“There is indoctrination happening” in Canada’s public and private school systems, says Peter Stock, president of the Home School Legal Defence Association (HSLDA), “and certainly there are some politicians who do not want to leave our home-educated children out of that indoctrination.”

It’s April 2023, and Stock is speaking on an Action4Canada webinar focused on homeschooling posted on Rumble, an online video platform known for hosting right-wing content. Action4Canada participated in the “Freedom Convoy” and 1 Million March 4 Children rallies and continues to organize online around a number of issues like “mass immigration,” “political LGBTQ” and 5G technology.

Host Tanya Gaw, founder of Action4Canada, agrees with Stock, saying the “government is trying to infiltrate all levels of education,” claiming she has evidence that SOGI resources in B.C. schools are “promoting the furries, which is [the] bestiality,” and warning private school and homeschool families that “they’re coming for you next.”

“You are playing Russian roulette with your child, putting them in the education [system], every day they go to school, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Gaw.

“Parental rights” groups like Action4Canada are promoting homeschooling to their audiences, working with groups that have lobbied the government against child protections and the expansion of rights for LGBTQ2S+ people to encourage parents to “protect” their kids by taking them out of the public school system.

A banner on Action4Canda’s homepage reads, “Let girls be girls and boys be boys. HOMESCHOOL!” The banner redirects to a section of their website called “Homeschool Revolution,” featuring a directory of homeschool associations, webinars about homeschooling, and links to the HSLDA and the Canadian Christian Education Movement.

The first sentence on Action4Canada’s “Homeschool Revolution” page warns parents that “public schools, at all levels of education, currently pose a serious threat to our children due to the globalist’s [sic] agenda to use them as Agents of Change.”

Action4Canada has previously encouraged its membership to contact government officials in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick in support of policies requiring parental consent before children under 16 can change their names or pronouns at school, and promoted the use of notices of liability to threaten legal action against teachers who incorporate sexual health and gender identity curriculum into their lessons.

Hazel Woodrow, a writer and researcher with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, says this messaging establishes a worrisome dynamic between parents and the leaders of far-right groups.

“Essentially what they are communicating to parents is: ‘Schools are such dangerous places. And your children aren’t safe there. And everybody else is lying to you about that. And we’re the only ones that will tell you the truth about that,’” explains Woodrow.

“Once people believe that it becomes a lot easier to isolate them from the other supportive structures in their community.”

Educators are not indoctrinating students

Carmen Celestini, a lecturer at the University of Waterloo’s religious studies department whose research focuses on apocalyptic thought and conspiracy theories, says warnings that children are being “sexualized” or “indoctrinated” in public education systems are common amongst Christian Nationalist and far-right groups.

“That’s one of the words that they use all time, that educators are indoctrinating [children] to either be part of the LGBTQ2S+ community or just to be so submissive that they become communist, vote for the Liberal Party or vote for liberal democracies,” explains Celestini.

In a September 2024 interview with right-wing podcaster Jordan Peterson, BC Conservative leader John Rustad said that some of the material used in B.C.’s education system is designed for “indoctrination.”

Homeschooling parents come from a wide variety of backgrounds, but Celestini says that homeschooling has been a pillar of the Christian Nationalist movement for decades “because there’s this idea of overreach of the government, that God isn’t in the classroom.”

In May, Celestini attended an event put on by Liberty Coalition Canada in Ingersoll, Ontario, which was attended by a number of far-right groups, including Action4Canada. Celestini says the event featured a panel discussion on taking children out of the public school system and the political policies needed to make that process easier.

Celestini says there was a lot of discussion about the success of Saskatchewan’s Parents’ Bill of Rights, mandating that children under 16 need to get parental consent before using different names or pronouns at school, which was passed using the Notwithstanding Clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in October 2023. A legal challenge to the bill, launched by the UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity, was also discussed.

“It’ll be interesting to see how [the case against Saskatchewan’s Parental Bill of Rights] comes out, and if that will damper people’s ideas or they’ll just learn how to find a loophole around that, or [use] different language to try to make sure it happens in other provinces,” says Celestini.

Religious beliefs over children’s rights

Prominent representatives for the Home School Legal Defence Association have a long history of arguing in favour of policies widely considered to be homophobic and transphobic.

In 2005, then-executive director and senior counsel for the Canadian HSLDA, Paul Faris, spoke in the legislature against marriage equality.

Faris told the committee that “the status of gay marriage is a major concern for many parents of faith … Parents of faith, consequently, have a legitimate religious objection to their children being taught that the gay lifestyle is acceptable … Our concern in this regard is that if marriage is redefined legally, it may become a factor that parents will be forced to teach their children, much like math or English, or they will have to have that perspective presented in their education materials.”

Stock has worked in politics for decades, unsuccessfully running for office in Ontario multiple times with the Conservative Party of Canada, as well as short-lived right-wing parties like the Reform Party of Canada and the Canadian Alliance Party.

He has testified before the House of Commons, arguing against extending common-law pension benefits to gay couples, calling common-law relationships a “disaster for children.”

The Canadian HSLDA, founded in 1991, operates in much the same way as the U.S.-based Home School Legal Defense Association, which was founded by prominent conservative lawyer Michael Farris in 1983. Both organizations are membership-based not-for-profits that require homeschool parents to pay dues in order to access legal services.

Both organizations promote their ability to lobby governments to make home education “legal” by speaking on behalf of homeschool families with ministers of education, elected officials, bureaucrats and education interest groups.

A report from the Fraser Institute shows steady growth in Canada’s homeschooled population over the past twenty years in every province except B.C. The number of children being homeschooled across Canada more than doubled during the 2020/2021 school year, and despite a significant portion returning to public or private schools in 2021/2022, the number of homeschooled students remained above pre-pandemic levels. In the U.S., a recent ProPublica investigation found that enrollment in public schools has declined by a million students since the beginning of the pandemic.

Eve Ettinger, a writer, educator and advocate for increased protections in homeschooling, says the push for “legalization” of homeschooling is better understood as a push for deregulation that prioritizes the beliefs of parents over the rights of children. “The parental religious belief is held as more valuable, more legitimate, more significant than the child,” they say.

Ettinger grew up in a Quiverfull family and was homeschooled. Their desire to advocate for the rights of homeschooled children comes from seeing children in the community they grew up in suffer from isolation, educational neglect and a lack of resources.

“I’ve seen every which way that homeschooling can look in my upbringing and social circles, and I’m really invested in making sure that some of the really horrifying things that I’ve seen or experienced don’t happen to another generation,” says Ettinger.

Ettinger was interviewed for the documentary series Shiny Happy People, an investigation into the dark side of the Christian fundamentalist Duggar family, who were featured on the TLC reality TV series 19 Kids and Counting.

Ettinger says the American HSLDA has “systematically” gotten homeschooling deregulated across the United States. They say the HSLDA’s work, alongside legal cases like Wisconsin v. Yoder, which permitted Amish parents to take their children out of compulsory education after the eighth grade for religious reasons, has allowed parents to homeschool their children without completing yearly exams or meeting with representatives from the education system.

“You have no obligation to teach them anything,” says Ettinger. “There’s no accountability.”

Stock noted in a May 2024 Action4Canada webinar that changes to homeschooling regulations in Quebec introduced in 2019, mandating that parents who are homeschooling their children meet with representatives from the Ministry of Education and file regular reports, and that their children complete public school exams, have made it a particularly “difficult” province to homeschool in.

Stock says these changes require homeschooling parents to follow provincial curriculum at least in part, something he says those parents do not want to do. He singled out the social studies curriculum as being “problematic” and “offensive” for homeschooling families, and said the HSLDA was fighting the policy change.

Ettinger says these laws aren’t just about controlling access to information that would be useful for queer and trans children, “it’s also controlling access to information that is vital to keeping kids safe and allowing them to like to interact with other adults in the community who are mandatory reporters.”

“Mandatory reporters” are adults who are legally required to report child abuse and neglect to child protective services. In some provinces and states, this refers to professionals who regularly interact with children, like teachers, social workers and pediatricians, while in other places, all adults are required to report abuse.

In the same Action4Canada webinar, Stock refers to Children’s Aid and social workers as a “problem” for homeschool families.

In the U.S., the HSLDA has been instrumental in preventing the government from ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child out of fears that the Convention “could be used by courts and social workers to usurp the rights of parents” and undermine parents’ decisions for their children regarding education or religion.

Ettinger says the Convention also includes provisions protecting children from physical abuse and ensuring their right to feel safe at home. While the Convention doesn’t include any jurisdictional power to actually enforce these provisions, Ettinger says Farris and the HSLDA overstated the potential for the state to punish parents who were found to be hitting their children.

“That fear-mongering was really powerful and really effective, and they were able to activate the homeschool community to lobby against it,” explains Ettinger.

The U.S. is the only member of the United Nations that has not ratified the Convention.

Ettinger says the HSLDA’s fight against the ratification of the Convention laid the foundation for the parental rights lobbying activities of groups like ParentalRights.org and the Parental Rights Foundation, which are housed in the same office building as the American HSLDA.

“They’re learning strategy, they’re sharing information, they’re sharing contacts,” explains Ettinger. “They’re refining their language and their positioning.”

On the May 2024 Action4Canada webinar, Peter Stock told the audience that the HSLDA does most of their advocacy work “behind the scenes” with politicians.

“It’s not something we tend to advertise because that’s not really the way you deal with that sort of thing,” notes Stock in the webinar.

Ettinger says the HSLDA’s lobbying power makes it challenging to fight for better protections in homeschool environments. Ettinger is on the board of directors of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE), a non-profit organization that advocates for homeschooled children. They say that when the CRHE approaches politicians and policy makers, it’s difficult to start conversations.

“So many of those legislators are terrified when we say, ‘Hey, we were homeschooled,’ because they think that it’s the other side showing up,” says Ettinger. “You can see them visibly relax when we say we’re in favour of oversight.”

CRHE maintains the Homeschooling’s Invisible Children database, which documents cases of abuse in homeschooling environments across the United States. The database includes over 400 cases of abuse and neglect and over 200 fatalities of homeschooled children.

Ettinger says that there are many ways to homeschool kids and that not all situations are abusive or harmful. But they say that many parents who have good intentions don’t realize how homeschooling can be used to harm kids when that power is in the wrong hands.

“It’s important to me to help the good parents who are invested in their children’s well-being and the well-being of their community members to be able to recognize abuse in the homeschool environment, and be able to advocate for keeping kids safe and establishing the kinds of protections that would keep kids safe,” Ettinger says.

Ettinger would like to see training for social workers on signs of parental rights extremism and what abuse in homeschooling environments looks like, as well as training on how to push back on messaging common in the parental rights movement.

They want teachers, social workers, librarians and other professionals who interact with children to be aware of the parental rights movement and to have the tools to be able to talk about it.

“Homeschool kids deserve to have an open future and deserve to feel safe and deserve to have an education that equips them to participate in society,” says Ettinger. “If you keep the homeschool kids safe, you’re going to elevate the quality of life for all the other kids in the community.”