Trustees served ‘notices of liability’

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This article was published 30/08/2023 (761 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon School Division trustees were delivered dozens of so-called “notices of liability” on Monday as part of a continued effort to ban LGBTQ+, sexual and gender identity content from its school libraries. But the board chair has called the validity of those notices into question.

During the public inquiries portion of Tuesday’s board of trustees meeting, resident Kathy Smitzniuk said a package of notices of liability produced with the help of Action4Canada had been dropped off at the division’s administration building earlier that day.

Those notices, she said, were destined to go to six trustees. After the resignations of Caroline Cramer and Jason Gobeil earlier this year, there are currently only seven sitting trustees.

“With the assistance of Action4Canada, we presented a stack of notices of liabilities signed by Brandon residents to the Brandon School Division office for distribution to six of the trustees,” Smitzniuk said, adding that she wanted it on the record that trustees had received the documents.

“Our hope is we can come together, find some common ground for the sake of all of our children.”

Action4Canada, which describes its mission on its website as “… to protect Canada’s rich heritage which is founded on Judeo-Christian biblical principles,” hosts several online documents for people to download and fill out to serve to various groups or individuals to supposedly inform them that they are in violation of Canadian law and are at risk of being the subject of legal action.

Most of the notices of liability focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines, but there are also forms about 15-minute cities and “pornographic books and radical LGBTQ learning resources.”

In February, Mission Public Schools in Mission, B.C., had its school board vote to ban Action4Canada from presenting at its meetings for one year after it made a presentation containing inappropriate images and refused to take the slides down after requests from the board chair.

On Tuesday, BSD board chair Linda Ross confirmed the notice that trustees received was titled “Notice of personal liability — facilitating in exposure of minors to sexually explicit educational resources, performers, activities and/or events.”

The three-page document states, among other things, that the recipients have been participants in making pornographic materials available to minors, facilitating the exploitation and/or sexualization of minors, encouraging children to masturbate, have sex with members of the same sex, participate in Pride events and to join gay/straight alliance clubs.

It then states that these activities are in violation of the Criminal Code of Canada’s statutes regarding child pornography and sexual interference.

The notices end with a demand that the recipient work to ban a list of books that Action4Canada maintains on its website as well as any other works by the same authors, that schools and libraries cease the promotion of activities that “exploit vulnerable minors” — which includes LGBTQ content — as well as provide information on who funded the placement of these books in schools and to end the teaching of sexual health and gender identity content in schools.

“Individuals/educators who approve and/or use or make accessible to minors, any pornographic materials, resources, performers (e.g. drag queens), activities/events, or clubs can be held personally liable, and this NOL may be used as evidence against you in future actions,” the notices conclude. “You have been duly advised and I trust you will take the appropriate actions to resolve this matter.”

According to Ross, between 50 and 60 of these notices were received. She didn’t know for certain but guessed that the one trustee who did not receive a notice was Breeanna Sieklicki, the only member of the board to advocate in favour of a committee to review and potentially ban books.

“Just speaking personally … I’m not taking it particularly seriously,” Ross said. “As far as I can tell, it has no legal value as far as claims that we are, you know, violating certain laws.”

She said she thought it was probably an attempt to intimidate trustees from “a small group of very vocal people with what I see to be an very clear anti-LGBTQ agenda.”

In an email, Sieklicki confirmed she did not receive any notices.

“I did not receive this package, but the other five trustees at the board meeting had large packages on their desks,” Sieklicki wrote. “They did not share with me what was in these packages other than motioning towards them when Mrs. Kathy Smitzniuk mentioned the forms she had dropped off. So, I am not aware of the content or petitions that may have been in the packages.”

At Monday’s meeting, Ross said private security was hired because a large crowd had been anticipated. It’s an extra expense, with security not usually needed for board meetings. Ross was unsure of whether a security presence would continue at future meetings.

Despite the notices and an attempt by Sieklicki to reopen the debate on content in school libraries, Ross said she was not interested in doing so.

“If people have new information to bring us, that’s a different matter,” she said. “We don’t want to hear information that we’ve already heard multiple times … it takes up a lot of time. It certainly infringes on time that we have available to do the business of the board.”

Brandon Pride chairperson Alyssa Wowchuk, who was also present at Monday’s meeting, said Tuesday that having looked at a copy of the notice being handed out, it was clear that much of its content wasn’t applicable to Brandon and mirrored some of the arguments made by former trustee Lorraine Hackenschmidt when she first proposed book bans earlier this year.

“Like I said at the meeting, it’s very clear that for this group, it’s not about book bans or for saving the children,” Wowchuk said. “The same group followed us to a city council meeting when we did a presentation suggesting a rainbow display in the city. We were not talking about books at that city council meeting, yet they still followed us there to get on the stand and say they don’t want that either.”

At the July 17 Brandon City Council meeting, Hackenschmidt advocated against the creation of a permanent rainbow display in honour of Brandon’s LGBTQ+ residents on religious grounds.

With the ongoing discussion in Brandon, as well as moves by provinces like New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Ontario toward requiring schools to disclose students’ changes to their gender identities, Wowchuk said she and Brandon Pride are looking to keep the rhetoric from accelerating as the start of the school year approaches.

Wowchuk also repeated a statement she made earlier this month, saying Premier Heather Stefanson’s election promise to improve parental rights in Manitoba was a dog whistle against LGBTQ+ people.

In July 2022, the Canadian Federation of Library Associations issued a statement to its members regarding the same notice of liability being served to libraries.

“Libraries need to know that the notice of personal liability has no legal value with regards to its claims of the recipient breaking the law and does not replace processes that the library already has in place to facilitate challenges to library materials, such as a request for reconsideration form,” the federation’s statement reads.

It also states that the notice “appears to be an intimidation tactic created for widespread use in an organized campaign but may also be viewed as an individual library patron expressing their disapproval.”

In December 2021, the CBC quoted University of British Columbia law professor Debra Parkes stating that notices of liability are not a valid legal term and appear to be just assertions of what someone thinks the law is.

The Sun could not find a phone number for Smitzniuk, and she did not reply to a Facebook message requesting comment on the situation.

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