Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said she looked to the United Kingdom restricting gender transitions in minors when deciding on her policies. “They had troubles at their major gender identity clinic, so they’ve paused their approach,” said Smith in a Saturday interview on Your Province. Your Premier. on Corus Radio. “They’re shutting the clinic down.” Corus Radio host Wayne Nelson started off by saying people are out protesting Alberta’s gender identity policies. “You have been taking a lot of flack over this one,” said Nelson. “Critics — many of them students — say they weren’t consulted.” Other transgender experts say they were not consulted. Nelson asked Smith who was consulted and what is her take on this backlash. Aside from the UK, she said she looked at the approaches from Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands. She added she has held plenty of consultations with people. Some of these consultations were with sexual minorities who were concerned children with same-sex attractions were being forced into gender transitions. There has been division in the medical community about the best way to approach this. To address these issues, she said the Alberta government “needed to set a few guardrails up and that’s why we put forward the package of policies we did.” What she said is most important is the maturity of young people to make these decisions. When people go on puberty blockers, they block the maturation of reproductive organs. People will be unable to have children. When it comes to medical treatments, court jurisprudence says 16- and 17-year-olds can be mature enough to make them.However, they will have to wait until they are 18 years old to have transgender surgeries. She said her job as a politician is to protect children from irreversible decisions. While children can be declared mature minors, she said it is rare. She acknowledged the Alberta government “felt it was better to provide some policy certainity so that kids that are going through this know that they can start the cross-sex hormones and the transition process at 16, have their surgery as soon as 18 and then for younger kids, that’s going to be a longer process.”Smith concluded by saying she did not want to interfere with how this would play out in the courts and whether or not there might be circumstances they determine children are mature enough to decide they cannot reproduce. “That will be something the court will have to decide with the requisite evidence,” she said. Smith said on January 31 changing genders is a decision that should be reserved for adults. READ MORE: WATCH: Smith says Alberta government to restrict gender transitions in minors“Making permanent and irreversible decisions regarding one’s biological sex while still a youth can severely limit that child’s choices in the future,” she said. “Prematurely encouraging or enabling children to alter their very biology or natural growth no matter how well-intentioned or sincere poses as a risk to that child’s future that I, as premier, am not comfortable with permitting in our province.”
