David Krayden: Moe’s Plan to Use Notwithstanding Clause Is Both Appropriate and Absolutely Necessary

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe looks on during a tour at Lakewood Civic Centre in Saskatoon, Sask., on Sept. 29, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Heywood Yu)

Commentary

He warned that it might come to this.

Now it has. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said Thursday that his government will invoke the notwithstanding clause to override a court injunction against the province’s pronoun policy mandating parental consent for students seeking to change their pronouns at school.

The policy aims to enshrine parental rights in a school system that insists upon indoctrinating children into gender ideology and seeks to allow children under the age of 16 to make decisions about their gender and pronouns with parental consent or even knowledge.

Thank God there is at least one premier with the backbone and love of basic democratic rights to use this constitutional mechanism as it was intended: to block the authoritarian arm of the courts and federal government.

Moe made the announcement on X, promising to bring representatives back to the provincial legislative assembly to proceed immediately.

“Our government is extremely dismayed by the judicial overreach of the court blocking implementation of the Parental Inclusion and Consent Policy—a policy which has the strong support of a majority of Saskatchewan residents, in particular, Saskatchewan parents,” he said.

“Our government will take action to ensure the rights of Saskatchewan parents are protected and that this policy is implemented by recalling the Legislative Assembly and using the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian constitution to pass legislation to protect parental rights.”

Let me say it as directly and succinctly as possible: The rights of parents to raise their children and bring them up in the traditions, religion, and culture that they know has been sacrosanct—not only in democratic societies but across Western civilization—for millennia. There should be no formal or informal remonstrance against this principle from the federal government or teachers’ unions.

One of the first areas of people’s lives that totalitarian governments target is the eradication of parental authority and for the state to usurp parental rights. Nazi Germany had the Hitler Youth. The Soviet Union had the Young Pioneers. In both of these societies, the government encouraged children to spy upon their parents and to expose them if they strayed from any orthodoxy.

So what Moe is doing is both appropriate and absolutely necessary for the perpetuation and maintenance of freedom in Canada.

Saskatchewan first announced that as of Aug. 22, schools had to talk to parents first if children want to change their gender or pronouns. Moe also said parents need to know about sexual education classes and can remove their children from classes if they object to that curriculum.

Moe’s latter concern may have been prompted when he discovered that Planned Parenthood had invaded Saskatchewan schools with an agenda that included suggesting there are unlimited choices of gender while presenting pornographic material to students.

If Moe had any doubts about first proposing the legislation and now promising to invoke the notwithstanding clause, he need only have listened to the rhetoric of the Saskatchewan teachers’ union.

The president of the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation made that position very clear in an Aug. 22 post on X:

“The new parental inclusion and consent policies are dangerous and a threat to the safety and well-being of students.

“The Federation is calling on the government to reverse this policy decision and engage in meaningful consultation with its sector partners and expert teachers,” she said.

In an accompanying video, the president alleged that the legislation “not only handcuffs teachers’ ability to build trust, it also dangerously threatens the safety and well-being of Saskatchewan students.”

Really? Entrusting children to their parents is dangerous and threatening?

The video continues with the president making the astounding claim that the legislation “politicizes our classrooms but it also takes us down a dangerous path without any consultation with teachers or the public at large.”

Now really, the teachers, education departments, and school trustees have politicized the classrooms and put children in danger and left parents without the influence they not only deserve but have a God-given right to.

The notwithstanding clause was inserted into the Canadian constitution at the behest of Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed and the agreement of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau that it was a necessary defence against unelected courts becoming too powerful and potentially undermining individual liberty and democratic rights without any means of arresting their aggrandizement.

Moe will be vilified by the federal government and mainstream media for using it to defend parents, but he should be praised as a Canadian folk hero.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.