[News] [Canada] B.C. Liberal, NDP leadership contenders urged to protect transgender rights
Stephanie Stevens
B.C. Liberal, NDP leadership contenders urged to protect transgender rights
By Stephen Hui, January 4, 2011
[Photo: <http://bit.ly/igU63Q> B.C. Liberal leadership candidate
George Abbott says transgender people deserve to have their human
rights respected.]
A transgender community leader is calling on candidates for the
leadership of British Columbia’s two main political parties to
enshrine transgender rights
<http://www.straight.com/article-155751/transgender-rights-still-unenshrined>
in the province’s Human Rights Code
<http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/freeside/00_96210_01>
.
Marie Little, chair of the Trans Alliance Society
<http://www.transalliancesociety.org/> , is urging declared and
prospective B.C. Liberal and NDP leadership contenders to commit to
changing the law in order to prohibit discrimination on basis of
gender identity and gender expression.
Little told the Georgia Straight that transgender people are often
forced out of their jobs and rental housing by transphobic employers
and landlords.
“We need basically to make it illegal to discriminate against us,” the
transgender-rights activist said by phone from her Vancouver home.
Little noted that transgender people even face prejudice in the
health-care system.
“We’ve had members who’ve had to change doctors when they came out of
the closest, because their doctor didn’t want to see them anymore,”
Little said. “That would stop or at least be limited if we got it in
the Human Rights Code.”
The B.C. Human Rights Code makes it illegal to discriminate based on
age, disability, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and other
grounds.
In 2008, the Trans Alliance Society spearheaded a petition
<http://www.straight.com/article-215113/vancouver-transgender-community-celebrate-living-gender-euphoria>
that called on MLAs to amend the Human Rights Code to also prohibit
discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.
Shane Simpson, the NDP MLA for Vancouver-Hastings, introduced the
petition, signed by 740 people, in the legislature in 2009.
(At the federal level, Bill Siksay, the NDP MP for Burnaby-Douglas,
has a private member’s bill before the House of Commons that would add
gender identity and gender expression to the Canadian Human Rights
Act’s list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. Bill C-389 is
expected <http://www.straight.com/article-363914/vancouver/burnaby-ndp-mp-bill-siksays-transgender-rights-bill-c389-headed-third-reading>
to go to third reading in March.)
George Abbott, one of six candidates for the B.C. Liberal leadership,
told the Straight that he believes transgender people deserve “all of
the human rights” enjoyed by other Canadians.
Speaking by phone, the Shuswap MLA noted he’s familiar with some of
the issues faced by transgender people because of the four years he
served as the province’s health minister.
However, Abbott said he wasn’t prepared to make a commitment to add
gender identity and gender expression to the Human Rights Code.
“In terms of the detail, about adding it to the British Columbia Human
Rights Code, I think I’d want to ensure that I understood all the
nuances and all the implications that might flow from such a formal
amendment to the Human Rights Code,” Abbott said. “But, in principle,
I certainly would want to ensure that all people, regardless of their
sexual identity or whether they are transgender or otherwise, enjoy
the respect that other human beings should expect and receive.”
Little also said she’s concerned about the lack of transgender health
services in other parts of B.C.
She noted that transgender people from across the province depend on
the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority’s Transgender Health Program to
help them access the services of physicians, psychologists,
endocrinologists, and other health practitioners.
The program was established after budget cuts by the B.C. Liberal
government led to the closure of Vancouver General Hospital’s Gender
Dysphoria Program in 2002.
According to Little, the Transgender Health Program’s funding hasn’t
kept up with inflation since it was launched in 2003.
“The fact that it’s a provincewide program but is being run through
Vancouver Coastal Health is a problem for people in the rest of the
province,” Little said.
According to the Transgender Health Program’s website
<http://transhealth.vch.ca/> , the term transgender “refers to a
person with a gender identity that is different from their birth sex
or who expresses their gender in ways that contravene societal
expectations of the range of possibilities for men and women. This
umbrella term may include crossdressers, drag kings/queens,
transsexuals, people who are androgynous, Two-Spirit people, and
people who are bi-gendered or multi-gendered, as well as people who do
not identify with any labels.”
Little acknowledged that transgender people constitute a small
minority of the population.
But she said she would like to see transgender rights be one of the
issues discussed in the next provincial election.
“We don’t swing a big voters’ club,” Little said. “But I think, in
Vancouver at least, we have allies and sympathizers. Most of the
unions that I’ve been contact with have been pretty supportive, and
they have members. We do have allies, and we would certainly give
support to people—politicians—who in turn supported us.”
© 2011 Vancouver Free Press