00:01:49.920Yeah, well, we put our fingers in all the pies.
00:01:52.700You know, we spend, you're right, we spend a lot of time on health care and natural resource issues.
00:01:57.360But we do some work on education, taxation, lots of different other policies.
00:02:04.940And we actually did a poll about two and a half years ago.
00:02:08.680And one of the questions we asked was, do Canadians think that the public school system has gone in the right direction or wrong direction over the last 20 years?
00:02:18.920And at the time, about 32% said wrong direction.
00:02:23.620And we thought, well, that's actually pretty high.
00:02:25.140That's a pretty significant number of Canadians who don't think the system is going in the right direction.
00:02:34.240And the reason what got us going with this poll is we thought, well, let's ask that question again.
00:02:38.640And then we sort of were looking at some of the other issues in education.
00:02:42.480And this was one where, you know, like yourself and I'm sure lots of your viewers, I had seen these different stories coming up about parents being kept in the dark, about, you know, what their children are talking with their teachers about when it comes to pronouns and transitioning, having very serious discussions.
00:02:59.460And I thought, you know, I wonder if there's any public opinion research on this for Canada.
00:03:04.400There were some numbers from the States.
00:03:05.500We thought, well, let's ask the question and see what Canadians think.
00:03:09.120Well, and the other one that was interesting, not as decisive as reporting back on, you know, gender identification is this one of 45, 47% of parents agree or of respondents agree that schools should have to make materials for topics on gender and race related topics ahead, available ahead of time for parents to view.
00:03:28.560Now, that one I find interesting because I think largely a lot of curricular materials are available ahead of time.
00:03:35.280But I don't think most parents have the initiative to to go in and seek those out.
00:03:53.940I know in the U.S. there have been some challenges where parents have tried to get access to materials that are being taught in schools and they've had trouble.
00:04:00.660I'm not sure exactly where that's at with where that's at in Canada, but I think it's an easy solution that can sometimes help in cases where parents are concerned about what's being taught for very sensitive topics.
00:04:13.440We have technologies makes all this stuff so easy now that schools could put this information out ahead of time.
00:04:20.620So a parent could go in and see, OK, what's my child going to learn about, say, gender related issues or race related topics and just kind of understand, well, do I want my child learning that?
00:04:31.080And if they're if they have a deep concern, they can say, well, you know, I'd like my child to sit in the library during that lesson or whatever.
00:04:36.560The other option, of course, and this was, you know, someone else raised this with me and I think it's a good idea.
00:04:41.540It also allows parents to know, OK, my child's going to learn this in school today.
00:04:45.280I want to present a different perspective to them when they get home so that they can learn a little bit more and, you know, see different viewpoints, have maybe a bit more of a balanced learning exercise when it comes to this topic.
00:04:56.800So we thought, you know, this would be interesting just to see what Canadians think.
00:04:59.960And like you say, certainly more Canadians think that's a good idea than people that say not to.
00:05:04.880I want to drill down to that one question I led in with about the 57 percent say, yes, the public, the teacher should have to tell or the school should have to tell parents if a child wants to change their gender, use different pronouns.
00:05:17.640The regional breakdown I found quite surprising here, because I think if you were to say this, everyone would be like, oh, yeah.
00:05:23.880If I were to ask which province said this yes the most, people would say like, oh, yeah, you know, clearly Alberta.
00:05:29.060And Alberta was actually kind of it was below the below the mean there.
00:05:34.160You know, BC, unsurprisingly, was the lowest, even then at 49 percent.
00:05:56.060So regionally, I found that just quite interesting.
00:05:58.940Yeah, those numbers certainly are interesting that, you know, it is higher in those provinces.
00:06:04.800It's like you say that samples are smaller, so it could be just, you know, partially due to having a smaller sample size.
00:06:11.100But it's not just the more conservative the province, the larger the number.
00:06:14.740Ontario was higher than Saskatchewan and Alberta.
00:06:16.980Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, we're not we're not an advocacy organization.
00:06:19.980We're not taking a position in terms of what governments should and shouldn't do on this.
00:06:23.320I mean, my own personal opinion is that, yeah, I think parents should have the right to know.
00:06:27.560I mean, this is a pretty serious thing for a child to be assuming basically a different identity at school if they're changing their pronouns.
00:06:35.420But also even chatting with the school system about, you know, how do I go about changing my my gender and trying to have surgery and all this stuff?
00:06:44.300You know, my colleague makes a good point.
00:06:46.260He says schools can't give students a Tylenol without checking with parents first.
00:06:52.200We're going to let them engage in this pretty serious psychological intervention.
00:06:58.180You know, I totally understand why parents would want to know.
00:07:01.340And what I think is interesting is the breakdown between parents that say yes and parents that say no, or rather Canadians that say yes versus no is 57 to 18.
00:07:11.380And then there's a large number of Canadians who are undecided, I think, maybe because they haven't been confronted with this issue.
00:07:17.260Maybe want to know a little bit more, whatever the case is.
00:07:20.580But it's also interesting, too, that when you shift this discussion from Canadians at large to Canadians with kids, the number increases goes up to a well over 60 percent.
00:07:33.360I think 60 and not just kids, but kids in the household.
00:07:35.820So not just like, you know, boomers with adult kids, but yeah, parents with kids at home.
00:07:39.820Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for clarifying that.
00:07:42.180Yeah. It's it's people with young kids.
00:07:44.440They want to know. And like I said, I can't blame them.
00:07:47.460And I think it makes sense because this would be a very difficult thing for a child to be going through if they're suddenly confused about who they are.
00:07:56.060And and that you'd want to as a parent, you'd want to be helping them.
00:08:00.700Right. You'd want to be there to guide them.
00:08:02.600And maybe regardless of what side of the debate you're on with this, I think any parent would want to be there to to support their child if they're going through something that's very difficult.
00:08:14.680I'm one of the dirty millennials that I complain so often about.
00:08:18.400And one of the challenges I find is that I think that I was kind of part of this transitional period where parents were engaged in the education system and, you know, wanted to do the parent teacher checkups and read the report cards and learn.
00:08:31.800But but for the most part, sort of just trusted that the system was working, just sort of dropped you off at school in the morning.
00:08:36.940And and that's that. And I think that parents would be doing a tremendous disservice of themselves and their kids to do that.
00:08:43.860And all the parents I know and granted, I mean, there's a bit of a selection bias in terms of who I talk to more often, but but they just don't trust it.
00:08:51.920And the number of people I've heard from that have just self-selected out of the public system who are not the traditional private school or homeschool demographic.
00:09:00.360But it's largely because of stuff like this.
00:09:03.640Yeah, there's it feels like there's been a lot of controversial news stories in the past while involving public schools.
00:09:11.480I mean, you're based in Ontario, the Oakville teacher with the extremely large fake prosthetic breasts.
00:09:19.100I'm sure most of your your viewers have seen them.
00:09:21.960If not, if you Google it, you'll see that these these fake breasts were about the size of a Gatorade cooler that, you know, an NFL team might throw on its coach after winning the Super Bowl.
00:09:46.600And then you see a school system that was just frozen, unable to deal with this, something that I think many people would consider to be extremely inappropriate on the other side of Canada, British Columbia, small town Castle Garby Sea, an elementary school teacher had a drag queen read to children in a classroom through Zoom.
00:10:06.540And so many parents were outraged about this.
00:10:09.560And so regardless of where you stand on these issues, I mean, these are pretty controversial things.
00:10:14.900And I think more than anything, what we're seeing is a need for more choice.
00:10:20.840And Alberta has a good solution with charter schools here.
00:10:24.000For those who aren't familiar, they're basically schools run by nonprofits that are funded by the government.
00:10:31.600And they tend to specialize in different things.
00:10:33.780One might specialize in science and math.
00:10:36.080Another one might specialize in a particular like cultural study or language, whatever.
00:10:41.120Parents have more choice that they can choose schools outside of the public school system without facing a huge bill.
00:10:48.700Because like I say, the government will fund these schools.