In office since 2013, Premier Kathleen Wynne has an approval rating of 21 percent. How does one explain such remarkable unpopularity?
An economic powerhouse since its birth, the province of Ontario is now in a mess. Many critics point to the economic mismanagement of the governing Liberal Party. The past nine budgets have run a deficit and the province is carrying a $300,000,000,000 debt. Although few Ontario taxpayers are happy about paying $11.4 billion in interest on the debt this year, there is another issue that concerns a growing number of people. Wynne’s sex-education curriculum has stunned the moral sensibilities of many.
Wynne’s government spent millions of dollars to promote its new sex-ed curriculum introduced to Ontario’s publicly funded schools in September 2015. The openly gay Wynne made considerable effort to satisfy the tastes of the LGBTQ community.
Many parents are less than enthusiastic with a curriculum introducing homosexuality to grade three students and anal sex to grade six students. There has been a rise of reports of children exposed to pornography, including grade one students watching porn on school-issued tablets.
Parents have responded in a number of ways: letter writing, signing petitions, demonstrations, and pulling their children out of public schools – a significant number of students have left the school system. For example, the Toronto District School Board announced a decrease in enrollment of 2,600 students. At one Toronto public school, 100 students are still absent. There has been a rise in homeschooling and placing students in private Christian schools.
Recently, the grassroots organization Parents As First Educators wrote: “We have seen parents rally across the province, demanding that their voices be heard. These are our children, our responsibilities – not the government’s. After that sham of a consultation process, the Liberal government needs to scrap the sex-ed curriculum, and start respecting parents as the first educators.” I applaud the activism of this group, but a major obstacle is that the secular media and education elites see no problem with progressive sex education.
Wynne has caused much economic pain, but she is also causing a lot of pain with her agenda of social engineering. I expect that Wynne will continue to be an unpopular ideologue until her departure, hopefully in the next election.
This article was originally posted at The Conservative Prof. https://theconservativeprof.wordpress.com/2016/02/24/the-unpopular-ontario-leader/
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