Over the past five years, the school system in Manitoba has been the subject of public dialogue, debate and conflict. During the COVID-19 pandemic, schools were placed under pressure as staff and students balanced public health measures with schooling. A push to “modernize” the public school system was also happening, which would have included sweeping changes like eliminating elected school boards and amalgamating school divisions. While the provincial government ultimately withdrew this plan in the face of public opposition and dialogue, other conflicts remained.
As pandemic restrictions eased and modernization plans were put on hold, school boards became contested spaces, this time with parental rights becoming a focal point. By examining two case studies in Manitoba where the parental rights movement caused school boards to become sites of conflicts, we can learn how this movement impacted public education and interfered with democratic practices.
The history of parental rights
The push for parental rights is not a new phenomenon. Parental rights movements have emerged at many points throughout history to control school curriculum, pedagogy and practices (Hornbeck, 2023). The claim of parental rights has also been used as a rhetorical tool by campaigning politicians to attract support and push forward agendas of privatization, particularly when these agendas involve incorporating private values into systems that should reflect public values based in human rights (Moore, McCorquodale-Bauer & Lopuck, 2025). More recently, this drive has been connected with opposition to public health measures, like mask or vaccine mandates. However, as these measures faded, attention shifted to opposing instruction relating to gender identity, sexual orientation, and race and racism. Proponents of parental rights at times frame the issue in relation to freedom of speech or religion, government indoctrination, and protecting children, although these talking points often obscure underlying homophobia, transphobia and racism (Mayo, 2021). In some cases, slanderous and false accusations are made against educators, such as grooming or pedophilia, and it is not unusual to find links to conspiracy theories and other disinformation (Moore & Lopuck, 2025).
The Manitoba Public Schools Act enumerates seven rights that parents have within the school system, such as the right of a parent to consult with a teacher about their child’s progress or the right to be informed of their child’s behaviour or achievement. The current parental rights movement is pushing to expand this list to obtain more control over what is taught and the ability to censor content for all students. However, no parent has the right to control what other people’s children learn within the public school system, particularly when censorship negatively affects equity-seeking groups and counters human rights. This tension has led to school boards becoming contested spaces as a culture war plays out in school board offices across Manitoba.
The 2022 school board elections
In October 2022, school board elections took place in Manitoba for the first time since before the pandemic. Some people who had protested public health measures and who had garnered media attention decided to run for school trustee, with the hope of influencing school board policies. Several candidates were connected to the far right. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network profiled five far-right candidates, several of whom made the jump from COVID restriction protestor to school trustee candidate. Several of these far-right candidates expressed homophobic or transphobic rhetoric and advocated for limiting sex education in schools. Some of these candidates had been associated with far-right groups, like the Proud Boys or Action4Canada, a group that pushes conspiracy theories and disinformation. While candidates connected to far-right ideology were a fringe group, some of their far right ideas became a part of their platform.
During this election, parental rights emerged as an underlying discourse in a few campaigns. For instance, a candidate who ran in Seine River School Division, in South Eastern Manitoba, emphasized parental rights and indicated that, “another thing is to have all the highly sexualized stuff removed from the school, and the gender ideology.” While this candidate and most others expressing these ideas did not succeed in their elections, a few did win their races, leading to later conflicts.
Louis Riel School Division
The Louis Riel School Division in Winnipeg serves as an example. In 2022, Francine Champagne was elected as a school trustee in Ward 1. In May 2023, Champagne posted and shared content on social media that was transphobic and she linked to a website that publishes false information about the WHO and the United Nations. She wrote, “the sexualization of our children in schools is all part of the agenda.” She was suspended in June 2023 for three months for breaching the school division’s code of conduct.
On June 20, 2023, a group of protestors went to a school board meeting to oppose the suspension, although a number of attendees were not members of the Louis Riel School Division community. Since the suspension was not an agenda item, the protestors were not permitted to register to speak as a delegation. Some of the protestors made homophobic, transphobic and racist remarks and a trustee who had recently come out as bisexual was targeted with abusive language and a threatening gesture. The police were called to deal with what one newspaper labelled a mob, and 35 people were later barred from future school board meetings. The board chose to move subsequent meetings online for a time to ensure a safe environment and to minimize disruption to the surrounding residential area. Despite this, Action4Canada chose to protest the next school board meeting in September. Community members responded with a counter-protest in support of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
Given the unsafe nature of the situation, it is understandable that the school division chose to move their board meetings online. However, this decision also emphasizes the serious impact of the parental rights movement on democratic systems. Democratic processes involve sharing differing points of view, with decision-making being informed by a variety of perspectives. However, this process cannot effectively function within an unsafe environment, particularly when marginalized groups are targeted, offensive language is hurled, and human rights are undermined and violated. This is an example of how the contested space of the school board had to shift its practices in response to conflict and abuse.
Champagne was later suspended in October 2023 for a month for refusing to sign her school division’s code of conduct. In November 2023, she was suspended for a third time for posting a racist comment online. The school division began the process of unseating her permanently via the courts and she chose to resign. While two pro-parental rights candidates ran in the June 2024 byelection and received a combined 24% of the votes, they were both defeated by a candidate who received 64% of the votes by running on a campaign that was supportive of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.
Brandon School Division
Another case study to highlight is the Brandon School Division’s response to calls for censorship. On May 8, 2023, a delegation presented to the Brandon School Board requesting a committee be established to review books found in Brandon schools. The delegation’s presenter focused on books that included 2SLGBTQIA+ characters and themes or books that teach about sexuality education. Throughout this presentation she cited disinformation targeting the 2SLGBTQIA+ community as part of a call for privately motivated censorship.
The response was intense; the next board meeting on May 23 was attended by hundreds of community members. The trustees had received 289 letters or emails, the vast majority of which criticized the book review proposal. At the meeting, 28 out of the 30 people who presented spoke against the proposal. Speakers emphasized the importance of access to books with 2SLGBTQIA+ representation for queer youth, the need for inclusive schools, and the benefits of comprehensive sexuality education for young people. In the end, the school board voted 6-1 against the proposal, with Trustee Breanna Sieklicki offering the sole vote in support.
This incident captured national attention and it appeared to be a decisive victory against censorship. However, in subsequent months, parental rights advocates continued to challenge trustees about this decision. In June 2023, a Brandon resident demanded that the board provide communications that occurred prior to the May 23 meeting to demonstrate their decision-making process. Board Chair Linda Ross refused, indicating that further discussion about reviewing books would interfere with the board’s main mission of educating children. She also indicated that evaluating books and resources was the role of professional library staff, not the board of trustees or private citizens.
Months later, the same resident would tell the board that packages containing notices of liability had been delivered to six of the trustees. This act is part of Action4Canada’s playbook, where legally dubious notices are given to school officials accusing them of exposing students to sexually explicit or pornographic material. The trustees were unmoved. At the end of August, Trustee Sieklicki tried to reopen the debate at a school board meeting, putting forward a new motion to establish a book review committee. She also made a second motion to require schools to inform parents about school activities, such as curriculum, presentations, and information relating to students. The other trustees did not support these motions and they did not move forward.
Constantly focusing on parental rights issues comes at a cost. Foremost, there is the stress experienced by members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and allies who are forced to assert their humanity and right to exist by responding in support of safe and inclusive schools. Additionally, there are consequences for how the Brandon School Board operates. First of all, the school board incurred the expense of hiring private security for their meetings, which had been unnecessary previously. Secondly: opportunity costs. Board Chair Ross made it clear that repeatedly retreading the same issues takes time, which interferes with the board’s ability to attend to school governance and other matters. An October 23, 2023 opinion piece in the Brandon Sun made a similar point when discussing parental rights delegations scheduled to present to the board. They stated that delegations continually communicating intolerance was an abuse of the process and urged the board of trustees to take steps to limit the disruption these presentations cause. Constant focus on parental rights issues became a costly and disruptive problem for the school board.
On October 25, 2023, byelections were held for Wards 1 and 2 of the Brandon School Division and parental rights became an election issue. In Ward 1, seven out of eight candidates agreed with the board’s decision to not establish a book review committee (one candidate was staunchly against the decision). Ward 2 included two candidates, one of whom was the father-in-law of Trustee Sieklicki and a supporter of the parental rights movement.
In both wards, the winning candidates expressed public support for safe, inclusive, and welcoming schools and each received more than twice the votes of their parental rights opponents. This echoes the Manitoba provincial election that had occurred on October 3, 2023, where the incumbent Progressive Conservatives campaigned on a parental rights platform and lost to the New Democratic Party. While the supporters of parental rights were loud, they did not garner massive public support when it came time to vote.
Conclusion
In both the Brandon and Louis Riel School Divisions, school boards became contested spaces as groups used parental rights to push for changes that were harmful for students. This results in spaces that are unsafe for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and for school trustees more generally. It wastes money and time that could be better spent on school governance. It normalizes the framing of parental rights ideology as something other than fringe, even though it runs counter to widely accepted views of human rights (and was rejected in the 2024 Louis Riel byelection, the 2023 Brandon byelection, and the 2023 Manitoba provincial election).
The parental rights movement has led school boards in Manitoba to become sites of conflict and dysfunction, distracted by individuals who cite conspiracy theories and push for changes that are not in the best interest of students. As the next school board elections approach in 2026 in Manitoba, it is important for citizens to pay attention and stay well informed in order to elect candidates who truly represent their communities.
References
Hornbeck, D. (2023). Navigating parental rights: A study of Virginia’s model policies on transgender student treatment. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 31(113). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.31.8166
Mayo, C. (2021). Distractions and defractions: Using parental rights to fight against the education rights of transgender, nonbinary, and gender diverse students. Educational Policy, 35(2), 368-382.
Moore, S., & Lopuck, K. (2025). Discursive decoys: The legitimation of homophobia and transphobia, educational neutrality, and teacher deprofessionalization in mainstream media’s coverage of the “parental rights” movement in Manitoba. Canadian Journal of Education. https://doi.org/10.53967/cje-rce.6933
Moore, S., McCorquodale-Bauer, M., & Lopuck K. (2025) Placating private values: A fourth pathway to education privatization. Our Schools/Our Selves, 23-26. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/our-schools-our-selves-2025-winter-spring.pdf
