Letter sent to Minister Johnson regarding AHRA from AHEA

September 5, 2012

 

Dear Minister Johnson,

 

AHEA has become aware that the PC caucus will be meeting today, on Wednesday, September 5, 2012.  We continue to urge you to remove the Alberta Human Rights Act from the Education Act.

 

The embedding of the Alberta Human Rights Act into the Education Act sets off red flags.  Why is it that an existing legislation is being embedded into the Education Act?  If the AHRA is already overarching as is the common explanation, what is the purpose to it being placed in into another Act?

 

Home educators are not against human rights.  In fact, many home schooling families stand up for the rights of those who don’t have a voice, those out of the majority and who are suffering or injured, not because standing up is popular, but because someone suffering needs help.  We believe in true human rights.

 

It would seem that the legislation name ‘Human Rights’ Act invokes thoughts that this legislation is all about Human Rights.  In actuality, this legislation has been used as much to harm individual rights and liberties as to protect them.  When people have to be afraid of prosecution by Kangaroo courts due to speaking words, even if true,  which offend, then this is the true violation to individual rights.  The Alberta Human Rights Act takes away an individual’s ability to express their opinions openly.  It makes speech the crime.

 

Individuals will have varying ideas and thoughts, and this variety of thought leads to robust communities and societies.  Limiting a society’s words and thoughts, simply because they might offend, is the true loss of liberty.   Take away a person’s ability to speak freely, and we truly are moving towards a controlled society, one in which true hate crimes are more apt to occur.  Prosecuting individuals who speak their mind is a type of social engineering and societal control that is a loss of human rights.

 

True hate crimes need to be prosecuted, and to be prosecuted to the fullest extent under the law.  Hate crimes are criminal, and need to be treated as such.  Criminal code prosecution of hate crimes is appropriate to ensure heinous hate crimes are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.  They are also necessary to protect individuals from unjustified prosecution by bureaucratically appointed, not legally trained, tribunals with little to no training in the foundations of law.

 

I urge you, to take out the AHRA from the Education act and replace Section 16 from Bill 2 with:

 

Education Programs offered and instructional materials
used in schools must not promote or foster doctrines of racial or ethnic
superiority or persecution, religious intolerance or persecution, social change
through violent action or disobedience of laws.

 

And, of utmost importance, please don’t forget about Parental Rights.  The Education Act has relegated parental rights and elevated Human Rights Legislation.  A parent’s right to make decisions for their children, simply because they are their parents, needs to be stated clearly in this act and this right needs to be protected.

 

Thank you for your efforts.

 

 

Patty Marler

Government Liaison for the Alberta Home Education Association

 

Cc  Premier Redford

Deputy Premier Lukaszuk