NORTH BATTLEFORD — A protest Saturday held outside the office of Jeremy Cockrill, who has mostly recently served as the minister of education and Battlefords MLA, shifted into a campaign event with the local NDP candidate Tom Kroczynski’s support.
“We’re going to do our best to get elected in this next election, to move Cockrill out of the Ministry of Education and out of office here in the Battlefords as the NDP government under Carla Beck, of course, will invest in our students, not attack them,” said Kroczynski.
The theme of the protest, which Battlefords Area Pride has railed against for more than a year, Bill 137 — known as the school pronoun law that requires students under 16 to get consent to use a different gender pronoun or name at school— which its chair, Bobbisue Thom, has said: “It’s forcing kids into the closet.”
“There’s not that much in the closet. They have no support. [The fact] is that when you're hiding, you can't go ahead and look for help… because [the young people] don't dare to be seen looking for it.”
She added that while the law appears to protect children, it actually does the opposite, “endangering” them instead.
“With this legislation, where school has traditionally been a haven for many children that it's not safe at home, and this [the law] takes that away.”
She said she would like to see a more welcoming and caring society for all diverse groups.
With people driving by and greeting the protesters, Thom said, the public turnout yet isn’t surprising with the group’s persistent effort in raising awareness of the LGBTQ group.
“It’s [the conversation has been] saddening,” Thom said.
Education has been a central point in the NDP campaign. In critiques of the Sask. Party, Kroczynski said he has seen the “devastating effects of the cuts in education,” citing his past 20 years of teaching experience. He argues that the Sask. Party, in power for just 17 years, doesn’t prioritize it enough.
“It seems like quite a distraction when our education system is in the state that it is, the Sask. Party has decided to use its power, of course, not to support all students, but to strip rights from our LGBTQ youth,” Kroczynski said.
Currently, the court cannot evaluate the legality of the law due to the notwithstanding clause. The timeline for the decision remains unclear, according to a CBC News article published on Sept. 24.
Protest organizer and Battlefords Area Pride secretary Kelly Waters stressed the importance of recognizing “youth who just don't have the same ways to reach out as adults do.”
“It's the place in the world where you can be executed celebrating members from the LGBT community of something, something that you have no control over. It's how you're born,” Thom said. “We're not waiting for that to come here. We're rallying against it now, rather than much too late.”
As of the News-Optimist’s print deadline, Jeremy Cockrill’s campaign office had not yet made its comments.
With files from Averil Hall
