Roundup: A short history of trans rights bills

Posted on by

The government is unveiling their promised trans rights bill today, and throughout the day, you’ll be reminded that other trans rights bills have been introduced in the House, and twice died in the Senate, and there will be a general sense of the NDP trying to anoint themselves in this glow of having been the fearless pioneers on this file. And it’s true – they did introduce previous trans rights bills, some of them more successful than others. But there is more to the story than is usually presented, and as someone who used to cover this file extensively (back in my Xtra! and the much lamented Outlooks days), it’s a little more complicated than is often presented. And yes, the NDP have largely introduced iterations of this bill but the sponsor, then-MP Bill Siksay, was too far down the Order of Precedence for it to be ever debated. During the 40th Parliament, however, he was high enough on the Order that the bill came up for debate, and narrowly passed the Commons. By the time it reached the Senate, however, it had mere days before the government was defeated. The Senate has no mechanisms by which to accelerate a private members’ bill, and the justice committee – where it would have been sent to – was jammed full of “tough on crime” bills and a private members’ bill never would have been able to come up for debate (as government bills always take priority). Nevertheless, the Senate was blamed for “ragging the puck” and it died when Parliament dissolved and an election was called. By this time, Siksay had announced that he was not going to run again, and Liberal MP Hedy Fry had said that she would re-introduce the bill in his stead if re-elected. She was, and fulfilled his promise. The NDP’s newly elected MP Randall Garrison was named the party’s new LGBT critic, and he was incensed that Fry had re-introduced the bill and decided to table his own version, but because you can’t have two identical bills on the Order Paper, he needed to come up with some creative drafting in order to differentiate the two bills. And then, by sheer fate, his name came up right before Fry’s on the Order of Precedence when the lottery was drawn, so he went ahead with his poorly drafted bill, while Fry’s version of the same bill was not put forward (and she went on to introduce a cyberbullying bill that was defeated). Not only did Garrison’s bill go ahead, but he decided to introduce amendments that would partially gut the bill and do things like put in definitions for “gender identity” into the text (something that would put it out of step with any other protected grounds in legislation). The resulting bill was a dog’s breakfast, and he managed to squeak it past the Commons, but he actually lost some Conservative support because it was such a hot mess. And when it reached the Senate, there were concerns. Conservative Senator Don Plett had some particular concerns and wanted to raise amendments, and while this whole “bathroom bill” nonsense began circulating, his amendments, while not great, were blown out of proportion by supporters of the bill as being far more odious than they were. And that bill eventually died on the Order Paper when Parliament dissolved, but while the NDP railed against the Senate as “killing” a bill that the Commons passed, they ignored the fact that it was objectively a bad bill and this was more of a mercy killing. And now, we have a government who has committed to making this one of their priorities, and they are, which we should applaud.

Update: The differences between Fry’s and Garrison’s bill weren’t as pronounced as I remember the debate being. Apologies to all involved, and thanks to Justin Ling for the correction. The amendments, however, were a dog’s breakfast.

Good reads:

  • The NDP didn’t move their four proposed amendments, forced a snap report stage vote that resulted in a tie, then proclaimed the Liberals were arrogant. Um, okay.
  • Michael Chong formally announced his Conservative leadership campaign focusing on his immigrant story, and answered questions about things like the niqab ban.
  • Surprising nobody, Thomas Mulcair says that the NDP will vote against the electoral reform committee motion (as it’s not stacked in favour of PR, obviously).
  • Kady O’Malley thinks that giving the Green and Bloc MPs votes on the electoral reform committee will fix its problems. I’m not so sure.
  • Nathan Cullen is back to playing coy on the NDP leadership.
  • Nine MPs talk about their grappling with the assisted dying issue.
  • Compare and contrast some Conservative and Liberal policy resolutions, such as firearms-as-Canadian-heritage versus a growing focus on Indigenous relationships.
  • 40 more immigration and refugee staff have been despatched to the Middle East to help clear the Syrian refugee bottleneck.
  • Canada legalising marijuana would contravene three UN narcotic conventions.
  • Colby Cosh hits back at those who complain that with FPTP that we are hardly a democracy, and he does so in top form.

Odds and ends:

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal agreed with a challenge that collecting gender information with social insurance numbers can be discriminatory.

Justin Trudeau made an unannounced visit to the funeral of the mother of Gerald Butts, his principle secretary and long-time friend.

David Saint-Jacques will be the next Canadian astronaut to be assigned to the International Space Station.

2 thoughts on “Roundup: A short history of trans rights bills”

  1. Really? These snarky attempts by Fenton to attach himself to the Chong story are worth reproducing here?

    • I thought they were amusing, and he has a point about not using terrible photos on a photo sharing site.

Comments are closed.