Ontario’s new Progressive Conservative leader says he won’t muzzle an MPP highly critical of the Liberal government’s sex ed curriculum and is downplaying a rift in his caucus over it.

While statements by MPP Monte McNaughton have allowed Premier Kathleen Wynne to tag the Conservatives as homophobic, Patrick Brown said Thursday that some Liberals are grumbling, too.

“The federal Liberal candidate in Kathleen Wynne’s own riding has said the implementation of the curriculum was wrong and has criticized the premier,” Brown told reporters Thursday.

Rob Oliphant, the federal Liberal candidate in Don Valley West, told the Star the sex ed curriculum — updated for the first time since 1998 — comes up at almost every door in Thorncliffe Park, which has a large immigrant population.

Oliphant said while he totally supports the curriculum, which he emphasizes is a provincial issue, he believes the concerns of the residents should be considered.

“What I am looking at is a way I can help open up that conversation so that no kids get left out,” Oliphant said, referring to a school in Don Valley West where parents kept several hundred 300 children out of class in protest Tuesday.

Oliphant dismissed Brown’s comments as being “completely wrong — I am completely supportive of the premier.”

Privately, many Conservative MPPs have grumbled at McNaughton’s push to have parents be the “first educators” on sex ed, saying it makes the party appear intolerant and behind the times.

“There’s a divergence of opinion in caucus,” Brown acknowledged. “We’ll have our policy process where everyone will have their say . . . and as a team we’re going to build a platform that we can take to Ontarians in the next election.”

He noted 185,000 parents have signed a petition against the sex ed curriculum.

“It’s not just Monte McNaughton,” said Brown, whose news conference to announce his shadow cabinet and priorities for Monday’s return of the legislature was derailed by questions about his outspoken MPP.

He kept McNaughton, a failed leadership candidate who represents Lambton-Kent-Middlesex, away from the education file as critic for economic development.

Brown will serve as the party’s education critic, a job usually delegated to an underling, and evaded a question on whether he sees anything in the sex ed curriculum as too explicit for any particular age.

“I believe you have to have sex education in the school system. We need to update issues on mental health, on consent, on texting. What I’ve said is, parents need to have a say on when and how much their children learn, whether it’s taught in Grade 3 or Grade 5.”

Brown said his main focus in attacking the government is the economy and jobs, particularly high electricity prices, the “fire sale” of Hydro One and the “job-killing” proposed Ontario Retirement Pension Plan that would force many workers and their employers to contribute unless they’re in a good workplace pension system.

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But he wouldn’t commit to axing Wynne’s pension effort, aimed at the two-third of Ontarians who don’t have company pension plans, if his party wins the 2018 election.

“If the pension plan was killing jobs in Ontario, as we believe it would, then yes,” said Brown, who was elected MPP for Simcoe North in a byelection last week. “But, I have to say, we will measure every idea on its merits.”

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