Canada's Far-Left Feminist Liberal Government Pits Transgenders Against Women

Transgender rights bill threatens 'female-born' women's spaces, activists say

By John Paul Tasker, CBC News 

Hilla Kerner from the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter told a Senate committee the transgender rights bill could threaten 'female-born' women's spaces. (Eric Dreger/Canadian Press)

Two feminists are warning the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee that passing the federal transgender rights bill could threaten the existence of exclusively "female-born" women's spaces, like rape crisis centres, a controversial argument that has ignited a debate over who should call themselves a woman.

"We are worried that this well-intentioned legislation will be used to undermine the rights of women and the crucial work of women's groups," Hilla Kerner, a collective member of the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, told the Red Chamber committee studying Bill C-16.

"What we are saying is: If you were born a female, you are doomed. You are doomed in our society to be second-class. You do not have the privilege of growing as a male and have a choice to choose to be a woman. Surely, you cannot say these are the same thing."

Bill C-16 would update the Canadian Humans Rights Act and the Criminal Code to include the terms "gender identity" and "gender expression." The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly in favour of these protections for the trans community, and sent the bill to the Senate last November.

Amazing! There appear to be no Conservatives in Parliament anymore. Only 40 MPs voted against entrenching the terms gender identity and gender expression into the constitution. This means that all parties in the House of Commons are now on the left side of the political spectrum and that genuine Canadian conservatives are without a voice again. This is not a healthy political environment.

Marni Panas of Edmonton testified before a Senate committee in Ottawa Thursday. Panas said she "may have been assigned male at birth ... but I was born a woman." (Submitted by Marni Panas)

The idea that a transgender person "chooses" their identity is highly contentious. 

Groundbreaking research compiled by Greta Bauer, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Western University, found 59 per cent of trans people knew their gender identity did not match their body before the age of 10, and 80 per cent knew this by the age of 14.

What does this have to do with whether or not a transgender chooses their identity?

Marni Panas, a prominent trans activist from Edmonton who also testified at the Senate committee, told CBC News transgender woman are often accused of "pretending."

I've never heard this argument before! I don't doubt that it exists though.

"That's the underlying bias that really perpetuates this debate, that transgender women aren't truly women. That fact is I'm real," she said. "Let me assure you, somebody doesn't come out as a transgender woman for privilege. It comes at a great cost. I've lost my parents. I'm going through a divorce.

"I may have been assigned male at birth, and I was born with a penis, but I was born a woman."

Is that not the most bizarre statement you have ever read? For 60,000,000 years, or 6,000 years, however long you think mankind has been on the earth, men and women have been distinguished by their genitalia. Now, suddenly, in the 21st century, we know better. We know that nearly every human being who ever existed was deceived and deluded when it came to sexuality.

Today, "I feel like a woman, therefore I am a woman" trumps the obvious genitalia. 

I'm not against the idea that transgenders need protection. It seems to me that a person who looks down at the male apparatus hanging between their legs and decides they are a woman is most definitely in need of protection, more so from themselves than anybody else. 

Panas, 45, said transgender people often cannot live their true lives until they've gotten over the fear of how society will react to their transition. "You push that down. You have the internalized transphobia. But at the end of the day I didn't choose this life, it chose me."

What does that mean, 'it chose me'? Isn't that giving transgenderism a life of its own? Does transgenderism have a mind that it can make choices as to whom it chooses? Isn't that giving transgenderism 'god-like' abilities? Seems pretty creepy to me!

'Female-born women'

Kerner's organization blocked a post-operative trans woman, Kimberly Nixon, from volunteering as a front-line rape counsellor because they said she did not have adequate "life experience" to relate to women fleeing violence perpetrated by men, an argument Kerner repeated at committee.

"Female-born women and people who were born male and self-identify as women have different life experiences. I don't know what it means to 'feel like a woman' — I know what it is to be a girl and to be a woman, and the experiences and the feelings I have because I am a woman," Kerner said.

"We know the embarrassment of having our clothes stained with blood from our period, the anxiety of facing an unwanted pregnancy and the fear of being raped, and we know the comfort of grouping with other women."

'Women are still an oppressed class of people in this country

and in this world, and that's solely due to biology.'

- Meghan Murphy

Kerner acknowledged that while the legislation might not have a direct impact on the day-to-day operations of her shelter — it does not fall under federal jurisdiction, and it is already subject to provisions of the B.C. Human Rights Code — she said the bill sends the wrong message.

Kerner said because her organization does not house trans women in its shelter they have been the subject of a "witch hunt" by some activists.

"The BC Federation of Labour just instructed all their affiliated unions to boycott [us] and we're the oldest rape crisis centre in Canada. And that's the danger of the legislation: it is not explicitly expressing the rights of women to organize."

How can this be interpreted as anything other than anti-women? The BC Fed of Labour is not a pro-feminist organization as it once was. It is now a pro-LGBTQ organization at the expense of women's rights.

Devon MacFarlane, the director of Rainbow Health Ontario, an organization that fights for better health-care outcomes for the LGBT community, batted away (at) those assertions Thursday during his testimony.

"I don't think this erodes women's rights. Trans women are women," he said. "Transition shelters and houses have been working with trans women for many, many years, and it's something that, aside from the Nixon case, hasn't come forward in law as a concern."

(After a 12-year legal battle, the B.C. Court of Appeal ultimately, and unanimously, ruled in the Nixon case that Vancouver Rape Relief was entitled to maintain its "women-only" policy.)

It would be nice to know who covered the extraordinary legal costs of a 12 year battle. Whomever it was certainly had no interest in women's rights or their welfare.

CBC and the reporter who wrote this article are obviously pro-LGBTQ whether it crosses women's rights or not. That I had to insert an (at) in the 4th paragraph above makes it pretty obvious. CBC is Canada's public broadcaster and is in complete agreement with Canada's far-left Liberal government.

'Vague' terms

If passed, Bill C-16 would make it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity or expression, and amends the Criminal Code to extend hate speech laws to add protections for trans people.

Critically, the bill also amends the sentencing principles section of the code so that a person's gender identity or expression can be considered an aggravating circumstance by a judge during sentencing.

Some feminists find these developments troubling because Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has been reluctant to define what they call "vague" terms.

Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould has said the government is working to update its

gender identity policies across federal departments. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

"This language is a big problem because it treats gender as a personal choice. It treats gender as though it's the clothes that I wear or my makeup or my behaviour or the way we sit," Meghan Murphy, a writer and the founder of the website Feminist Current, told senators.

Murphy, and some other feminists, have argued that gender is a social construct. A girl may be socialized to wear pink, have an interest in fashion and wear high heels, but those interests are not inherent, she said.

"Women are still an oppressed class of people in this country and in this world, and that's solely due to biology."

Exactly!

Canadians from Iran and Pakistan Rally Against the “Islamophobia” Law

BY ROBERT SPENCER 

video 4:08

The supporters of the Canadian bill condemning “Islamophobia” insist that it will not restrict the freedom of speech, but interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose was more realistic: she said that she was concerned that charges of “Islamophobia” would be used “to intimidate rather than to inform,” and added: “I do worry that some of my work trying to empower women and girls in Muslim communities could be branded as ‘Islamophobic’ if I criticize practices that I believe are oppressive.”

Of course she is absolutely right. That is exactly what happened to Pamela Geller and me when we held a conference about honor killing. The interviewees in the video above come from Iran and Pakistan and are against the bill because they know what it leads to. As one of them said, “I know how it starts.” This is how.

UNICEF Lobbies Canadian Parliament to Allow Euthanasia for Children

Astonishing!

 

OTTAWA — UNICEF Canada is pushing for assisted suicide and euthanasia for children — or “mature minors” — arguing that this conforms with the Charter, Canadian legal precedent and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

That would include euthanasia or assisted suicide for mature minors who suffer from a non-terminal illness or disability, according to UNICEF Canada’s policy director Marvin Bernstein.

UNICEF, or United Nations Children’s Fund (originally, Emergency Fund) is a UN organization that is, according to its website, “on a mission to reach every child and ensure their well-being, no matter where they are in this world.”

“There’s no limit to the lengths UNICEF will go, the risks we’ll take or the depth of our commitment to save children’s lives,” it reads. “We are committed to take action, save, rehabilitate and watch over children, with a special attention to the most vulnerable and excluded groups.”

OK, and where in there is a mandate to lobby for child euthanasia? Or do the terms 'well-being' and 'save children's lives', mean something completely different in the UN?

Bernstein reiterated UNICEF Canada’s pro-euthanasia position during the Senate legal committee’s hearings into the Liberal government’s controversial euthanasia law, Bill C-14.

The legislation amends the Criminal Code in light of the Supreme Court’s February 2015 Carter ruling, which ruled the current ban on assisted suicide and euthanasia violates the Charter, and comes into effect June 6.

Carter ruled “competent adults” had a Charter right to seek assisted suicide or euthanasia, and Bill C-14 limited eligibility to be killed in this way to persons aged 18 and over.

The bill’s eligibility criteria also include that the individual have a grievous and irremediable disease or disability that causes unendurable suffering, is in an advanced state of irreversible decline, and his or her natural death is reasonably foreseeable.

“UNICEF believes that this right should be extended to mature minors who are competent to make end-of-life decisions for themselves,” Bernstein told the committee May 12, “but with additional potential safeguards as a measure of last resort.”

The Supreme Court had given “competent, mature minors” “the rights to make health and survival-related decisions” in its 2009 AC v Manitoba  ruling, which found that it was “arbitrary” to assume anyone under age 16 was not competent to make medical decisions, he said.

UNICEF also supported the recommendation by the joint parliamentary committee that mature minors be eligible for assisted suicide or euthanasia in the second of a two-stage legislative roll-out, “which would come into force no later than three years after the first stage is enforced,” noted Bernstein.

“In fact, this is very close to the recommendation advanced to that committee by UNICEF Canada,” he told the Senate committee.

The three-year period “would allow sufficient time for informed research and broad-based consultation to occur and the appropriate safeguards and due care considerations to be identified.”

But UNICEF Canada further proposed that in the three-year interim, children be allowed to petition a Superior Court to be allowed assistance to kill themselves, or to killed by lethal injection.

That recommendation was “so we don't have an unfair prejudicial situation continuing for three years with no remedy that can be accessed by mature minors,” Bernstein said.

United Nations General Assembly mandated UNICEF “to advocate for the protection of children's rights, to help them meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities to reach their full potential,” Conservative Manitoba Senator Don Plett told Bernstein.

“Do you not see a major problem with the consideration of allowing vulnerable children to request assisted death?” Plett asked.  “Have these children, in your opinion, reached their full potential?”

There “may be children who are experiencing irremediable conditions, intolerable and enduring suffering,” replied Bernstein, “and they should have the right when they reach a point of sufficient maturity to make some determinations for themselves.”

If “a competent adult has the right to access medical assistance in dying, based upon a certain set of circumstances and conditions, that should not be denied, not to all children, but to mature minors,” he added.

UNICEF Canada supports euthanasia and assisted suicide in cases where the children are not suffering from terminal illness, Bernstein told the committee, adding: “I think it should be the same criteria…applied to adults and children.”

As for assisted suicide or euthanasia for children who suffer from mental illness, not permitted under Bill C-14 in its current form, “UNICEF is not suggesting psychological suffering, in and by itself, be the litmus test in terms of terminating life and making those decisions for young people,” he said.

Extending euthanasia and assisted suicide for mature minors was among three contentious recommendations in the joint parliamentary committee’s February 2016 report.

It also recommended the use of advance directives for people diagnosed with degenerative diseases such as dementia, and euthanasia or assisted suicide solely for mental illness.

Bill C-14 rejected all three, but Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould promised that the Liberals would study the issues before the bill’s mandated five-year review.

That wasn’t soon enough for the Liberal-dominated House of Commons justice committee, which added clause 9.1, requiring Parliament start independent reviews of the three issues no later than six months after the bill passes.

MPs are expected to vote on C-14 on May 31, after which it goes to the Senate, which has signalled it will overhaul the bill.

The Senate is dominated by Conservatives. They may not be able to kill the bill, but can certainly alter it significantly.

The Senate committee’s pre-study report of May 17 endorsed the use advance directives, but recommended dropping further consideration of euthanasia solely for mental illness, and for mature minors.

Trudeau Votes Against Conscience Rights as He Pushes Euthanasia Bill

OTTAWA, (LifeSiteNews) – The Liberals and New Democrats combined to defeat a Conservative-supported motion protecting the conscience rights of doctors and other health professionals who refuse to participate in euthanasia and assisted suicide. Hope now centres on the Senate for amendments to the government’s proposed law for protection for medical professions and patients.

On Tuesday the House of Commons divided almost entirely on party lines to defeat a motion from Tory MP Arnold Viersen defending conscience rights by a 214 to 96 vote margin. Every Conservative who voted supported the motion and every Bloc Quebecois and Liberal MP who voted, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, opposed it. Five NDP members supported it as did Green MP and leader Elizabeth May.

The motion was a way to put the government on the record either supporting or opposing conscience rights for doctors and nurses who refuse to perform or abet patients who want to die. The government had avoided the issue with its proposed assisted dying bill, C-14, which said nothing about conscience rights on the grounds that the regulation of health professionals is a provincial matter.

Without calling for any amendment to Bill C-14, Viersen’s motion declared that “It is in the public interest to protect the freedom of conscience of a medical practitioner, nurse practitioner, pharmacist or any other health care professional who objects to take part, directly or indirectly, in the provision of medical assistance in dying.”

MP Viersen explained, “The Liberals continue to emphasize that nothing in Bill C-14 can compel a healthcare provider to provide medical assistance in dying, but any province or employer could still compel healthcare professionals against their conscience rights.”

Bill C-14 is an amendment to the Criminal Code, setting out the conditions that must be met by health professionals putting patients to death or assisting them to commit suicide, without committing a crime. It was necessitated by the Supreme Court’s decision in the Carter case throwing out the blanket Criminal Code provision against either forms of homicide, with enforcement of the decision delayed first till February and now till June.

While C-14 was initially silent on conscience rights, in committee an amendment was added declaring that nothing in the bill could be used to compel health professionals to act against their consciences. The House has yet to vote on this and other amendments.

Larry Worthen, head of the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada, told LifeSiteNews that the amendment “was a move in the right direction,” but not nearly enough to protect doctors and other health professionals from discrimination or discipline.

“We really are hoping that what we want will be added in the Senate,” said Worthen. The Senate’s Justice Committee has just issued its report on the issue and on Bill C-14 indicating it wants stronger protections not only for doctors, but for patients. But the bill must first pass in the Commons before going to the Senate.

The Senate report calls for amendment declaring that “No medical practitioner, nurse practitioner, pharmacist or other healthcare institution care provider, or any such institution, shall be deprived of any benefit, or be subject to any obligation or sanction, under any law of the Parliament of Canada.”

While it recommended making it easier for a person to request assisted dying in advance of an anticipated cognitively disabling condition, it also called for greater safeguards against minors or the mentally ill getting such aid, and measures to prevent those who might benefit financially having a hand in requesting the assistance.

Worthen was joined by Dr. Catherine Ferrier, of Quebec’s Living with Dignity group, in warning that provincial governments, institutions and professional regulators such as colleges of physicians and surgeons could all violate health workers’ freedom of conscience by requiring them to help patients die or refer patients to other doctors who would help them.

“A palliative care centre could make it a condition of employment,” said Worthen. “The Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons made it a requirement last year that doctors must provide ‘effective referrals.’”

Ferrier said the Quebec government already requires doctors to pass on requests for assisted suicide to a committee that will find them a doctor. “The way it worked in the past,” she told LifeSiteNews, “was that a patient who just discovers he has terminal cancer might say, ‘I want to die now.’ And we would respond, ‘It’s against the law for us to do that. Let’s talk about what else we can do to help you.’ Then the palliative care providers deal with the patient’s pain, he talks with his family, he starts dealing with all the important issues of his life, and he realizes he is glad he is still alive.”

But now in Quebec, said Dr. Ferrier, “When we say, ‘We can help you with the pain,’ the patient says, ‘I don’t want any help. I just want to die right now.’” Dr. Ferrier said she knew of several doctors considering leaving Canada or retiring rather than participate in the death of their patients.

CMDSC’s Worthen called on all those supporting conscience rights to use the organization’s website, www.canadiansforconscience.ca, to register their views with members of the Senate.