MINDERHOUD: BC has the wildest MAiD program and gender surgery machine — where's the Conservative leadership candidates’ outrage?

Levi Minderhoud is a policy analyst for the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada.Six candidates remain in the leadership race for the BC Conservatives. After spending a century in the political wilderness (the party last formed government back in 1928 under Simon Fraser Tolmie), the party has been resurrected in the last couple of years.But the party isn’t entirely certain about what it stands for in its new life.The core vision endorsed by most of the candidates is relatively certain: protect private property when challenged by indigenous land claims, focus on treatment rather than free narcotics for drug addiction, unleash resource development, be tough on crime, get rid of SOGI in education, and bring back fiscal sustainability.Beyond that core, what it means to be a conservative in British Columbia in 2026 is still up for debate.But British Columbians don’t have to reinvent the wheel. They can look around the country for inspiration about what it means to be a well-rounded conservative. In particular, they can take a couple of pages out of the playbook of neighbouring Alberta. In January, Alberta finalized its policy to protect minors from medical gender transitioning. It bans gender surgeries for those under the age of 18 and only allows puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for 16 and 17 year olds with parental, physician, and psychologist consent. This follows a growing international consensus — from Finland and Sweden to the United Kingdom and the United States — that there is insufficient evidence to justify medical intervention to treat gender dysphoria..The BC Conservative leadership candidates should propose the same policy. To her credit, Caroline Elliott has promised to prohibit these irreversible surgical and medical interventions for minors. But no other candidate has publicly promised to do so.Some might claim that gender surgeries for minors do not happen in British Columbia. That’s simply not true. Although the government and health authorities do not disclose data on this, first-hand reports from operating room nurses testify that minors in British Columbia are having their breasts removed to relieve gender dysphoria. And if relatively conservative Alberta has confirmed that it has performed gender surgeries on minors in recent years, then relatively progressive British Columbia, with the biggest gender surgery program in Western Canada, almost certainly does as well.Others might claim that restricting medical gender transitioning is a risky political move. But according to Nanos, 62% of British Columbians are not comfortable with allowing minors under 18 to take puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for the purpose of changing their gender. A plurality of British Columbians also support a full ban on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender surgeries, according to Leger. Most British Columbians view restrictions on medical transitioning for minors as common sense.Another conservative move that BC Conservatives should emulate is Alberta’s Bill 18, the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act. This legislation introduces many safeguards to prevent abuse of medical assistance in dying (MAiD), including restricting MAiD to those who only have a year left to live, prohibiting MAiD for those suffering solely from a mental illness, and forbidding healthcare professionals from initiating a conversation about MAiD. MAiD has expanded rapidly in Canada, particularly west of the Rockies. British Columbia has the second-highest rate of MAiD in the country, accounting for almost 7% of all deaths in the province. MAiD was originally legalized by the Supreme Court as a last resort for those whose natural death was “reasonably foreseeable” and where “the risks of physician-assisted death ‘can be identified and very substantially minimized through a carefully-designed system’ that imposes strict limits that are scrupulously monitored and enforced.”.But now, MAiD is routinely offered as a first resort to those with decades left to live, with safeguards that are inconsistently enforced. Just last week, the National Post reported that a “BC woman was offered MAiD before other treatments. She said no to death and went on to climb a volcano.” Another Ontario man suffering from vision loss and diabetes was deemed ineligible for MAiD in Ontario, but a doctor in British Columbia was willing to end his life. A recent set of reports found that the Ontario coroner’s office tracked 428 possible cases of noncompliance. Only four were reported to the regulatory college, and none were referred to law enforcement.This is literally an issue of life and death, yet of all the BC Conservative leadership candidates, only Yuri Fulmer has proposed to bring any restraint to British Columbia’s MAiD regime. (And only to restrict MAiD from being offered to those suffering from mental illness.)British Columbia faces many challenges these days. Yes, many are economic problems that demand a fiscally conservative approach. But many issues on the cultural and social front desperately need conservative action too, issues like medical gender transitions and MAiD. Kudos to the candidates who are bold and principled enough to demand change in these policy areas, too. All of the candidates need to take these issues seriously.Levi Minderhoud is a policy analyst for the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada.

MINDERHOUD: BC has the wildest MAiD program and gender surgery machine — where's the Conservative leadership candidates’ outrage?

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