Lise Merle, a Regina mom and parents' rights activist, filed a FOIA request in June for school records on herself, her children, SOGI programs, and Rainbow Week of Equality, facing a $30K bill—$197K if using provincial methodology. She claims the Saskatchewan Parents Bill of Rights is violated by these fees and bureaucratic secrecy, while criticizing federal funding of SOGI initiatives under Justin Trudeau’s government. Running for school trustee under "NOD," she accuses current boards of pushing ideological agendas over academic excellence, demanding equal accountability for teachers. Gunn-Reid defends dismissing criticism about Ray Gunn’s doctorate, framing it as a critique of outdated university standards, and invites more feedback on education controversies. [Automatically generated summary]
Imagine being slapped with a $30,000 bill to find out what government bureaucrats were saying about you and your family behind your backs.
That's what happened to my guest today.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
Some of you may already know my guest today, particularly if you're from the beautiful province of Saskatchewan.
She's a former conservative broadcaster there.
So if you already know her, let me reintroduce you to her.
Now, some of you may have recently learned of my friend Lise Merle from the viral video wherein she kicked the local NDP candidate off her lawn when they refused to denounce secrecy between teachers and parents.
Take a look at this.
You believe the teachers should keep secrets from parents?
I may not agree with you.
Do you believe that teachers should keep secrets from parents?
Yes.
You do believe that they should keep secrets from parents.
Get off my lawn.
Thank you, Rand.
That's Lise Merle, Regina mom of six, and my dear friend.
She joins me today because she started an investigation into what teachers and education bureaucrats were saying about her.
And that required filing for access to information.
And she didn't get information.
She got a big fat bill.
Let's hear it from Lise.
Take a listen.
So joining me now is my good friend, dear friend, beloved friend, Lise Merle, mom to many and parents' rights activist.
Lise, thanks for coming on the show.
If people follow me on the internet, they know that we are friends in real life.
And besides all the other things that we have in common, we're staunch advocates for government transparency and parents' rights.
And you've got a wild story of your attempts to hold the government to account and to find out what they were doing with regard to their attacks on parents' rights behind closed doors.
And the story just spirals out of control from there.
But instead of me telling you how or telling the world how great you are, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Because you're a former broadcaster and a full-time mom.
Yes.
Well, hello, my beloved friend, Sheila Gunread.
And hello, Rebel Sam.
It is so good to be here today.
My name is Lise Merle.
I'm a mom of six and a writer and a little bit of a media personality from Saskatchewan.
And as we all know, parental rights have become quite a big topic du jour in Canada these last couple years, especially in the wake of what happened in COVID.
And being a big fan of Sheila Gunread on Rebel News and hearing her talk about filing Freedom of Information Act requests on government institutions, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on the Regina Public School Division.
This was back in June.
And basically, I asked for four things.
I asked for information about myself.
I asked for information about my children.
I asked for information about sexual orientation and gender ideology in schools because as you know, the government of Saskatchewan basically said that we're not going to have SOGI, so the SOGI curriculum in our schools.
And I also asked about pride events and the Rainbow Week of Equality, which is a brand new rainbow week that was introduced and foisted upon the Canadian public via taxpayer funds this last June.
And what I got back was a fee estimate.
Are you sitting down, Sheila?
Are you sitting down?
Yeah.
They sent me back a fee estimate that said in order to get the records that I requested, it would cost me $29,247.
What year?
The Regina Public School Division.
Yes, this is the school division that my kids attend, that my kids attend.
Because as a parent, as the holder of the charter right to education, this is a little known fact in Canada, but parents are the explicit holders of the right to education in Canada and have the ability and have the right to direct all education related initiatives.
The parents hold the right.
The children do not have the right.
The teachers do not hold the right.
Parents hold the right to education in Canada.
And I wanted to know what my school division was up to when all of the parents were struggling to survive.
So what they did was they sent me back an invoice that said, give us $30,000 and we'll let you know what we've been up to.
But it goes further than that, Sheila.
What they said was that if they had followed the methodology of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Saskatchewan, that my fee estimate would have come back at $197,000.
This is for one school division in Canada.
Can you imagine the resources and the waste that they've put on this particular focus of their attention?
Can you imagine?
$200,000 to figure out what your own school division has been doing?
It's outrageous.
It's absolutely outrageous.
Well, and, you know, as someone who files for access to information all the time, this is a load of malarkey.
These are digital documents.
This is, you go into somebody's email, you search by keyword.
They're not, you know, going down to the old printing press, turning a crank, cranking out a stack of paper, then getting in the big file folders.
This is, no, it's a, this would be a keyword search.
Yeah, they're not paying someone to scroll through a micro fiche for hours on end and then jumping in the jalopy, going down to the post office three hours away, sticking a ream of paper in the mail and then shipping it off to you.
These are digital documents that will be sent to you by email if indeed they ever send them to you.
Yes.
Yep.
And not only, well, not only is it just an egregious cost, an egregious cost, and it tells me really everything I need to know about their focus and what their focus has been on this last couple of years, but it's also, it also contra may contravene the Saskatchewan Parents Bill of Rights.
As you know, the government of Saskatchewan has been probably the most proactive government in the country as it pertains to what parents get to determine and what we get to know.
And as part of the Parents Bill of Rights, there's a section that says parents have the ability to get their kids' school files.
So how much of this are my kids' school files?
I would argue all of it.
Every part of what I'm asking for has to do with my kids' experience.
And yet, Regina Public Schools with their tagline, I respect, I'm responsible, I belong, I want to know, say you have to pay us $30,000 in order to get this information.
It's outrageous.
It's an absolute outrage.
Now, I showed the video in the intro to our interview, but I think the video of, well, a couple of videos.
The one of you kicking the NDP candidate off your lawn that went viral when Canada Proud posted it.
You believe the teachers should keep secrets from parents?
I mean, I think you would.
Do you believe the teacher should keep secrets from parents?
Yes.
You do believe that they should keep secrets from parents.
Get off my lawn.
And then your speech at the March for Parents, right?
Million March for Children.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that puts you on the radar of your own school board.
And I think that's why there are so many communications regarding you directly.
Just so you get it all right.
19,000 Canadian children in $5 a day daycares.
Okay.
This is what we get for $5 a day daycare in over 1,000 subsidized daycare facilities, including one in Regina and one in Lovingston are conditioning babies, toddlers, preschool children to adopt gender theory and immerse them in gender immersion.
The tide has now shifted.
I would love to know what these people were saying about you behind your back, using the resources provided to them by your tax dollars.
Yeah.
Not only is it a breach of the social contract, right?
We must have trust.
Parents must be able to trust the teachers and school divisions and the entire education mechanism.
And what they've done is violate that trust.
But it's also really telling in what they think they can get away with.
And to be completely honest, I'm a mom that's done playing nice when it comes to this.
These are my kids.
I hold the rights and I'm going to hold your feet to the fire until you start producing what I'm demanding you produce.
And this goes for all levels of government.
I'm just done being dumbsplained that this really isn't any of my business and it's not really happening.
And just trust the experts.
We all know how far the experts.
As Scott Moe says, as Premier Scott Moe says, parents are the experts of their own kids.
We must be given a voice at this.
Not only a seat at the table, we must be sitting at the head of the table.
And God help.
God help any bureaucrat that tries to get in my way on this issue.
I'm done.
I'm done.
Yeah.
Well, I almost slightly feel bad for them if they weren't doing such a sinister thing.
And let's just talk about the great irony in all of this is that you want to know what they're doing and saying about you and your kids and the policies around them, the things that they're doing in secrecy.
And what do they do?
Throw up a paywall to enforce that shroud of secrecy.
You're doing exactly the thing you want to know that they're doing.
That's exactly right.
And what's really interesting is that in Saskatchewan, our Office of Information and Privacy, the commissioner in charge of information and privacy in Saskatchewan, does not have order-making ability, which means even if, so even if I go to them with this invoice saying this is an egregious, egregious sin, as far as I'm concerned, against parents not being able to find the information or be able to access the information on their own children, on their own experience,
the commissioner cannot order the school board to release the documents to me or reduce the fees.
And this is a big, it's a big hole in our ability to be able to collect information because how else do we hold these bureaucrats to account if A, we can't afford to get the documents, and if B, they're not obligated to provide them anyway.
How are we supposed to do that?
I think if the government knew just how many public servants they had working against them, like actively working against them to get them re-elected, they would be singing a different tune as it pertained to the privacy commissioner.
But this is something that we need to have a hard look at, especially in Saskatchewan and in every jurisdiction where the Information and Privacy Commissioner doesn't have order-making authority.
Yeah, I mean, this is the Education Deep State in Saskatchewan working against parents and the government who are trying to bring in legislation to protect parents.
And at the end of the day, it rewards the bad behavior of the bureaucrats.
Like, look what they're doing.
They can talk crap about you and your family behind your back.
You know that they're doing it now because of the amount of documents that could potentially be returned to you.
But because they did it in such an enormous manner, it amounts to a paywall preventing you from getting the information.
That's that's exactly what happened when I when I got the when I got the fee estimate, that I about fell off my chair.
Like I called my husband, I was like, How okay are we remortgaging the house for me to get information about our school division?
Like that's what it would come to.
Their fee estimate, $197,000 is double the cost of my first house.
That's a true story, Sheila.
That's, I mean, it is completely, it's completely outrageous.
Right now, you can't buy a, excuse me, you can't buy a hovel for $200,000 hardly in Saskatchewan, but it's still just an outrageous sum of money for any individual or even organization to be able to come up with to figure out what's what's gone on.
And they're absolutely using it to their advantage.
This is an organization that's absolutely stuffed full of crazed NDP activists.
They were extraordinary online through COVID, just especially on Twitter.
When Twitter, back in the olden days, where Twitter was being run by the insane left, you know, the lunatics running the asylum, they were extraordinarily active in attacking conservatives, is what is what happened.
And our family, our family has been harassed for over two years by a Regina public school teacher.
Yeah.
For over two years by a Regina public school teacher.
My kids have been made targets of a Regina public school teacher and her online activist friends.
And to find out what they've been doing, give us a check for $30,000.
Federal Overreach in Education00:10:10
It's crazy.
Yeah.
I mean, this is telling the bad teachers and bad bureaucrats that if we talk poorly about these parents, let's just make sure we do a lot of it.
That's right.
That the parents can't can't climb over this paywall to figure out what they're doing to them and about them.
It's literally incentivized incentivizing awful, abhorrent behavior by the public service yeah, and they get paid taxpayer dollars to do it.
We're pegging them to talk shit, excuse me, talk shit about us, and it's, it's crazy.
I mean, these things have to, these things have to get looked at.
Uh, Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan has done a lot of heavy lifting as it pertains to education.
Just recently, they announced that they were banning cell phones in school, and this was an issue that I was on talking to them about even last year because, as far as i'm concerned uh, sexual orientation and gender ideology caught on like wildfire throughout our, throughout our young people's population.
Um in in, in three sort of ways.
We had uh, the social, the social contagion um, that's propagated through social media and online usage.
So this is just cell, this is kids using cell phones.
It was propagated through public schools, through activist teachers that are encouraging this insane thing to mind virus to to keep, to keep going, and it was also.
It was also.
It also sort of happened because, because our kids were forced into such solitude through covet and they are, they are so starved for peer groups and for peer attention.
And what they did was they set up these circumstances where they said well, here's a whole new, here's a whole set of accepting inclusive, diverse peers that you can have.
Um, and the government of Saskatchewan said, right, we're doing away with cell phones in Saskatchewan.
They also uh, brought out the Saskatchewan parents bill of rights, which was an incredible moment and one of many, many that are going to be coming to other provinces.
Um, but we have a lot more.
We have a lot more work to do.
One of the reasons why teachers in Saskatchewan are able to operate the way they are uh, with immunity I mean, short of being a sexual predator, in Saskatchewan, there is no way, real way to fire a bad teacher this is because they're not legislated by the employment act.
In Saskatchewan, teachers have a special act called the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation Act and the Education Act.
That sort of governs their behavior and so long as teachers have special protections under these acts, they can act with immunity, they can act, they can do whatever the hell they want, and that needs to be changed.
Sheila, teachers need to be, need to be, governed by the employment act just like everybody else, and when they step out of line when they violate the social contract.
They must not be teachers anymore.
So, and you know, this is, this is frightening for, I think, people who live in less conservative places in the country right uh, for example, if you live in Bc, if you live in Manitoba, you live in Ontario um, this is this should chill you, this interview right now.
Um, because Saskatchewan is one of the most conservative places, I think, in North America.
Uh, you have a conservative government that is advocating for parents rights.
Um, but this is what the education deep state will do, and it's time the parents had something more to enable us to hold them to account, because they are working against us every step of the way.
That's right and, and one of the one of the things that one of the barriers that parents have is that we have no direct line of communication with with, with anybody with decision-making powers, unless you know, unless you know a guy who knows which I have, which I happily do.
But if you're a regular parent, there are so many barriers between you and being able to direct all aspects of your children's education.
This is so much bigger than just having a quick conversation with a teacher or with your, you know, with your principal at your school, because like I learned talking to the former director of education for my school division, they will lie to you.
There is nothing stopping them from just placating you saying, right, this is, we'll handle it.
You know, just leave it with us.
We'll handle it.
And they lie.
So what parents need is across the country of Canada is a mechanism to speak directly to the decision makers, directly to the decision makers, where if an issue comes up, if a parent has a concern or if a parent holds, waves a red flag saying my rights have been violated, that there is that there is a support system in place to be able to support that parent.
Because as much as the public opinion polls say parents have wide support on this, you know, teachers in schools should not be keeping secrets from parents.
With respect, the key stakeholder in every one of these issues is the parent.
And being a parent with kids in school is such a compressed amount of time.
To be completely honest, what I think and what I say, having six children, four of them right now in elementary school in Saskatchewan, what I say should have much greater weight than some Joe Blow, right, in rural Manitoba who is 75 years old.
What I say should have 100 times more weight than that person.
And that is what does not exist in any jurisdiction in Canada right now.
And it must change.
It must change.
And I think there is a failing, and I hate to say it, on behalf of the regular citizen here, in that we have not been paying attention to this nonsense for a very long time.
We've been asleep at the swing.
Asleep at the wheel.
Yes.
Yeah.
And, you know, we focus on, as conservatives, and I'm guilty of this too, we focus on the big macro issue.
We have that dumb guy in Ottawa who's ruining the country.
And then we look at the provincial government and we're like, God help us if the NDP get back in both of our provinces.
But we have to pay attention at the municipal level.
Most of the COVID restrictions that really harmed us came down at the COVID or at the municipal level.
The municipal government isn't just when your pothole is too big that it blows the hearing out of your ear and your garbage doesn't get picked up.
We are not paying attention to making sure the right people get elected at the school board.
Now, I will, I'll credit my muse, Nillie Kaplan-Murth of the Ottawa Carleton District School Board, for, I think, turning a lot of people on to the craziness that happens at the school board.
And if you're wondering why the teachers and the unions get away with the things that they do, look directly at the school board and then look in the mirror.
Were you involved in the school board election?
Did you vote?
Did you choose a candidate?
What did you do?
Those school board trustees are supposed to be your voice in the system.
She will select the right one.
Would now be an appropriate time to announce my candidacy for the Regina Public School Division.
Yes, I am.
Division 7, Northwest Regina, baby.
I'm NOD.
Like we do not, this North Regina does not abide by like this.
And we need a grown-up in the room to redirect our focus because not only is our school division completely like absolutely completely captured, it's being run by lunatics, like lunatics, Sheila.
These are people that are wholly invested in social justice, in DEI, in the critical race theory.
What we want as parents, okay, what we want as parents is for our kids to be good at math, for kids to be good at science, for kids to be really, really great at languages, to be good communicators and critical thinkers.
This is what we want for our children, not all of this garbage that they've been forcing down our throats.
And we need the ability to tell them what we want.
And that's, yeah, yeah, it means getting involved at every level.
Every municipal board needs to be overtaken in this country because those municipal boards report up to the provincial who report up to federal.
And I'm so happy that you brought up the federal government in this conversation because, as you know, education in Canada is the jurisdiction of the provincial government.
But what we have as it pertains to sexual orientation and gender ideology across the country of Canada in education is a federal overreach by Justin Trudeau.
Justin Trudeau is the worst teacher in the entire country of Canada, and it is his beliefs that were percolated down to the provincial jurisdictions of education.
Every time that there is a sexual orientation and gender ideology issue in Canadian schools, that is a result of electing this fool teacher as our prime minister.
He is to blame.
Right.
And he is funding the activist organizations with federal bucks, and those are the ones influencing the local curriculum.
That's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
As it pertains to the Rainbow Week of Action that was propagated throughout all of the public school boards in June, that was funded by him.
All of these initiatives are being funded by him.
It is insane, the federal overreach into provincial jurisdiction on this matter.
Can't Wait To Celebrate00:04:00
And I can't wait to, I can't, I mean, I will be dancing in the street when that man is voted out of office.
I will be dancing it with you.
Yes.
We'll be in our matching cowboy hats.
That's right.
Yeah, our little sprinter mans just leading a parade.
We're done.
We're done.
But then also we'll have a lot of work to do to undo all of the damage.
And that's very much a part of this is we're going to have a lot of heavy lifting to do to undo the damage of these last nine years.
Well, and as Trump says, you got to drain the swamp.
You cannot think that things are going to change when you leave a bunch of underminers in the bureaucracy.
That's right.
That's right.
No, if we could cleave off, if we could cleave off that Laurentian triangle, I mean, just expropriate it from the rest of the country, we'd be so much further ahead right now.
But it's going to be an interesting year, that's for sure.
It's going to be an interesting year.
So what's next?
I'm going to do what I can to help you unravel what's going on with your access to information filings.
We have some in-house expertise that we will rely on because I'm just as curious about what's in those documents as you are now at this point.
Because if they're doing this to you, they're doing this to a lot of people, probably me included.
Oh, what's the question?
I don't think they should be able to do this stuff in darkness.
And this should scare them, prevent them from doing it to the next batch of parents that come up behind you.
And you're running for school board.
And then we also need to get those access to information laws changed, don't we?
Yeah, we really, really do.
Well, it's imperative.
It's imperative if we want to correct, if we want to correct the public trust, if we want the public to have trust in the institutions, we must be able to know what these institutions do.
Lise, how do people see what you're doing?
Follow you?
What do they have to do?
You can follow me on X.
This is Elon's.
This is Elon's place.
And my handle is my name, Lise Merle, L-I-S-E-M-E-R-L-E.
Or you can just contact Sheila because she knows where I am all the time.
Yeah, no, this is just great, babe.
This is just great.
We're just great together.
I mean, aren't we?
Aren't we?
I feel like I'm going to have you back on again very, very soon, especially since you have a new foray into the political sphere, which you did not tell me about until now.
And I'm sorry, I thought, sorry, I thought I mentioned it before, but I might have told you.
I feel like I should have mentioned it.
You know, I go between like, God, am I bombing her phone too much?
But then no, it just, no, it's just always, it's just like a, it's a stream of consciousness.
And this is what's great about our friendship is is I feel like we operate very much on the same level.
You know what I mean?
At a really fast clip and we keep up with each other.
Sorry that I didn't I didn't mention that.
Actually, it's a pretty, it's a pretty new decision.
It's a pretty new decision, but I'm super excited.
I mean, you know, those tattoos that people have, be the change you want to see in the world or what I go.
Well, that's what, that's basically what I'm doing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can't wait to see.
I can't wait to see you win and then strike fear in the hearts of your fellow trustees.
I can't wait, either.
But to be honest, across the country of Canada, we've all identified school boards as a big, big problem.
And what I'm recommending people do is go to their go to their school board website right now, screen cap all of the current trustees' names and then commit to voting for somebody else.
Vote these bastards out that did this to us.
Vote them out at your earliest convenience, Canada.
It's imperative.
It's absolutely nothing is more critical than voting your current school board members out.
Commit To Voting00:04:29
They did the damage.
they may not be rewarded for it.
Well, friends, we've come to the portion of the show wherein we invite your viewer feedback because unlike the mainstream media, I actually care about what you think about the work that I do here at Rebel News because without you, there really is no Rebel News.
We rely on you because we will never take a penny from not only Justin Trudeau, but any level of government to do the work that we do to hold government to account.
So you send me letters.
Sometimes I read them on air.
You comment on our YouTube or Rumble videos.
Sometimes I read those comments on air, but I will give you my email address right now.
It's Sheila at RebelNews.com.
Put gun show letters in the subject line so I know why you're emailing me because I do get dozens of emails every single day from outside of the company.
And it is hard to keep track of them all.
Now, this week's letter comes from a regular viewer and longtime supporter of Rebel News.
And it was on last week's show where I just took letters from you.
And one of the letters was on some comments that I made about the Australian breakdancer, if you can call her that, named Ray Gunn, no relation.
And Ray Gunn, if I understand correctly, thought that her useless degree in, I think it's cultural movement, would magically transform her into some sort of Olympic athlete.
I think she single-handedly had breakdancing removed from the Olympics going forward.
But imagine the narcissism. of thinking that just because you studied the politics of break dancing in the Olympics, that somehow you would then be a better athlete than actual breakdancers.
Well, that's what happened with good old Ray Gunn.
Now, she has complained now that anybody being critical of her is guilty of devastating misogyny.
No, actually, I think the woman who thought that her useless degree would somehow make her better than the other female breakdancers, that's the misogynist, right?
She's the one that did something to harm female breakdancers, not me.
Anyway, I made some comments about Rachel Gunn, no relation, Ray Gunn, as she dances under.
And so a lady sent me a scathing email about how I, I'm obviously jealous of Rachel because I don't have the same university qualifications as her.
I'm doing just fine.
But anyway, and I think the fact that Ray Gunn has a doctorate in cultural movement is more of an indictment on the university system than anything else.
Because I read her university dissertation and just, wow, lots of progressive mumbo-jumbo and exactly what you would expect if someone wrote a dissertation on the politics of breakdancing and the inclusion of breakdancing into the Olympics.
So longtime Rebel News viewer, supporter of the things that we do here at Rebel News, Dave Hines sent me an email about my remarks to the lady who said that I was just jealous of Rachel Gunn, no relation.
So he says, hi, Sheila, regarding today's university degrees, I think this cartoon sums it up.
You might say that the deer get it or that Alberta's deer are smarter than what is being turned out by today's universities.
And then he sends us this cartoon here.
I normally just sign with my name, but in this case, I'll include my qualification so no one can say that I have not done the work to get a degree and I'm not qualified to criticize our universities.
Deer Smarter Than Degrees00:00:27
And just for the record, they were all earned in the 20th century.
Dave Heinz, BCom, CPA, CMA, CIM.
Thanks, David.
Nice to hear from you.
And even if you didn't have all those fancy letters behind your name, you seem like a pretty smart guy and a decent individual.
So, well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place next week.