Tory MP Brad Trost Compared New Sex-Ed Curriculum to Residential Schools

If you're a Canadian whose brain hasn't been totally deprived of common sense from watching the American election unfold, you're in luck: Saskatchewan Conservative MP Brad Trost has tapped the well of stupidity and let it flow into our collective consciousness.

According to Twitter users and confirmed by VICE, Trost, a Tory leadership hopeful, compared Ontario's new sex ed curriculum to the way in which residential schools abducted Indigenous children from their parents, while speaking at a protest Wednesday.

"This is an illustration of incidents in Canadian history where parents' rights are not being respected. I don't think parents are being respected here at the sex-ed debate, and this is [a civil right issue with the federal government.] The absolute worst case, much more severe case in Canadian history, is of the residential schools," Trost told VICE after his speech Wednesday.

"It's the underlying principle that I'm comparing here. Like I said, residential schools are the absolute worst case scenario, but you often work your way up when you start with [small issues]."

When asked what he personally takes issue with in the curriculum, Trost said "that's not the issue," instead arguing that it's about "what the parents take issue with."

"If you want to have Kathleen Wynne's sex-ed program, I'm not gonna stop you," he told VICE.

Trost keeps it classy.

Trost, whose province and riding has one the highest populations of Indigenous Canadians in all of Canada, said that he is not worried about alienating constituents who might take issue with his comparisons between residential schools and sex-ed curriculum, or his stance on same-sex marriage.

"I've represented this area for 12 years. People know where I stand, people know that I'm honest and respectful. Like I said, I think that the Aboriginal people were abused by the government more than anyone else, because their parental rights were abused. But no, I don't have a problem with [them being offended.] I realize that there's always some people who get upset, but I've been elected five times, there's a reason why even people who disagree with me stuck with me. We'll go forward."

For some context, Ontario's new sex-ed curriculum—introduced earlier this year—begins in elementary school and teaches children about everything from safe sex to pregnancy, STIs to masturbation. In what seems to be really riling folks up, however, the curriculum also teaches children that same-sex relationships are perfectly normal, and explains that there are more than two genders. Since the curriculum has landed, some parents have been pissed—staging protests and threatening to pull their children out of school.

The fiasco has grown so big that leader of the Ontario Conservative Party, Patrick Brown, was asked about his opinion recently. In public, Brown kept neutral—addressing a letter to his constituents this year saying that he had no interest in scrapping the legislation (without actually endorsing it). It was revealed last week, however, through leaked private emails, that Brown was ready to officially oppose the curriculum last year.

"I will repeal it! I say that everywhere," the email, addressed to the anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition in 2015, reads.

Brown has defended his position since, saying that he only promised to scrap the program in private last year because it was a topic for the leadership race, but now believes the concerns of protestors to be "exaggerated."

Trost, who has been a vocal opponent of his party's move toward marriage equality as a rule of their official platform, made headlines earlier in the year when he told reporters that he was upset with the party's move away from social Conservatism.

Just recently, Trost ran a social media campaign that featured two fingers-face-puppet-things (a poor attempt at representing a man and a woman, I guess) to promote heterosexual relationships. Social media grilled him for it pretty hard.

When asked how Trost, who's running for leadership of the federal Conservative party, feels about his party's new adoption to move away from an anti-same-sex marriage platform, he said he is "untouchable."

"I've run in every election and been elected as a Conservative member of parliament [every time,]" he said. "Typical Canadians, they want to have a disagreement, they want things to go away quietly, but I'm here because I stand for my principles, and I am here to argue for them."

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