Across Canada, provinces and territories have rules about creating positive, safe, and inclusive schools. Here are a few examples:
- Ontario: Schools must promote a positive school climate that’s inclusive of all students, including queer and trans students.
- Manitoba: Schools must have policies that respect human diversity and create safe and inclusive learning environments.
- Quebec: Teachers are expected to foster respect for human rights in their classrooms.
- British Columbia: School boards must actively build cultures of respect, inclusion, fairness, and equity, and address issues like discrimination and homophobia.
- New Brunswick: School personnel and students in the public school system have the right to work and to learn in a safe, orderly, productive, respectful and harassment-free environment, and school’s must create a culture where 2SLGBTQIA+ students see themselves and their lives positively reflected in the school environment.
Not every province or territory has an explicit law about inclusivity (like Nunavut and the Northwest Territories). But even there, your right to equality under the Charter, and in your province or territory’s human rights law, still gives you the right to an accepting and inclusive school environment.
Many provinces and territories also require schools to create safe learning environments for students. We believe that this requirement must be understood as a duty to protect not only the physical safety of students, but also as a duty to create inclusive schools.
