[URBAN NOTE] "Brad Trost compares Ontario sex ed to residential schools"

[rfmcdonald]

MacLean's carries this Canadian Press report which makes it clear that Brad Trost is not suited to any kind of prominence in Canadian public life.

Conservative leadership hopeful Brad Trost raised some eyebrows Wednesday when he compared Ontario’s new sex-education curriculum to residential schools.

Trost joined a couple hundred parents gathered outside the provincial legislature to protest Liberal changes to the way sex education is taught in the province.

[. . .]

“You have a responsibility, a responsibility that you take very seriously, a sacred responsibility to do what is right for your children,” the Saskatchewan MP told the crowd.

“We in Canada, when we have taken away those rights from parents we have had a disaster each and every time. The most tragic incident in our history was the residential schools and that was the underlying problem: parental rights were not respected.”

About 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were taken from their families and forced to attend government schools. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard graphic testimony from survivors who detailed physical, sexual and emotional abuse at the schools.

Trost said after his speech that the Ontario sex-ed curriculum is “not nearly” the same level of seriousness as residential schools, but “the underlying principle is the same.”