Prince Albert Pride says local MLAs are not responding appropriately to constituents who have reached out with concerns over Saskatchewan’s divisive pronoun consent legislation.
Chair Chelsea Bleau said the government made no contact with the LGBTQ+ organization before announcing the policy in August, nor has it offered a meaningful response to any community members since.
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Bleau estimated that “hundreds” of letters have been sent by members of the public to Prince Albert-Northcote MLA Alana Ross since the first week of September thanks to a letter drive organized at a local rally. A Saskatoon event did the same.
This number stands in stark contrast to the 18 letters revealed to be the impetus for the policy’s development, in both a Saskatchewan court and later in access to information requests by news media.
Those who have sent letters and emails, including Bleau, are receiving a “very generic, copy-and-paste response” in return. Requests to meet with Ross have also gone unfulfilled, they said.
“I wouldn’t count it as a response. It’s more just saying, ‘Thanks for sending your letter, it’s been acknowledged and this is what the policy entails,’” Bleau said. “It’s not really responding to any of the concerns or issues that we’re bringing forward.”
Bleau said the level of communication feels like MLAs are not listening to certain constituents, violating their representational mandate.
“It’s especially sad to see MLAs, who say that they’ve been allies in the past, just disappear and become invisible on this topic all of a sudden,” Bleau said. “I feel like the silence speaks volumes.”
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Prince Albert Pride also called out other politicians in the region for what they characterized as little engagement, including Prince Albert-Carlton MLA Joe Hargrave, Saskatchewan Rivers MLA Nadine Wilson and Premier Scott Moe, MLA for Rosthern-Shellbrook.
Battlefords Pride said some have receive the same type of canned response letters from MLA and Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill.
“The whole thing is very frustrating,” said secretary Kelly Waters.
OUTSaskatoon chair Melody Wood similarly confirmed no MLAs “were ever in contact with us to consult on the policy, nor offered more than a form response to concerned constituents since.”
Asked if form letters are an appropriate way for MLAs to respond to constituents, a government spokesperson sent an emailed statement reiterating the government’s assertion of significant parental support for the bill but did not address the question of MLA’s responses to residents in opposition.
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“Over the last several months, local MLAs, the Minister of Education, and the Ministry of Education have heard from thousands of parents and guardians about the desire to be more involved in their children’s education,” the statement said.
“As a government, we considered the pronoun policy for some time, particularly following the decision of one School Division to exclude parents from obtaining crucial information about their children.”
Ross did not respond to a request for comment as of deadline on Friday.
As people around the province continue to speak out against the new law, others have taken to social media criticizing journalists for not giving enough of a platform to those in favour of it.
Premier Moe shared a piece of analysis singling out the CBC’s coverage of the emergency session to pass Bill 137, calling it unbalanced. The analysis is bookended by discourse around defunding the CBC.
Alec Couros, professor of educational technology and media at the University of Regina, said a bias within that piece of analysis shows the need for a “lateral reading” of any news source.
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Within any publication, mainstream or otherwise, bias will exist, but Moe’s posted claim that the analysis shows “CBC’s overwhelming bias on the parental consent policy” is bit of a stretch, Couros said.
“From what I was able to see, it’s flawed in areas.”
For example, the opinion piece posits that the CBC did not seek out a single expert in favour of Bill 137, Couros added.
“The analysis does not consider that there may have been fewer experts willing to publicly support the government’s policy, and I think that ‘publicly support’ piece is really important.”
During coverage of the special sitting to pass the bill, Education Minister Jeremy Cockrill said there were 10,000 letters of support. Later, he said there were 1,000. Journalists, through a protracted freedom of information process, were able to see 18 letters to the government following an incident at a Lumsden High School in advance of the policy being announced.
The province has said these letters are only a sampling of the positive feedback it received, but despite repeated requests from media, has yet to provide further concrete examples.
Bleau said the public engagement since the bill passed raises questions about how genuine politicians are being about the motive for the policy.
“It almost feels like there’s some kind of underlying purpose to this that we cannot see,” they said. “It feels targeted.”
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