Barry Neufeld is a school trustee in Chilliwack, BC, who has been accused of anti-choice and anti-gay propaganda. He has been censured by the Board of Trustees of the British Columbia Association of School Trustees, and has been reported to the BC Human Rights Commissioner.
00:00:00.000Several months ago, I outlined the 2017-2018 controversy surrounding Barry Neufeld, who is
00:00:12.400an elected school trustee in Chilliwack, BC, that spoke out against SOGI123, which is a sexual
00:00:19.440education resource toolkit in BC that promotes transgender ideology to young children. You know,
00:00:25.440the idea that there's no biological males and females and all that kind of stuff. So Neufeld was
00:00:30.320always very clear that he is opposed to the SOGI123 educational resource. He said he considers it
00:00:37.520child abuse, a comment he later apologized for, but even if he's opposed to the resource, he is still
00:00:43.760very supportive of LGBTQ people. However, the BC Teachers Federation president at the time and BC's
00:00:51.520education minister were calling on him to resign, and the BC Teachers Federation filed a human rights
00:00:58.080complaint against Neufeld, and the local QP411 union, which is composed of the educational assistance
00:01:05.520and maintenance staff and all that, they filed a second BC Human Rights Tribunal complaint against
00:01:10.880Neufeld. And so there was this all-out coordinated attack against Neufeld's character with all of
00:01:17.600these people trying to oust him from his position. But amidst all this controversy, there was a
00:01:24.000municipal election in 2018, and despite everything going on, Neufeld was successfully re-elected by
00:01:31.360the people of Chilliwack. But now Barry Neufeld is back in the news, and again his colleagues are
00:01:37.600trying to get him to resign. This is because on May 9th, 2020, Neufeld published a Facebook post that read,
00:01:46.160It just dawned on me. Who is perpetrating all this fear over the dreaded coronavirus?
00:01:51.920Why, it is the World Health Organization, the same outfit that claims easy access to abortion
00:01:56.720is a human right, and is promoting mandated comprehensive sexuality education for little
00:02:01.680kids that gender is not binary. Pre-pubescent children should be allowed to choose their gender
00:02:06.720and sterilize themselves. And Dr. Theresa Tam, Canadian Head of Public Health, is suspected by
00:02:12.160Wikipedia of being transgender. If this person, who has spent a major portion of their life deceiving1.00
00:02:18.080people as to who she slash she truly is, and is now a major player in the corrupt World Health
00:02:23.760Organization, why should we believe anything he slash she says? Of course, outrage ensued over this post
00:02:31.200because he criticizes the World Health Organization for supporting abortion and the gender transitioning of
00:02:36.960children. And because he also claims Dr. Theresa Tam is transgender. And presumably he's saying that
00:02:44.160because there was this incident where a troll edited Tam's Wikipedia page to say that she was born a male,
00:02:51.680but that's not verified information and that edit was only up for a few hours. When I read Neufeld's post,
00:02:58.960I kind of thought, you know, this is an eccentric thing to write, you know, a bit kooky, but I don't get the vibe of it
00:03:06.160being hateful or full of hate, you know, so and I know critics might say, well, that's just a result of your white cisgender0.60
00:03:13.680privilege that you're not offended by it. But, you know, I would say at most this is maybe provocative or he might be trying to get a reaction.
00:03:22.400But that that doesn't mean that it's hateful. But you had people affiliated with the school board,
00:03:28.560such as former BC Teachers Federation President Glenn Hansman and the chair of the Chilliwack School Board,
00:03:35.600Dan Coulter, saying this post was awful, disturbing, bigoted, hateful. And Education Minister Rob Fleming
00:03:45.040is going so far as to report Neufeld to the BC Human Rights Commissioner. There's also a petition
00:03:51.280with over 20,000 signatures that is calling for Neufeld to resign. And, you know, over 20,000,
00:03:57.920that's pretty significant. But I do wonder how many of these people who signed it are actually from
00:04:04.240Chilliwack, BC. Neufeld did apologize and say he regrets the comments, which was the right thing to do.
00:04:11.360But he has faced heavy censure. So as part of the decision to censure Neufeld,
00:04:17.680the board decided he will not have any school liaison duties, he will be removed from committees
00:04:24.240and committee work, and will also not be invited to any school district events where students or
00:04:30.880staff will be in attendance. So they're they're trying to ice him out and make him feel so excluded
00:04:37.440that he'll voluntarily leave because they're not allowed to kick off an elected representative,
00:04:43.200frankly. So they're trying so hard. They've actually been trying for years to get rid of this guy,
00:04:49.040but they just can't. So they're trying to make him feel so alienated and uncomfortable that he'll
00:04:54.480just voluntarily leave. But I hope he can stick it out. And if we look at what the definition of what
00:04:59.600a school trustee actually does, let's look at the webpage of the British Columbia School Trustees
00:05:04.960Association here. Trustees engage their communities in building and maintaining a school system that
00:05:11.040reflects local priorities, values and expectations. School trustees listen to their communities,
00:05:16.240guide the work of their school district and set plans, policies and the annual budget. So note that
00:05:21.440first line reflecting local priorities and values and expectations. So Chilliwack, BC is actually more
00:05:27.200of a conservative and religious community in BC. So you might expect in Vancouver, which is a, you know,
00:05:34.800urban progressive liberal place for there to be more of a championing of trans ideology. But you know,
00:05:41.200the people of Chilliwack are just not into that as a collective, right? So that's why Neufeld,
00:05:47.840despite the controversy over SOGI-123, he still got elected in October 2018. And the next municipal
00:05:54.960election in Chilliwack is in 2022. So if Neufeld runs again, we'll see if the electors vote him in again,
00:06:01.920just as they did in 2018, even though he was in the middle of a controversy back then.
00:06:07.360I'm Lindsay Shepard with True North. Thanks so much for watching, and I will see you next week.