Premier-designate Doug Ford is running into fresh flak for his plan to scrap Ontario’s updated sex education curriculum, a key election promise to appease the social conservative wing of his PC party.

“We’re repealing it,” he said Friday when asked if the new lessons, implemented three years ago in the first modernization since 1998, would be axed in time for the start of school in September.

“I’ll sit down with the new cabinet and with the minister of education and discuss that with them,” Ford added. “We keep our promises, what we say we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do.”

Outgoing Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Ontario Public School Boards Association warned the move will leave children more vulnerable in the internet and social media era, because they won’t learn about consent, sexting or online dangers like cyberbullying.

“It is 2018, it is not 1965,” Wynne told reporters at Queen’s Park.

“It is very, very important that children have information that keeps them safe, that allows them to sort out all of the wickedly variable information they get, some of it good, some of it just horrible. All that needs to stay.”

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Cathy Abraham, newly elected president of the public school boards group, said she will urge Ford to recognize the importance of the changes.

She noted that the sex-ed lessons are part of a broader reform of the health and physical education curriculum, which the association fully supports.

“It talks about health issues and safety and it’s about the well-being of our kids … we will work with this government and help them to understand why we believe this health and physical education curriculum is important,” Abraham added.

“The whole issue about consent, we all know that’s a huge conversation right now and the sooner we are able to have that conversation with our children, that they have the right to say no. That’s not a bad conversation to be having.”

The sex-ed portion is a small part of the curriculum, she noted. “When people read it, they realize it’s not quite as advertised by some folks.”

That’s a reference to complaints from social conservatives that children are being taught how to have sex.

Both Abraham and Wynne said they don’t know whether Ford intends to axe the entire new health and physical education curriculum or just the sex-ed portion, and what would be taught in the meantime.

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“I literally don’t know whether he understands what he said this morning and how that will be possible,” Wynne said.

Although conservatives have complained the curriculum was brought in without enough consultation — particularly with parents — Wynne disputed that.

“It is designed to give kids the information they need to keep them safe. It was designed and written by experts in child development, internet safety, police, social workers. Parents had input.”

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