Comprehensive sex education takes a holistic approach to cover every aspect of human sexuality. This includes a queer understanding of sexuality and gender.

Comprehensive sex education has been shown to significantly improve the mental and physical wellbeing of youth while strengthening their decision making and relationships. It reduces risky sexual behaviour, the rate of unplanned pregnancies, the transmission of HIV and sexually transmitted diseases, and the incidence of intimate partner violence. Comprehensive sex education also addresses the negative health outcomes and discrimination that our LGBTQ+ youth disproportionately experience.

However, sex education is spotty across Canada and varies widely from province to province. This results in an outdated, inconsistent, insufficiently regulated, and under-resourced sex education that negatively impacts our youth. Without an LGBTQ+ inclusive and comprehensive sex education, our children and adolescents face an increased risk of experiencing negative physical and mental health outcomes. 

The time to act is now! A growing wave of anti-LGBTQ+ conservative groups and politicians are attempting scale back sex education across the country. This threatens the autonomy of our youth and strips them of the power that comprehensive education provides. Let's band together and demand a progressive, nation-wide comprehensive sex curriculum in all Canadian elementary schools and high schools!

We put forward the following 7 demands to the Canadian government:

1. Design and implement a nation-wide comprehensive sex curriculum in collaboration with key sexual health and LGBTQ+ organizations. These include The Sex Information & Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN), Action Canada for Sexual and Health Rights, The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC), and us here at Q.
2. Work independently with each province and territory to tailor the sexual health curriculum to meet specific provincial and territorial needs.
3. Incorporate an understanding of queer theory and its expansive view of sexuality and gender into the new sex curriculum.
4. Incorporate youth perspectives into the design and implementation of a new sex curriculum.
5. Design and implement a sexual health training program for all primary and secondary school teachers.
6. Design and implement regulatory measures to ensure the quality and consistency of sex education.
7. Form an advisory committee led by key sexual health and LGBTQ+ researchers to review the sexual health curriculum every 5 years in order to address contemporary concerns.

Join the queer Canadian movement and sign the petition today!