Last Friday, Justin Trudeau-appointed Justice Allison Kuntz granted the advocacy group Egale Canada a temporary injunction against Alberta’s Bill 26.Bill 26 is legislation that protects vulnerable minors from the harms of transgender ideology and its puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries. Bill 26 will now be put on hold for months if not years, until after a full hearing on the merits of Egale Canada’s constitutional challenge. If a girl identifies as a cat and claims to be a cat, and persists with this claim in all seriousness for years on end, should the girl’s parents respond by feeding their daughter cat food in a bowl on the floor, petting her, and providing a litter box? A small minority of parents would pander to the girl’s delusion, but most parents would (sooner or later) help their daughter to come to terms with the reality that she is a girl, not a cat..A friend of mine, the son of immigrants, has a “medium” skin-colour, neither light nor dark. He once told me that, in his childhood, he very much wanted to have “white” skin like the other Calgary kids that he grew up with at school and in his neighbourhood. He would gladly have taken an injection or pill to lighten his skin colour, even if that medication had had negative side effects. Today, looking back on his childhood, he is grateful that he learned to accept (and eventually appreciate) his real skin colour. Changing his skin colour while he was a child, had it been possible, would not have served his own best interest, even though he badly wanted lighter skin at that time.A man may feel in his heart that he is a Napoleon Bonaparte, but that does not make him one, and that does not obligate his fellow men to tip their hats to him in the street.Common sense tells us that we should help people to recognize the reality of their species, their skin colour, the time period in which they live, and other aspects and dimensions of reality. We understand that strong feelings about being a cat, or disliking our skin colour, or being a historical figure, should not trump reality. We encourage people to embrace reality even when their path to authentic self-acceptance will be difficult and painful in the short-term..And yet, when some adults and children claim to belong to the opposite sex, our culture and society often reject common sense and instead embrace transgender ideology: feelings trump reality, and reality must be altered to align with feelings.According to transgender ideology, if a boy feels like a girl, then he is a girl! Therefore, his body must be altered accordingly, so that reality is changed to match his feelings. Puberty blockers and estrogen together will ensure that the boy does not mature sexually, and that he never becomes a father. While having forever destroyed his potential to become a father, the puberty blockers and estrogen will not provide him with the capacity to become a mother. He will never produce a single ovum. He will never conceive a child. He could undergo penile inversion vaginoplasty surgery to construct an artificial vagina, but his body will treat it as a wound in need of healing. Ironically, the estrogen that he took during his teenage years will have inhibited penile growth, thereby reducing the chance of successful vaginoplasty surgery..In like manner, girls and women who embrace transgender ideology risk permanent infertility. Puberty blockers combined with testosterone, taken during the teenage years, will provide girls with a permanent deep voice and facial hair. Unable to conceive and bear children as mothers, these girls will not acquire male reproductive capacity either.These choices to remove healthy body parts, and to destroy fertility, are sad enough when made by adults. But how much worse when minors, many of them isolated from their own parents and manipulated by ideological doctors, make life-altering decisions that cause permanent infertility.Basing law on reality rather than on ideology, Bill 26 prevents ideological doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones to minors under 16, and prevents minors under 18 from undergoing transgender surgeries.The court’s 39-page ruling offers very little explanation as to why the judge preferred the evidence of Egale Canada over the evidence of Alberta. .The judge adopts ideological language, asserting that gender is somehow “assigned” at birth, as opposed to being an obvious and observable reality.She describes giving estrogen to boys, and giving testosterone to girls, as “gender-affirming” hormone treatment. She declares that “gender identity is an immutable characteristic” in spite of abundant evidence showing that many people experience changes in their feelings and identities over time. She asserts that going through normal puberty (not blocked and not delayed by drugs) constitutes “irreparable harm” for children whose gender identity does not match their physical bodies. She expresses full confidence in doctors who prescribe puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones, trusting these ideologues to “do so with a careful eye to the needs of the patient and the risks of the treatment.” She gives scant attention and very little weight to the irreparable harm done to vulnerable children and teenagers who were (and are) encouraged to embark on the futile quest to become a member of the opposite sex..When Canadians challenged lockdowns in court in 2020 and thereafter, and when governments then admitted in court that lockdowns did violate the Charter freedoms of association, expression, peaceful assembly, religion, conscience, mobility, travel, etc., many Canadian judges were quick to extend extreme deference to the government’s choices on how to deal with COVID-19. One Ontario judge declared herself to be neither equipped nor inclined to resolve scientific controversies concerning COVID-19, and then approved the government’s violations of Charter freedoms. In other words: when the science is disputed or unclear, governments can violate Charter rights and freedoms to address whatever the government deems to be a crisis.But this “lockdowns” legal standard was not applied to Bill 26. In the context of highly unsettled and continuously changing data about the harms and benefits of giving puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones to minors, the judge extended no deference to the Alberta government’s policy choice. In spite of the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy and other countries rejecting (in whole or in part) the policy of giving puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormones to minors, the judge ruled that the Alberta government must, for now, follow and apply transgender ideology.John Carpay, B.A., LL.B. is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca)
