FIRST READING: ‘Hate speech’ to critique child gender transitioning, says Nova Scotia minister

Nova Scotia MLA Brendan Maguire pictured on a Nova Scotia legislative assembly livestream. Photo by Screenshot via YouTube

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In a speech defending a Nova Scotia policy of schoolchildren gender-transitioning without parental consent, a Progressive Conservative minister called its critics “fearmongers,” “disgusting” and purveyors of “hate speech.”

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That same speech would also see him defending the terms of a new social work bill by stating that parents don’t “deserve rights over a child.”

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“I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand here and listen to someone say that the parents deserve rights over a child. No, they don’t. They absolutely don’t,” said Brendan Maguire, Nova Scotia’s minister of education and early childhood development.

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Maguire, whose own parents abandoned him as a child, was responding to criticism from NDP MLA Lina Hamid over the terms of Bill 201, a new act that, among other things, makes it illegal to publish the names of children who die while under the care of the province.

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The bill was introduced in the wake of media reports surrounding Isaiha Surette, a 17-month-old boy who was beaten to death by his mother shortly after being returned to her from foster care.

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April Surette, 32, pleaded guilty in December to manslaughter after throwing Isaiha to the floor during a diaper change, causing him fatal head trauma.

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The new ban wouldn’t just extend to media reports surrounding cases such as Isaiha’s. Bill 201 specifies that anybody publishing a social media post with such information could face fines of up to $10,000 or two years’ imprisonment.

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“Imagine losing a child who was in the care of the province. While grieving, you need to go to the minister to talk about your loss,” said Hamid.

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Maguire reacted in particular to Hamid’s use of the word “losing,” saying it implied that it was easy for parents to lose custody of their children.

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“I’m tired about this argument, because I’ve heard it my entire life: ‘What about the parents’ rights?’” he said.

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Maguire detailed his own background of growing up under alcoholic parents, and a father who “beat the living hell” out of him and his five siblings each night.

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“Government stepped in time and time and time and time again, and gave him chance after chance after chance, and that’s what the department of community services does. They don’t want to separate children from their parents,” he said.

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Maguire ultimately entered foster care after he and his siblings were abandoned at a Halifax mall. His parents returned to Ireland.

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Maguire’s speech had begun with him zeroing in on the fact that she had cited the Citizens Alliance of Nova Scotia among a list of community groups who opposed the legislation (although Maguire called it the “Canadian Alliance of Nova Scotia”).