Drainville requires maintenance
of single-sex washrooms
(Quebec) Bernard Drainville has decided: he prohibits Quebec schools from converting entire toilet blocks, currently dedicated to girls and boys, into mixed toilets. In return, he proposes a compromise that he considers "very reasonable and very acceptable" to accommodate non-binary people: that individual and closed toilets be designated for the use of all.
In a media scrum at the resumption of parliamentary proceedings on Tuesday, the Minister of Education returned to the controversial decision made at D'Iberville High School, in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, which announced that work is underway so that the toilets on the three floors are mixed as of the start of the 2024-2025 school year.
"There is no question of turning boys' toilets into mixed toilets or girls' toilets into mixed toilets,
" Drainvillle said, adding that his decision is "firm".
"We will now think about how we are going to ensure that this decision is respected," he said.
Avoid mockeryTo justify his decision, the Minister of Education explained that he had imagined a scene where young teenage girls who have their first menstruation would be the target of mockery from their male colleagues.
"I imagine the scene, the young girls of 12, 13, 14 years old who start to have her period for example and who come out of the cubicle and there, there are boys next to 13, 14 years old who look at them. Imagine the scene. The mockery, the sarcasm, the humiliation. You're talking about students who could be hurt, if not bruised by these kinds of situations," Drainville said.
"We don't want to go there. I think we have to draw a line and the line is drawn now.
There is no question of us going in that direction, "he decided.
On the broader issue of debates surrounding the notion of gender identity, namely the "internal feeling or feeling that we all have about being man, woman, neither, both or anywhere else on the gender spectrum," as Jeunesse J'écoute explains, Bernard Drainville affirms like his colleague Martine Biron, Minister responsible for the fight against homophobia and transphobia, that the government wants to have a "framework" to guide its decision-making.
"On all issues of gender identity, we are thinking about the best way to respond to the issues [...]. We want to give ourselves a framework. Now, which one? We are thinking about that," he said.
In a media scrum at the resumption of parliamentary proceedings on Tuesday, the Minister of Education returned to the controversial decision made at D'Iberville High School, in Abitibi-Témiscamingue, which announced that work is underway so that the toilets on the three floors are mixed as of the start of the 2024-2025 school year.
"There is no question of turning boys' toilets into mixed toilets or girls' toilets into mixed toilets,
" Drainvillle said, adding that his decision is "firm".
"We will now think about how we are going to ensure that this decision is respected," he said.
Avoid mockeryTo justify his decision, the Minister of Education explained that he had imagined a scene where young teenage girls who have their first menstruation would be the target of mockery from their male colleagues.
"I imagine the scene, the young girls of 12, 13, 14 years old who start to have her period for example and who come out of the cubicle and there, there are boys next to 13, 14 years old who look at them. Imagine the scene. The mockery, the sarcasm, the humiliation. You're talking about students who could be hurt, if not bruised by these kinds of situations," Drainville said.
"We don't want to go there. I think we have to draw a line and the line is drawn now.
There is no question of us going in that direction, "he decided.
On the broader issue of debates surrounding the notion of gender identity, namely the "internal feeling or feeling that we all have about being man, woman, neither, both or anywhere else on the gender spectrum," as Jeunesse J'écoute explains, Bernard Drainville affirms like his colleague Martine Biron, Minister responsible for the fight against homophobia and transphobia, that the government wants to have a "framework" to guide its decision-making.
"On all issues of gender identity, we are thinking about the best way to respond to the issues [...]. We want to give ourselves a framework. Now, which one? We are thinking about that," he said.
