Slide shared by New Brunswick Premier: ‘Blatant misrepresentation’ of sexual health presentation

ST. JOHN’S, NL — The sex education slide that enraged New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs is the first of more than 100 slides in a presentation on healthy relationships and sexual health that will be shown to high school students across the country, reporters learned Friday.

Teresa Norris, president of Montreal-based HPV Global Action, led the media through the presentation to provide context for the single opening slide, which Higgs shared on social media last week and called “clearly inappropriate.”

The screenshot of the slide contains questions such as “Do girls masturbate?” and “Is anal sex good or bad?”

Norris explained that the questions are meant to get attention, but also to show teens that such questions are normal and that presenting them will give them the information they need to find answers. She said teens are asking these questions whether parents and educators know it or not.

“And HPV Global is committed to providing people who are looking for an answer with an appropriate, age-appropriate, fact-based answer and not … misinformation like they find online,” Norris said in an interview.

Higgs shared a screenshot of the slide on X (formerly Twitter) last week and wrote that HPV Global would no longer be allowed to be presented in schools in the province “effective immediately.”

He also claimed that the material was not part of the province’s curriculum. However, a government website states that puberty, gender identity, sexual orientation and healthy romantic and sexual relationships are discussed in a high school course on individual and family well-being. Higgs later admitted that he had not seen the presentation in its entirety.

On Friday, Norris explained that the slide sets the stage for her presentation, titled “Healthy Relationships 101,” and is not an overview of what will be discussed. The next few slides tell her own story of losing her best friend to cervical cancer, a story she uses to build a connection with her audience and reinforce that some of what they are about to learn about sexual health could save a life.

The presentation then discusses healthy and unhealthy friendships and relationship behaviors, sexuality and puberty, consent, abstinence, and sexually transmitted diseases. It explains that it’s OK for teens to feel uncomfortable about sex or to ask questions about it and their own sexual identity. It discusses what it means to be sexually active, which sexually transmitted diseases can and cannot be cured, and how you get them and how to prevent them.

Anal sex is only discussed in this context because it is a form of sex and, like any other, it carries risks, Norris said.

All of these problems are related to HPV, a sexually transmitted disease that can cause a number of cancers, including cervical cancer. She recommends that students get vaccinated against the virus and be aware that symptoms can appear years after the initial infection.

Norris also encourages students to remind their mothers to get tested regularly for HPV. In more than two decades of giving various versions of this presentation in schools across the country, 12 teens have come back to her and told her that their mothers got tested at her urging and were found to have a health problem, she said.

Steve Outhouse, a spokesman for Higgs, said Norris offered to give government officials an abbreviated version of her presentation, but they declined. He asked for her slides instead, which she declined. But he said he would accept Norris’ offer to give the full presentation.