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A United Conservative Party government would proclaim a seven-year-old piece of education legislation, turfing some legal protections for Alberta LGBTQ students and school staff introduced by the NDP government.

UCP Leader Jason Kenney said Monday if elected to government, his party would replace Alberta’s School Act with the former Progressive Conservative government’s Education Act. It would eliminate changes the NDP introduced with Bill 24, which requires school principals to immediately grant student requests to form a gay-straight alliance and requires private schools to have publicly available policies to protect LGBTQ students.

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“We want safe schools, we want peer support for kids who need it, and I think we can do it while respecting the basic religious freedom of faith-based independent schools,” Kenney said in Calgary Monday.

The move would return the law to how it read in 2015 after the former PC government passed its Bill 10. Those changes compelled all school principals — public and private — to establish a gay-straight alliance or similar extracurricular club when a student requested one, and said students could choose a respectful club name.