It is very likely that the issue of “trans kids” – children suffering from gender dysphoria – will be an issue in the next Canadian federal election. Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has stated his opposition to giving puberty blockers to children, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has responded with his familiar faux outrage. As the consensus on the transgender pharmaceutical and surgical industry begins to shift, Trudeau is immovable – and the only strategy Canada’s progressive establishment has for hanging on to power after a devastating decade of damage to the country is to portray the Conservatives as invading “far-right” American culture warriors.
If Canada had a functioning opposition press, this would be a harder strategy for Trudeau to employ. It is difficult to precisely disentangle the snarl of incentives created by the Liberal media bailout and the CBC’s taxpayer-funded budget; is the CBC working overtime to defend the transgender movement because their financial overlords want them to? Or, more likely, are they doing so because they, too, are staffed by staunch progressives and LGBT activists? Either way, positions that would be moderate and common sense in the U.K. are portrayed as “extreme” or “anti-LGBT” in Canada. Much of the Canadian media relies on a handful of LGBT activist academics for comment on any issue of controversy.
There are, however, a few notable exceptions that are worth noting – press stories that the Conservatives should keep close on hand. The first is an investigation by Radio-Canada, CBC’s French language arm titled “Trans Express” that exposed the transgender intervention pipeline in Canada. Radio-Canada sent a 14-year-old actress outfitted with a hidden camera into a private “gender clinic” to request cross-sex hormones. The girl went in alone – her parents were not with her, and she did not possess a referral from a doctor, psychologist, or therapist. Despite that, she was given a prescription in just 9 minutes.
The girl was asked to first review a form that listed the possible side effects of cross-sex hormones before she could see a doctor; upon meeting the doctor, the actress told him that she had an eating disorder but that she had seen videos online that had persuaded her she was actually born in the “wrong body.” None of this, apparently, triggered alarm bells for the doctor, who did not review the side effects of cross-sex hormones with her or examine any underlying conditions. The doctor did ask her if her parents supported her “transition” and wondered if she’d considered surgery such as a “mastectomy, removing the chest.”
The doctor also asked her if she wanted to preserve her fertility, an implicit acknowledgement of the lifelong damage the girl would suffer if she took the drugs he was so willing to prescribe. Transgender activists claim that these “treatments” are reversible, but most minors who embark on them are, in fact, eliminating their ability to have children naturally.
“I understand that it’s a bit far off for you, at 14… Is fertility something you want to preserve before you start?” the doctor asked. “Er…no. I always knew I didn’t want children,” said the girl. “Okay,” was the doctor’s only response. Less than 10 minutes from the start of the appointment, her prescription was being filled out. “Of course, when you’re 14, we don’t give adult doses right away, because you don’t want your hair to start growing the next morning,” the doctor told her. “I’m going to start you on an intermediate dose… between adult and non-binary.” Radio-Canada’s conclusion: teenagers in Quebec are being rushed into irreversible “transitions.”
Another report was published on April 30 by the National Post, one of the only newspapers that has consistently reported stories that run counter to the Canadian progressive establishment and the LGBT movement on these issues, titled “Who’s Carl? When parents are the last to know about their trans kids [sic].” The report opens with a story that should send a chill up any parents’ spine:
It was around Christmas 2021 when Robin discovered her child, a biological girl, had socially transitioned at school. Nearing the end of the fall term, an Ontario public school teacher gave Robin and her husband a school report notifying them, “Carl was doing really good.”
“My husband and I looked at each other,” Robin recalled and asked, “Who’s Carl?” Robin said they later learned their 14-year-old, “Claire,” told a teacher she felt like a boy and the educator “established that our child would be he/him by a new name at school without us knowing.”
Schools have become the most contentious battleground in the nation’s polarized gender wars. Parents, educators, activists and lawmakers are squaring off over who has the best interests of children in mind when it comes to gender identity and sexuality. Making matters worse is the rapid surge in adolescents presenting with gender dysphoria, especially biological girls. The phenomena, “unlike that in any prior historical period,” was documented in the recent British Cass report on trans kids [sic].
Despite the fact that much of this story is being reported using LGBT activist-approved language only, the facts laid out in the National Post report – which features interviews with 10 parents revealing how the Canadian public school system has been hijacked by the transgender movement – will be very inconvenient for politicians who wish to defend this behavior. As the Post noted:
In half of the families, the transition happened in secret, without their knowledge or consent. All the parents said they faced major obstacles with school board policies that kept them out of the private lives of their minor children. In Ontario, many school boards, including some of the province’s largest, require a minor’s consent before disclosing to parents and guardians when their child begins socially transitioning.
The parents spoke to the National Post on condition of anonymity because they feared that publicly criticizing trans-affirming care [sic] would endanger their relationships with their children and damage their reputations and livelihoods. Their names, and the names of their children, have been changed. A number are health-care workers, from nurses to hospital administrators. Some volunteered their progressive political leanings.
Consider that fact for a moment: parents in Canada do not dare to openly discuss how their children were socially “transitioned” to a different gender in secret for fear of being viciously attacked by the movement that our prime minister, his party, and much of the progressive establishment are a part of. This is despite the fact that all of the parents said that the schools “undermined their children’s well-being, destabilized the family and alienated them from their children. They said it represented a massive overreach by teachers and school administrators into their family lives.” All of the children were girls. Some parents had social services called on them.
The Post report detailed the various school board policies across Ontario, virtually all of which make specific provisions for keeping “transition” a secret from parents; Hamilton’s school board notes that “In cases in which students aged 4–12 years of age have requested a name and pronouns be used that correspond to the gender with which they identify and do not have parent/guardian consent, the principal will discuss a safety plan and next steps with the Superintendent of Student Achievement.” Even four-year-olds can be introduced to the idea of transgenderism, decide to identify other than their sex, and have that hidden from parents. Near Northern District also has no age limit.
When families object to their children being “transitioned,” Canadian school staff are increasingly calling Children’s Aid (CAS) to investigate them for abuse:
Increasingly, educators are turning to CAS to investigate families seen as unaffirming. “Anecdotally, we are hearing from our member agencies that they are increasingly being contacted by community members about issues related to gender identity,” the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies organization told the Post.
“When assessing whether a concern of this nature should be investigated, child welfare agencies use the measurement thresholds in the Eligibility Spectrum related to the assessment of emotional/psychological risk or harm. Further, when assessing a concern raised about the well-being of a child or youth, child welfare agencies must ensure they are adhering to Katelynn’s Principle, which puts children and youth’s voices and identities at the centre of all decision-making,” the group added in a statement.
Christina is a parent of a 12-year-old biological daughter in the York Catholic District School Board who experienced repeated interventions by CAS. Christina objected to using male pronouns for her child because Christina saw the gender dysphoria issue as an underlying mental health crisis. She said her adolescent rapidly began altering gender identity during the pandemic but hadn’t previously expressed any body discomfort. “I was very depressed and hated my body for not being more masculine. I began self-harming and having suicidal thoughts,” the child wrote in a personal essay shared with the Post.
“Because the school was hiding a lot of stuff from my parents, I was just trying my best not to accidentally tell my parents about that stuff,” the child alleged in an interview with the Post. “My principal, she talked to me a few times, and she said that she understands that I’m in a very bad position; that my parents are not doing what they should be, they’re harming me, and that if I ever need to talk to a children’s aid worker, she can always call them for me,” the child alleged. The child eventually desisted from transitioning, but not before the family was nearly torn apart by teachers and principals who allegedly saw Christina’s opposition as child abuse.
The Post’s report includes multiple other stories – of struggling girls who decided to identify as LGBT after being introduced to these concepts and identities in the school curriculum; of parents getting visits from social workers who claimed that they had received reports of “anti-LGBTQ remarks” being made at home; of mental health issues being diagnosed as gender dysphoria. The transgender movement and Canada’s progressive establishment insists that these things are not happening – that only wicked bigots oppose the radical policies imposed by school boards over the past decade. This is not the case, and it needs to be called out, loudly and consistently.
Canada’s progressive establishment has used LGBT issues as wedges for almost two decades. They have finally pushed too far. That is why, following New Brunswick, province after province has passed parental notification legislation; a 2023 poll found that a super-majority of Canadians, 78%, support this move. Alberta has gone a step further, proposing a ban on “sex changes” for minors. Trudeau and his political allies appear determined, thus far, to run against Canadian parents in the next election. Common-sense politicians should welcome this challenge. This national travesty has to end.
