Premier Blaine Higgs says he saw only one slide of the sex education presentation that he banned from New Brunswick schools.
In a Friday evening statement on social media, Higgs called a presentation delivered to a dozen high schools “clearly inappropriate” and said the sex education group behind it would no longer be welcome in the province’s schools.
While responding to reporters’ questions in the New Brunswick legislature Tuesday, Higgs said he was sent a screenshot of the presentation slide that he shared to social media. “I’ve never seen the entire presentation,” he said.
When asked if his decision to ban the presentation from schools was based solely off the screenshot he had viewed, Higgs replied: “Next question.”
That screenshot features the questions: “Do girls masturbate?” — “Does it hurt when you do it for the first time?” — “Is it good or bad to do anal?” — “Is it normal to watch porn like people watch TV series?” Higgs said “a lot of parents were shocked” to see those questions featured in a presentation aimed at high school students.
When asked what was shocking about the slide, the premier said “it speaks for itself.”
Teresa Norris, president of the Montreal-based organization that made the presentation, says her group has been teaching in New Brunswick schools for years and its material has been vetted by the province and is in line with the provincial curriculum.
“We are not promoting any sexual behaviour … our ultimate goal is to destigmatize conversations about sexual health so young people can get accurate information,” Norris said in an interview Monday.
She said this is of particular importance in New Brunswick, where the teen pregnancy rate was seven births per 1,000 teenage girls in 2022, compared to the national average of about four births per 1,000 teenage girls.
A 2019 report on sexual health education in the province published by University of New Brunswick researchers says youth in the province have a high incidence of sexually transmitted infections, unplanned pregnancy, sexual violations and dating violence that is “suggestive of high-risk sexual behaviours and a lack of knowledge regarding sexual consent, personal safety, and understanding of healthy relationship characteristics.”
Norris said when students don’t have access to quality sexual education, they turn to the internet where they may find dangerous misinformation and easy access to pornography.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 29, 2024.
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