C-16 is proving to be a hornet’s nest. If the GBA was done in good faith, why can’t we see it? If in bad faith, it’s time we knew it
Sen. Linda Frum got to the heart of the problem in a June 2017 Toronto Sun op-ed, “The big problem with Canada’s transgender rights bill.” She expressed her “fear that it will not create rights for the transgendered as much as it will take away rights from women and girls.” Importantly, she noted, “Bill C-16 does not provide explicit protections for the transgendered. Instead, it creates protections for “gender identity” and “gender expression”: vague concepts with no precise legal definitions.”
Exactly. And how prescient she was when she wrote, “It is guaranteed that it will be only a short matter of time before C-16 triggers litigation that will place a financial and legal burden on women who will need to prove that biological women (and transitioned transgendered women) have a right to women’s-only safe spaces and the right to sex-segregated activities,” citing abuse shelters, spas, women’s prisons and women’s sports teams. All of her predictions have come true.
