there was a lot of interest out there, even if
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some of the interest was for people to mischaracterize them. Because in the United States,
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wow, they've really got something going on in that direction. And they are, they are overturning
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a lot of incumbents, and they are really getting a parents rights movement happening in the United
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States in terms of people upset with the fact that they've realized, hey, we've been busy talking
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about who's going to be president, who's going to be governor. Meanwhile, there have been people
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getting into these positions at the school boards, and they've been doing radical things that we're
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unhappy about. So now we're in a position in Ontario where I think people are at least aware of that
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angle. They're aware of that fact, and they know trusty races do matter. And these are,
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for better or worse, now battlegrounds for so many broader issues, things that are discussed
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in broader society, and the ways that some people want to really force those issues upon children.
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And that really, a lot of people just want to get the politicization, the race-based ideologies,
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the divisive stuff, the cultural stuff, they want to get that out of the school system. And
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they're seeing that there's too much of it going on right now. And I think that's resonating
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with a lot of parents, even nonpartisan parents who just say, well, hold on a second. I just want
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the kids to get a just the facts education to prepare them for adult life. So my guess is while
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these candidates weren't victorious, this time around, we're going to see more and more interest
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in this, more and more people get in the game, more and more people watching the school board meetings
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because they've concluded this is a level of government, a level of elections that matters.