On August 9th, the Opposition Critic for Education Matt Love and Human Rights Critic Meara Conway called on the Minister of Education Dustin Duncan to take leadership and respond to escalating concerns and allegations from dozens of former students of Christian Centre Academy, now known as Legacy Christian Academy.

“This story broke to the public a week ago. The Minister’s office has known about these allegations for months but the Minister has been missing in action. He’s neither faced the media to answer questions, nor signaled any remedy from his Ministry,” said Love.

Since then, Minister Duncan has not spoke and committed to any government lead action or response. Concerns over the Sask. Party governments school spending has also risen throughout this since the provincial government dramatically increased funding for independent schools while funding for public schools has not been prioritized.

“Criminality should not be the litmus test for an ethical education,” said Conway. “The Minister should be taking action to ensure no student in Saskatchewan goes into an abusive, unsafe, or intolerant classroom next month. The failure to demonstrate in words or in action that the human rights of all students will be upheld in publicly-funded schools is unacceptable.”

The Minister did release a statement saying he's waiting on the criminal investigation to conclude before addressing the concerns.

“I hope the Minster understands his duty - leaving this to the criminal justice system means he’s setting the bar for quality education pretty low,” said Love. “Students deserve much better than ‘not illegal’ in the classroom.”

The NDP opposition is calling on Minister Duncan to publicly answer the following questions:

  • Why has he not offered any solutions yet?
  • Does he take any responsibility as the Minister of Education to address allegations of exorcisms, paddling, and solitary confinement in publicly-funded Saskatchewan schools?
  • Is school-mandated partisan activity and political campaigning appropriate?
  • Why are independent schools not subject to the same access to information and transparency mechanisms as public and separate schools?