Thanks for the reply. I honestly find this whole topic infuriating and intensely depressing. It just seems beyond belief to me that when I’m in a change room taking off my bathing suit, I have no guarantee there will be no males present. I have no hope that any gym will be challenging this situation. Aside from the costs, they seem far too invested in announcing to the world how proud and happy they are to have eliminated singles sex female spaces. Do you think a private citizen could bring a human rights challenge? Or would the costs be prohibitive?
I have a question that is about human rights in Canada more broadly. I have been looking in to joining a gym in Ottawa and have been informed that human rights law essentially prohibits single sex female change rooms, because they must allow people to use the room that best aligns with their gender identity. So, while I know that gender identity is now protected in law, does this de facto mean that there are no longer sex based rights? Or has the law just been used in such a way that sex based rights have been ignored. What I’m wondering is if there is some way to challenge to loss of wonen’s single sex spaces.
This is an open question and I have not seen any actual human rights tribunal decisions on it. Section 20 of the Ontario Human Rights Code explicitly permits the creation of sex segregated spaces where necessary to preserve "public decency" and sex is a separate group from gender identity. The basic problem is that the costs of defending a human rights complaint, plus the damages if unsuccessful, could bankrupt a gym owner.
**Edit: Leslie here. Substack gets us mixed up even though I sign in with my own e-mail address.
I agree that your approach to sport would have been more practical. However, curtailing gender expression as a human right would be a bold political step, even if it was narrowly defined as not extending, as it seems to now, to requiring leagues and venues to allow men to present and compete as women or face a ruinous and effectively undefendable* human rights complaint.
The only politician I have ever heard call for outright removal of "gender" (as distinct from binary sex) from Human Rights Codes is Maxime Bernier. It is that far outside the Overton Window in Canada. Certainly, what you were proposing is not to remove the protection of gender expression entirely. But any ring-fencing of the right to freedom from all discrimination -- saying "not quite" to the premise that a woman is any person who says he or she is a woman -- strikes at the very heart of trans activism. Saying, "A woman is any person who says he or she is a woman.....except when the state says otherwise" is a hill the activists will die on, to quote Chase Strangio of the ACLU (of all things) in calling for book bans. If a right can be circumscribed at the whim of the state, it is not much of a right. (That's why we don't really have freedom of expression in Canada where they do in the United States.) A lot of reasonable people of good will are sympathetic to the idea that trans people shouldn't have to face discrimination because of how they dress or refer to themselves but they, still of good will, say, "except in bathrooms, locker rooms, violence shelters, sports, and prisons." Yet those are the very protections trans activists shout the loudest for. The way you queer society is to attack traditional protections for women right where they are most vulnerable. What are "reasonable limits" to us normies are anathema to the activists.
In sum, I think Premier Smith just may not have the political capital to do the medically important part -- banning hormones for minors -- *and* tackle the larger issue of "trans rights." She won her first election as a sitting Premier with a reduced majority and fewer seats in the two large cities, and faces a leadership review. The NDP is an ever-present threat. She does have to tread carefully. I give her a B+ for this legislation: good enough for grad school (i.e., her government's second term with her as sitting leader.)
------------------
* Why "undefendable"? Because the Courts won't over-rule Human Rights Tribunals on judicial review unless the Tribunal acted "unreasonably." They can be wrong, so long as they aren't unreasonably wrong. So everyone walks on eggs in fear of a human rights complaint. Even if the Justice Centre takes your case, you have to hope they can win at the Tribunal. (That's my take. I'm not a lawyer.)
I think you are right on two points. Making changes to the Human Rights Act would raise bigger red flags than Premier Smith is prepared to raise at this point. It is also very difficult to challenge a human rights tribunal decision in court. This is a growing problem because it gives a small group of politically appointed human rights adjudicators outsized influence over public policy. It is still possible to make the argument that gender identity and sex (gender in Alberta) are separate categories and it is therefore appropriate to create categories based on sex rather than gender identity in situations such as sports where biological differences are important. This of course runs directly counter to the queer / trans agenda which is to erase any binary distinctions made on the basis of biology.
That’s a great point about making changes to the human rights code to ensure sports bodies are comfortable making eligibility changes. I am surprised that Alberta would directly replace sex with gender as I don’t believe that’s the case for BC which is much more woo about this. I do think though that the threat of a HR case is not the only thing stopping sports bodies from protecting the sex category. The pressure from TRAs can be really fierce. So I personally think some sort of provincial legislation is helpful to ensure that the female category is respected. Thank you for this summary! Very interesting.
Thanks for the reply. I honestly find this whole topic infuriating and intensely depressing. It just seems beyond belief to me that when I’m in a change room taking off my bathing suit, I have no guarantee there will be no males present. I have no hope that any gym will be challenging this situation. Aside from the costs, they seem far too invested in announcing to the world how proud and happy they are to have eliminated singles sex female spaces. Do you think a private citizen could bring a human rights challenge? Or would the costs be prohibitive?
I have a question that is about human rights in Canada more broadly. I have been looking in to joining a gym in Ottawa and have been informed that human rights law essentially prohibits single sex female change rooms, because they must allow people to use the room that best aligns with their gender identity. So, while I know that gender identity is now protected in law, does this de facto mean that there are no longer sex based rights? Or has the law just been used in such a way that sex based rights have been ignored. What I’m wondering is if there is some way to challenge to loss of wonen’s single sex spaces.
This is an open question and I have not seen any actual human rights tribunal decisions on it. Section 20 of the Ontario Human Rights Code explicitly permits the creation of sex segregated spaces where necessary to preserve "public decency" and sex is a separate group from gender identity. The basic problem is that the costs of defending a human rights complaint, plus the damages if unsuccessful, could bankrupt a gym owner.
**Edit: Leslie here. Substack gets us mixed up even though I sign in with my own e-mail address.
I agree that your approach to sport would have been more practical. However, curtailing gender expression as a human right would be a bold political step, even if it was narrowly defined as not extending, as it seems to now, to requiring leagues and venues to allow men to present and compete as women or face a ruinous and effectively undefendable* human rights complaint.
The only politician I have ever heard call for outright removal of "gender" (as distinct from binary sex) from Human Rights Codes is Maxime Bernier. It is that far outside the Overton Window in Canada. Certainly, what you were proposing is not to remove the protection of gender expression entirely. But any ring-fencing of the right to freedom from all discrimination -- saying "not quite" to the premise that a woman is any person who says he or she is a woman -- strikes at the very heart of trans activism. Saying, "A woman is any person who says he or she is a woman.....except when the state says otherwise" is a hill the activists will die on, to quote Chase Strangio of the ACLU (of all things) in calling for book bans. If a right can be circumscribed at the whim of the state, it is not much of a right. (That's why we don't really have freedom of expression in Canada where they do in the United States.) A lot of reasonable people of good will are sympathetic to the idea that trans people shouldn't have to face discrimination because of how they dress or refer to themselves but they, still of good will, say, "except in bathrooms, locker rooms, violence shelters, sports, and prisons." Yet those are the very protections trans activists shout the loudest for. The way you queer society is to attack traditional protections for women right where they are most vulnerable. What are "reasonable limits" to us normies are anathema to the activists.
In sum, I think Premier Smith just may not have the political capital to do the medically important part -- banning hormones for minors -- *and* tackle the larger issue of "trans rights." She won her first election as a sitting Premier with a reduced majority and fewer seats in the two large cities, and faces a leadership review. The NDP is an ever-present threat. She does have to tread carefully. I give her a B+ for this legislation: good enough for grad school (i.e., her government's second term with her as sitting leader.)
------------------
* Why "undefendable"? Because the Courts won't over-rule Human Rights Tribunals on judicial review unless the Tribunal acted "unreasonably." They can be wrong, so long as they aren't unreasonably wrong. So everyone walks on eggs in fear of a human rights complaint. Even if the Justice Centre takes your case, you have to hope they can win at the Tribunal. (That's my take. I'm not a lawyer.)
I think you are right on two points. Making changes to the Human Rights Act would raise bigger red flags than Premier Smith is prepared to raise at this point. It is also very difficult to challenge a human rights tribunal decision in court. This is a growing problem because it gives a small group of politically appointed human rights adjudicators outsized influence over public policy. It is still possible to make the argument that gender identity and sex (gender in Alberta) are separate categories and it is therefore appropriate to create categories based on sex rather than gender identity in situations such as sports where biological differences are important. This of course runs directly counter to the queer / trans agenda which is to erase any binary distinctions made on the basis of biology.
That’s a great point about making changes to the human rights code to ensure sports bodies are comfortable making eligibility changes. I am surprised that Alberta would directly replace sex with gender as I don’t believe that’s the case for BC which is much more woo about this. I do think though that the threat of a HR case is not the only thing stopping sports bodies from protecting the sex category. The pressure from TRAs can be really fierce. So I personally think some sort of provincial legislation is helpful to ensure that the female category is respected. Thank you for this summary! Very interesting.