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“It’s hard to contain my joy,” Liberal MLA Laurie Blakeman said emotionally, after the government handed her perhaps the greatest victory any opposition MLA has achieved since the Progressive Conservatives took office in 1971.

Nobody thought the Prentice government would completely reverse itself and accept everything Blakeman wanted for gay-straight alliances in Alberta schools.

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But that’s what the PCs did on Tuesday, because they were wrong all along, and in the end they had the courage and maturity to admit it.

Alberta students will be able to form gay-straight alliances (and call them that) in all public schools and school boards funded by the province, as well as private and charter schools.

These friendship clubs will meet in the schools themselves. There’s no more talk of approving them and then running the kids off the property when they choose to meet.

The alliances will be mandated, period. If gay and straight kids want a GSA, they get one.