A secretive guide instructs gender and sexuality club facilitators in elementary and secondary schools to hide student involvement from parents while coaching children to lie in the form of “confidentiality scenarios.” The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board’s Positive Space Best Practices teacher’s guide encourages training kids to be political activists, without parental knowledge or consent under the guise of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Perhaps most alarming is the normalization of role-play exercises that coach children to conceal what happens in these meetings. The guide advises teachers to “review confidentiality scenarios with students and to openly discuss the nuances of outing someone.”
The secrecy is explicit. The document states, “Parent/Guardian/Caregiver permission is not required for participation in secondary and elementary Positive Spaces.” By design, the program deliberately excludes the family from knowledge of the child’s participation, regardless of age.
Such “confidentiality scenarios” are not benign. They teach children that keeping secrets from family members is virtuous. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, teaching young children to keep secrets about sex and sexuality can embed the idea that their loyalty belongs to the abuser, isolating them from their family. In doing so, the policy normalizes the same conditions that safeguarding experts warn can lead to exploitation: secrecy, isolation from family, desensitization to discussions of a sexual nature, and pushing personal boundaries.
The leak comes with an additional resource that trains teachers how to respond to pushback, asking them to “stick to the script” stating that Positive Space is “legally protected” under Ontario’s human rights legislation and the Education Act. Opting out isn’t an option because “discussions and texts that reflect diverse people — including Two Spirit and LGBTQIA+ identities — appear across all subjects and grade levels throughout the school year.”
The program begins by offering “support,” but facilitators are instructed to transition students toward activism. “Some Positive Spaces focus on education, improvement of school climate, combating prejudice, hate and bias, planning and implementing awareness raising campaigns and social justice driven events.” Teachers are trained on how to help students engage in activities that “further the group’s goals.”
On the other hand, students in Ontario have been punished for engaging in conservative-coded activism or speaking out against gender ideology. In Kitchener-Waterloo, a student faced hate crime charges for posting flyers that warned of the medical risks of gender reassignment surgery.
The resource is aligned with the Ministry of Education’s focus on transforming education in line with critical race theory which views racism not as individual bias but as a structural feature of institutions. In Ontario classrooms, it takes shape through Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy, where lessons are reframed to explore identity, power, and oppression. This approach was formally adopted in 2017 through the province’s Education Equity Action Plan, which made identity-based analysis and anti-oppression training central to policy, curriculum, and teacher development. The approach is also intersectional in that it directs students to examine “the impact of colonialism on queer and trans perspectives.”
Several Ontario school boards including Toronto, Ottawa-Carleton, York Region, and Hamilton-Wentworth have adopted policies instructing staff to withhold information about a student’s gender identity from parents unless the student consents. Citing the Ontario Human Rights Code, these boards sideline family involvement in matters of gender transition and sexuality effectively undermining the family’s ability to act as the child’s first and most safeguard.
The Education Act doesn’t mandate secrecy. Nor does the Human Rights Code mandate that children be shielded from their parents under the banner of inclusion.
True North contacted the HWDSB for comment on numerous occasions but did not receive a reply.