A program teaching youth about healthy relationships and addressing one of the Mass Casualty Commission’s prevention recommendations is currently in some Nova Scotia schools, but not others.

Healthy Relationships for Youth is a 10-session violence prevention program started by the Antigonish Women’s Centre and Sexual Assault Resources for the Strait Regional Centre for Education schools in 2006.

It has since expanded around the province and is currently in 20 high schools. Older students take the lead in teaching the materials to Grade 9 students. 

The MCC recommendations call for a provincewide curriculum that addresses gender-based violence and bystander intervention education to be implemented in schools for grades primary to 12.

The program teaches youth emotional regulation, personal boundaries and consent before digging deeper into recognizing different forms of violence in different relationships. 

“It’s not only just how to recognize and identify it, but also how to support somebody that might be going through it, how to address it yourself if you need to seek supports on your own,” said Taeya Jones, the program’s provincial co-ordinator.

For Jones, getting information to youth on how to have healthy relationships is vital because “we expect people” to know how to navigate these topics without “ever really having the conversations.”

In 2024, it was announced that Healthy Relationships for Youth would receive a combined $2.5 million over five years from the Advisory Council on the Status of Women and federally from the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The women’s centre hopes to use this funding to expand the program to all 80 schools with Grade 9-12 students.

Ava Connors and Kingston States are peer-facilitators at a high school in the Halifax Regional Municipality. A teacher is still in the room to help or answer questions if the students need it. 

Connors said that before the program she’d never really heard these topics in her classes.

“We touched base on them, but not in the depths like we do with HRY,” Connors said.

States said the program didn’t just help with his confidence, the peer-facilitated aspect also helps create connections across grade levels. He said younger students will sometimes go to the older students with questions or for help.

The programs aren’t just about recognizing unhealthy relationships between romantic interests.

“It’s at-home relationships with your family, your friends and romantic relationships, it really touches on all of them,” he said.

Both Connors and States said learning how to facilitate this program has also impacted how they view their own personal relationships, especially with friends and family.

“We teach it three sessions a day sometimes, so it’s just like the repeat of the same information and it really sticks in your brain,” said Connors.

Abby Pino, former youth facilitator of the program, shares a similar belief. 

Her training helped her realize she was in an unhealthy relationship herself, which she was able to share with the Grade 9 students.

“People go through this, like, everybody goes through the same thing, and you’re not alone,” said Pino.

External programs are used in support

The Department of Early Childhood Education said in an email that programs like these are used to supplement “curriculum outcomes” that schools are already doing to address gender-based violence and bystander training in schools. The onus to use them rests with the schools and the regional centres for education.

Sarah Thomas is the program’s provincial expansion co-ordinator. A lot of her work around this involves reaching out to new schools and some that might have used the program in the past.

In the wake of the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia, the program became “highly recommended to have in schools.” 

Some schools may say yes, but if their education centre says no, they cannot run the program.

Some of this may be due to logistics, where youth facilitators must be recruited and trained, and teachers have to be made available for the sessions.

A spokesperson for the Annapolis Valley Regional Centre for Education said in an email that while this program is not offered in their schools, learning about healthy relationships is part “of wellbeing programs for grade 6 to 8 students in place at several AVRCE schools.”

Teachers concerned about lack of training

In light of the MCC recommendations, the provincial government revamped its healthy education P-9 and language arts curriculums.

The curriculum update for Grade 10-12 language arts began some time during the 2025-26 school year. 

Teachers will be expected to incorporate the updated materials into their healthy education classes in the 2026-27 school year.

Peter Day, Nova Scotia Teachers Union president, said everyone agrees gender-based violence and bystander education is extremely important.

However, Day said teachers are concerned about a lack of training.

“We would love to see supports in place where we have specialists, whether it’s our school psychologists or school counsellors or school social workers who have that training, have that experience on how to give that trauma-informed practice, and how to meet the needs of students while they’re learning about gender-based violence and prevention,” he said.

According to Day, high school teachers have only received a “one-hour information session on how to find those resources” relating to language arts.

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