It's up to Ontario's school boards to ensure they adhere to the province's equity policy, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Monday in the wake of reports that a student was banned from forming a gay-straight alliance at a Mississauga Catholic school.
McGuinty said the government is letting all school boards know that it is unacceptable to discriminate based on race, gender, religion and sexual orientation.
"We are sending the message loudly and clearly to all boards that they must adhere to our equity policy," McGuinty said in the provincial legislature.
But he didn't go as far as saying St. Joseph's Catholic Secondary School had violated the policy.
"We have also said that boards can find different ways to ensure that they adhere to those policies," McGuinty said.
McGuinty didn't elaborate on what the government will do to enforce the equity policy.
Recently, St. Joseph's student Leanne Iskander approached her principal to ask if she could start a gay-straight alliance.
Iskander was reportedly turned down and told that she should use existing supports at her school instead.
NDP education critic Rosario Marchese said the government is being negligent by failing to enforce its policy.
"You either have a policy memorandum that you want them to follow and you enforce it, or you don't have such a policy memorandum," said Marchese. "It's one or the other. You can't have it both ways."
But Mike Feenstra, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, says the policy does not specify that schools must permit the formation of gay-straight alliances.
"The policy just says that boards have to support students who wish to participate in gay-straight alliances, or other sorts of activities that promote understanding of healthy relationships," Feenstra said. "There has to be some support, and it doesn't necessarily need to be called a gay-straight alliance, it could be called any number of things."
Bruce Campbell, a spokesman for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, said the board supports the principal's actions.
All school clubs must examine issues through a Catholic lens, Campbell said.
"It's imperative that we have our Catholic perspective ingrained in any discussion," he said. "We believe we meet the needs of all our students in this regard. However, if students feel the existing structures we have in place don't meet their needs, then we certainly look at new structures."
But the board is unlikely to consider a gay-straight alliance as a new support structure. Such alliances are incompatible with the Catholic perspective, Campbell said.
