CHILLIWACK — A school trustee in Chilliwack, B.C., has resigned his position, saying he “no longer feels safe in expressing” himself after the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal’s decision to fine former trustee Barry Neufeld $750,000.
Laurie Throness says in a statement that he can’t do his job or speak his mind freely without “worrying about accusations of workplace discrimination,” after the tribunal found Neufeld violated the human rights code by publishing hate speech against LGBTQ+ people.
He says the tribunal’s decision will place a “chill on public discourse.”
He adds that he felt he couldn’t call for the suspension of sexual orientation and gender identity education in his capacity as a trustee after the mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge where eight people were killed.
Throness, who’s also a former member of the B.C. legislature, says school trustees across the province will no longer comment on “sensitive topics” including gender or inclusivity because of the “legal ordeal” that Neufeld went through.
Chilliwack board of education chair David Swankey says Throness was a valuable voice that advocated for academic excellence and the seat left vacant will be open until the next municipal election in October.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 27, 2026.
FIRST READING: B.C. school trustee quits to call out gender ideology in schools
Laurie Throness, a former BC MLA, cites Tumbler Ridge massacre as a wake up call
A B.C. school trustee has resigned for the specific purpose of calling out the influence of gender ideology in schools following the Tumbler Ridge school shooting, which was committed by a trans-identifying 18-year-old.
“We need to suspend SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) province-wide until a examination is done on its impact, if any, on the perpetrator of the tragedy in Tumbler Ridge,” wrote Laurie Throness, in a Monday statement posted to Facebook following his late February resignation from the Chilliwack School Board.
On Feb. 10, Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, murdered six people at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School, including five children. Initially identified by police as a “gunperson,” Van Rootselaar was a biological male who had begun identifying as female a few years earlier.
Throness, who previously served as a BC Liberal MLA, is calling for a “full public inquiry” on the impact of SOGI in B.C. schools.
First introduced in 2016, SOGI differs from prior approaches to sex or LGBT curricula in its emphasis on the idea of gender as a self-identified trait disconnected from biology.
Among the more noticeable impacts of SOGI is an increase in “rainbow displays” on school property, a policy of “affirming” the self-stated gender identity of students, and enforcing observation of said identity among the student body.
It’s also involved an official push towards “gender neutral washrooms and change rooms,” and the demarcation of girls’ and boys’ sports based entirely on self-identified gender.
“The Board is committed to reducing, and where possible eliminating, the practice of segregating students based on sex and/or gender in order to ensure the full inclusion of transgender and/or gender non-conforming students,” according to the Sooke School District. It’s a typical passage in the SOGI-aligned policies of many B.C. school boards.
As to why Throness felt the need to resign before coming out against SOGI, he cited the example of Barry Neufeld, another former member of the Chilliwack School Board.
Just last month, Neufeld was fined $750,000 by the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal for his public opposition to SOGI, including the policy of unquestionably affirming the stated gender identity of students.
The decision would notably cite Neufeld’s long-time refusal to accept that gender was distinct from biology. “A person does not need to believe in Christianity to accept that another person is Christian. However, to accept that a person is transgender, one must accept that their gender identity is different than their sex assigned at birth,” the tribunal decision read.
As Neufeld was a trustee at the time, the tribunal premised their ruling on the claim that his comments had created a discriminatory work environment for transgender teachers in his district. The $750,000 was ordered to be paid to an unnamed consortium of those teachers.
“A school board trustee is technically an employer, and any one of 2,500+ District employees could claim discrimination in the workplace if I made a remark about gender,” wrote Throness on Monday, adding that he could face a “huge penalty” for speaking freely while serving on the board.
“As the disastrous recent Human Rights Tribunal ruling made clear, the bar to prove workplace discrimination is low,” he wrote.
The Tumbler Ridge shooting was one of several recent high-profile massacres committed by assailants identifying as transgender, something that Throness referenced as a “pattern of similar events in the States.”
Last August, a 23-year-old biological man identifying as female opened fire on a Minneapolis Catholic school, killing an eight-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. In 2023, a religious school in Nashville, Tenn., was attacked by Aiden Hale, a female alumnus of the school who had since begun identifying as male. Hale murdered three children, and three adult employees.
Just six days after the Tumbler Ridge massacre, Robert Dorgan, a 56-year-old biological man identifying as female, shot and killed his ex-wife and one of his sons at a Rhode Island hockey game.
The three incidents represent a small portion of the overall number of U.S. mass-shootings recorded each year. But there is research drawing a link between gender dysphoria and other mental health comorbidities, including those that can lead to violent behaviour.
A 2023 Danish study, for instance, found “significantly higher” rates of suicide, suicide attempts and “suicide-unrelated mortality” among transgender individuals. A research review published in 2021 in the Journal of Psychiatry Treatment and Research found that among trans adolescents, as many as 45 per cent “have some type of psychiatric comorbidity.”
And mental health comorbidities were certainly a factor in Tumbler Ridge. The shooter had previously been taken into custody under the terms of the Mental Health Act.
Shared from https://nationalpost.com/opinion/b-c-school-trustee-quits-to-call-out-gender-ideology-in-schools
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