BC Human Rights Tribunal orders doctor to pay $28,100 for refusing puberty-blocker shot to minor

PENTICTON — The BC Human Rights Tribunal has ordered Delta family doctor Henry Ajaero to pay $28,100 after he refused, on religious and cultural grounds, to inject a 14-year-old patient with the puberty blocker Lupron..BC Human Rights Tribunal vice-chair Devyn Cousineau issued the decision in Child Q v. Ajaero (No. 2) on September 1. In the decision, Cousineau declared a breach of s. 8 of the Human Rights Code, ordered Ajaero to stop the same conduct, and split the award: $20,000 for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect and $8,100 for the complainant’s "expert-witness bill."The patient, anonymized as Child Q, is described in the first line of the decision as a “brave, sensitive, kind transgender girl.” The decision uses female pronouns throughout. The teen is biologically male and identifies as a girl. A publication ban covers anything that would identify the patient, the mother, or the gender-clinic clinicians..The appointment was March 5, 2021. Dr. Ajaero had been the family doctor for about four years and, at the mother’s request, had already referred the teen to the BC Gender Clinic. An endocrinologist there prescribed Lupron, a gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist given every three to four weeks to suppress endogenous puberty. The teen preferred a doctor’s office to a home injection.Ajaero learned what the syringe was for while the pair sat in his waiting room. His chart that day reads: “I noticed that the injection is for gender re-assignment as patient is already in the waiting room with [her] mother. I called mother into the room and explained to her that I would not be able to give the injection. Based on my religious belief and cultural background.”He told the mother there was no one else in the clinic who could do it. They left. The mother reached a walk-in clinic that same late Friday afternoon and the teen received the shot there.Cousineau held the same-day workaround did not erase liability for the doctor who refused to offer the shot. “The fact that she was able to mitigate the impact by going to another clinic may be relevant to remedy, but it is not relevant to liability,” the decision says..Ajaero, a Christian who trained in Nigeria and later practised in South Africa and rural BC before opening the Delta clinic in 2014, told the tribunal he had never knowingly treated a trans patient or given Lupron for any purpose. He runs a panel of about 2,800 to 2,900 patients and sees about 50 a day. The hearing sat May 4 to 7 by video.“I believe in God created man and woman. And I find it difficult to be involved anything against that,” he testified. He argued two standards: a Religion Standard that barred him from “gender reassignment” care, and an Expertise Standard that put Lupron outside a family doctor’s scope.Cousineau rejected both arguments. She wrote that Lupron “does not, on its own, conflict with Dr. Ajaero’s stated religious belief that ‘God created man and woman’” because, in her view, the drug only pauses puberty. She found no evidence a family doctor was unqualified to push the syringe. She excluded a proposed medical-ethics expert, Prof. Gary Goldsand, as unnecessary.“This context is an explanation for Dr. Ajaero’s decision, but it does not justify his decision to deny medical services to a vulnerable trans youth because of her gender identity,” she wrote. Intent did not matter. “The Code is concerned with impacts and not intent.”She also found the teen was “misgendered and deadnamed” in the waiting room and the consult. “Child Q’s gender identity was not respected. Her dignity was not upheld.”Ajaero asked that his name and clinic stay out of the final reasons. He pointed to threats against doctors who deliver gender-clinic care. Cousineau refused. “I am not prepared to assume that the public response is the same to doctors on both sides of the issue,” she wrote. There was, she said, no evidence that doctors who refuse that care face the same risk..The ruling treats the injection as “important and publicly funded medical services.” It does not mention the Cass Review, an April 2024 independent review of NHS youth gender services in England that found no high-quality evidence puberty blockers improve gender-related or mental-health outcomes and documented risks to bone density. NHS England stopped routine prescriptions in 2024. The UK government made the ban on puberty blockers for gender dysphoria in under-18s indefinite in December 2024 after the Commission on Human Medicines called the existing pathway an “unacceptable safety risk.” Writer Kim Goldberg posted the CBC account Wednesday night and tied the fine to a previous BC Human Rights Tribunal order against former school trustee Barry Neufeld..On February 18, a three-member panel that included Cousineau ordered former School District 33 trustee Barry Neufeld to pay $750,000 to the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association for social-media posts, speeches and blog entries from 2017 to 2022 opposing the government’s SOGI 123 classroom resources. Chilliwack Teachers’ Association v. Neufeld (No. 10), 2026 BCHRT 49, found six publications were hate speech under s. 7(1)(b) and that Neufeld had also discriminated in employment against association members who identify as gay, lesbian or trans. Neufeld called gender transition in children “child abuse.” He has said he cannot pay and has moved for judicial review in BC Supreme Court..The Neufeld order reached the legislature eight days later. On February 26, Independent Kelowna–Lake Country–Coldstream MLA Tara Armstrong introduced the Human Rights Code Repeal Act. “Last week they fined Barry Neufeld three-quarters of a million dollars for refusing to believe that a man could become a woman — for his own personal opinions,” she told the House. .The bill would have abolished the tribunal, repealed the Code, wound up the Human Rights Commissioner’s office, and voided outstanding orders, including Neufeld’s. It died at first reading, 50 to 37. The Conservative caucus voted Yea. New Democrats and Greens voted Nay.Chilliwack North MLA Heather Maahs, now Leader of the Official Opposition in the House, then put a motion on the order paper for a special committee to review s. 7 of the Code — the discriminatory-publications section used against Neufeld — along with complaint timelines, whether the commissioner is necessary, and speech protections for local elected office. New Democrats called it an attempt to weaken the same section Neufeld had breached.Maahs wrote in the Chilliwack Progress that no one was advocating the removal of human rights and that first-reading votes are not votes on substance.The same expert billed in Dr. Ajaero’s $8,100 expense award, UBC nursing professor Elizabeth Saewyc, testified in the Neufeld hearing.Dr. Ajaero’s counsel were Scott Marcinkow and Aynsley Severide. The complainant’s counsel was Adrienne S. Smith. Neither side had issued a public statement by Thursday morning.Smith is the same "non-binary" individual who chaired the federal NDP leadership convention in Winnipeg from March 27 to 29. They opened the floor with a harassment-reporting address and a yellow “equity card” that let any delegate claiming a gender identity other than man jump the speaking queue..Clips of the card fights, and of Smith correcting a delegate who called them “Madame Chair,” ran for days. Smith, who was assigned female at birth and identifies as non-binary, advertises transgender-inclusion workshops and commonly litigates name-and-pronoun complaints..There is no appeal process following a Human Rights Tribunal finding. Ajaero can petition the BC Supreme Court for judicial review under the Administrative Tribunals Act. The clock runs for 60 days from the tribunal's decision date.The College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC — the body normally tasked with disciplining doctors and nurses involved in medical malpractice — has not published a related disciplinary finding against Dr. Ajeaero.

BC Human Rights Tribunal orders doctor to pay $28,100 for refusing puberty-blocker shot to minor

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