Editorial: DEC should give up on Policy 713 fight

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New Brunswick Minister of Education Bill Hogan has little choice now but to exercise what has long been understood to be his (or any education minister’s) power: to disband the Anglophone East District Education council immediately if it doesn’t stop misspending taxpayers money to fight a duly legislated provincial policy decision on gender identities.

The recalcitrant DEC can concede, or meet its Waterloo.

The controversy has been thoroughly debated since last year, some changes made, and Hogan has sent a series of three letters ordering Anglophone East and a few francophone DECs to adhere to the policy.

DECs don’t have the mandate to decide. Their job is policy implementation, always has been, and our courts have already ruled on that when other DEC-government disputes have arisen in the past.

No doubt has been left: Education is constitutionally the full purview of the provinces, even if DECs think otherwise. DECs are elected to help run the school system, not to make such policy.

The Policy 713 question has been debated at length. Similar legislation is being appealed in other provinces and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association is appealing them, including New Brunswick’s, on Charter grounds. Human rights objections should be heard in the courts, not by grandstanding DECs – which have no greater authority on the issue than the elected provincial government.

Hogan on April 22 ordered the DEC to cease its activity, remove its material off its website and to acknowledge the minister had cancelled all pending court actions because the DEC lacks the authority. Three days later, the DEC replied, acknowledging it did as ordered (a tacit admission the minister has the power) but stated the DEC voted a ‘new’ policy identical to the old and resubmitted that to the court.

No credible judge will find anything but the same old policy. It’s a ludicrous, insubordinate subterfuge. The DEC should relent.