A new ruling by the Saskatchewan government has significantly negatively impacted LGBTQ+ rights and childhood safety in our province, mandating that "students under 16 years of age in Saskatchewan will require parental permission when changing preferred names and pronouns in a school setting" and that "parents or caregivers [...] will now have the option of opting their children out of sex-ed", (CTV News: https://regina.ctvnews.ca/sask-government-will-let-parents-opt-their-children-out-of-sex-ed-1.6529413 in flagrant violation of the United Nations' Human Rights Convention on the Rights of the Child, (Articles 2.1, 16.1, 19.1, 22.2.f, 28.1.e, 28.2, 29.b, and 29.d: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-child

The first declaration means that LGBTQ+ kids now need their parents' permission to use a name and pronouns they prefer. The risk and damage this inflicts upon students is self-evident, as many do not have accepting parents. Informing abusive and queerphobic parents that their child would prefer a different name and/or pronouns can result in physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. The hypocrisy when it comes to choosing one's name is also self-evident. This either is enforced for nicknames as well, (which I imagine everyone can agree is absurd, regardless of position), or it is only enforced on queer students, which is targeted harassment, (additionally, see section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/how-rights-protected/guide-canadian-charter-rights-freedoms.html Rulings like these are exactly what occurred in the Southern U.S. before they violently began forcing students to detransition. We can not sit back and allow our friends, neighbours, classmates, and/or family to be harassed, degraded, and demonised.

The second declaration means any student might be denied access to sexual education. The ramifications of this are much simpler: more teen pregnancies, more STDs, more sexual assault, and more rape. I do not need to further explain why this is reprehensible to allow.

This petition is one step to preventing such policies and worse from being implemented in our schools, and may have a serious effect on our education system if we are strong enough to pursue it.