Last September the Toronto Star published an opinion piece headlined “It’s a privilege, not a right, to know your kid’s gender identity”. Its author, Julia Malgobat, is the mother of a “transgender boy” renamed Zack. Julia knows her 11-year-old is no longer a girl because, she reports, “He told us.” But how does Zack know? As Malgobat explained a couple of years earlier, Zack learned about being trans at school, with help from the Rainbow Alliance, an external group allowed into Canadian schools to promote alternative sexualities such as transgenderism. Malgobat says she’s grateful to them “for giving Zack the word to name his feelings and his identity.”
Imagine that a religious cult had mysteriously swayed Canada’s schools to teach children that they are spirit-beings trapped in their physical bodies as some kind of curse. Imagine further that special staff were dedicated to ensuring schools were “safe spaces” for kids to discover their true spirit-selves. Imagine special “student clubs” to guide students in this self-discovery, with help from zealous adult believers from outside the school. Imagine students adopting new cultic names for themselves at school, which everyone else was required to use. And imagine at last schools keeping their kids’ new cultic identities secret from parents because “children don’t need parents’ permission to be who they are,” to paraphrase Justin Trudeau.
I think Canadians would be appalled at this. And many would intuit that there was something legally suspect about it. But swap in “gender identity” and this is what’s happening in Canada. A quasi-religious gender ideology is permeating our public schools, and most Canadian families have no opt-out.
This confusing ideology teaches children they have a disembodied “gender identity” that’s separate from biological sex, yet somehow still defined by reference to the categories of male and female. Gender identity is said to be one’s internal sense of being male or female, both – or neither. It reflects the “true gendered self” and, despite its vagueness and subjectivity, ultimately overrides biological sex. The latter was merely “assigned at birth” and is (supposedly) changeable via synthetic hormones and surgery. Apparently, just “being yourself” now requires major alterations to a healthy body.
For good reason Alex Byrne, Professor of Philosophy at MIT in Boston, Massachusetts, in his masterful Trouble With Gender (2024) says the belief that everyone has a true gendered self is now “the orthodox view.” And the high priests of the new orthodoxy have done their utmost to silence heretics. Among the latter is Byrne’s wife, Carole Hooven, a former Harvard biology professor who dared to say biological sex is binary and paid for this statement of fact with her career. In contrast, the belief that every person has a disembodied-yet-gendered “true self” is not scientific.
How did we get to a place where it is not only acceptable but expected to teach children that a boy can be born in a girl’s body or vice-versa? It’s a long story, well told by The Economist’s Helen Joyce in Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (2022) and by Christian theologian Carl Trueman in Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (2020), among others. The bottom line is that such a claim rests not on science or empirical facts but on certain articles of faith or presuppositions about what it means to be human – a way of thinking that Princeton Professor of Jurisprudence Robert George has called “gnostic liberalism”. Bizarrely, alongside this view sits the idea that gender and even sex are social constructs traditionally used as tools to oppress women or gays and lesbians. But of course, gender cannot be an innate identity marker and a mere social construct at the same time.
How such an ideological mish-mash came to dominate our culture and politics is a complicated and, accordingly, separate story. In the briefest terms, when “gender identity” and “gender expression” were added to human rights and education statutes across Canada in the 2010s, Canadian schools were given legal cover – many came to consider it an obligation – to push gender ideology on children.
Freedom from Religion?
In the late 1980s the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) fought to remove religious instruction from public schools. Although parents were already free to opt their children out, the CCLA argued that religious instruction and exercises like school prayer violated students’ religious freedom. The courts soon agreed in key cases like CCLA v. Ontario (1990, Court of Appeal). Schools, it seemed, should be strictly neutral when it came to issues of personal identity and core beliefs.
Fast-forward to 2023 and the CCLA launched litigation to allow public schools to facilitate a child’s gender transition at school without permission from parents. Specifically, the CCLA challenged New Brunswick’s Progressive Conservative government’s new policy requiring schools to obtain parental permission before using a student’s preferred name and pronouns rather than their legal name for official purposes like class lists, report cards and so on. That requirement had been implemented in 2020 via a change to the province’s policy on sexual orientation and gender identity, Policy 713.
This was highly controversial, generating sustained headlines across Canada. Yet Policy 713 remained “woke” in other ways, keeping students’ participation in gender and sexuality alliances (previously known as gay-straight alliances) secret from parents, granting students access to facilities on the basis of gender self-identification, and using nonsense language like “sex assigned at birth” and “non-binary gender…is neither exclusively male nor female or is in between or beyond both genders.” But under the revised policy, at least one aspect of socially transitioning a child at school would require parental consent. The new approach had overwhelming public support all across Canada; if anything, parents wanted even stronger rights. Other provinces began to follow New Brunswick’s lead.
The CCLA’s case against New Brunswick’s government became moot last December when the Liberals unseated the Progressive Conservatives and immediately undid the changes to Policy 713. But similar court cases are proceeding against Alberta and Saskatchewan, which have adopted more robust policies that respect parents’ authority to raise their own children according to their own beliefs and that provide some protection against woke indoctrination. Alberta, in particular, has been showing signs of resistance to gender orthodoxy’s dominance.
Strong Families and Free Societies
The CCLA’s case was notionally against the New Brunswick government. But in effect it was against New Brunswick’s parents. After all, the impugned policy change limited the power of government schools vis-à-vis parents, making these slightly more accountable to parents. It was thus a pro civil liberties policy.
The CCLA failed to appreciate that in order to remain free, a free country needs strong and free social institutions, families especially. Non-government institutions need not adopt the ideology that prevails in government. An ideologically liberal or “progressive” government shouldn’t force parents or religious communities to adopt progressivism as their operating worldview.
But if you ‘liberate’ children from their parents, they become utterly vulnerable to manipulation, coercion or exploitation by whoever ends up having authority over them. They are, after all, children; someone will end up looking after them, for good or ill.
The CCLA and other progressive liberals, however, see a need to liberate children from their parents’ and religious community’s restrictive norms. They may even see a need to free children from the limits that would seem to be imposed by our biology. In this understanding of liberalism, evil is found where a person’s freedom is constrained without her consent, regardless of who constrains that freedom and how. Salvation means being liberated from such external restraints.
But if you “liberate” children from their parents, they become utterly vulnerable to manipulation, coercion or exploitation by whoever ends up having authority over them. They are, after all, children; someone will end up looking after them, for good or ill. It is far better that society keep this responsibility where it belongs, with parents, respecting the rights of all parents, even those who contradict officially approved or currently in-vogue values or beliefs. This natural relationship, individual freedom, and a free society itself, are all threatened when government employees can secretly instil in other people’s children the state’s favoured ideology.
Parental rights have a solid basis in law. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, like the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, states that the natural family is “the fundamental group unit of society” and is “entitled to protection by society and the State.” It also says that “parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” By “prior”, the statement refers to natural law, providing individual rights outside of, and predating, the state.
Solid basis in law: Parental authority is upheld in a number of international documents, including the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes that parents have “a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.” (Source of photo: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Canadian constitutional law, in line with the Covenant and the Declaration, and our common law heritage both recognize the right of parents to choose the kind of education that will be given to their children, especially on moral and religious matters, i.e., on deep questions related to human nature. As the Ontario Court of Appeal explained in a 2017 ruling, “[T]he right of parents to care for their children and make decisions for their well-being, including decisions about education, is primary, and the state’s authority is secondary to that parental right. This has been recognized in many different cases, statutes, and international instruments.”
It is also true that the law has long imposed limits on parental rights to deal with cases where parents demonstrably fail, on an objective standard, to preserve their child’s basic wellbeing. But the state must not ignore or abrogate parents’ authority to direct their child’s education and make decisions that guide the child’s development towards adulthood based only on a vague suspicion that parents might mistreat their child if they disagree with their child’s beliefs regarding gender.
A child’s decision to adopt a transgender identity (along with a new name and pronouns) and a school’s decision to publicly affirm a child in the same are not religiously, philosophically or morally neutral decisions. Rather, they rely on and affirm deeply contested claims about human nature and identity, claims that discount or deny the significance of the biologically natural body for personal identity.
Why is parental consent important in decisions about a child's gender identity?
Parental consent is crucial because parents are their children’s legal guardians and primary caregivers. They know their children best. Decisions about gender identity, such as social transitioning or medical interventions, can have long-term impacts on a child’s physical and mental health. Ensuring parents are involved helps protect children from potential harm and respects the family’s values and beliefs.
Public Schools vs. Parents
As we have seen, the law has until very recently been quite clear that schools have authority and influence over students only by permission of parents, via a revocable delegation of parental authority. Public school staff only know anything about a child’s self-identity because the parent chose to send their child to a state-run school.
From this it follows that respecting parents’ primary educational authority and right to choose the kind of education their children receive must entail, at the very least, keeping parents informed about important aspects of their child’s development. It also means respecting parents’ authority regarding whether to affirm a child’s belief about so consequential and contestable a matter as a child’s supposed gender identity.
Permitting or requiring schools to affirm a child in a transgender identity without consulting the child’s parents also has a discriminatory impact on families who, for scientific, philosophical, moral, religious or other reasons, cannot affirm the notion that a child can be “born in the wrong body” or change gender. Preserving an inclusive, pluralistic education system means respecting and accommodating the beliefs of such parents, whom the educational system has given the pejorative descriptor “non-affirming”. But should Canadian courts conclude that children possess a statutory or constitutional right to have teachers affirm their subjective self-concept and beliefs regarding gender, and to do so secretly and without parental permission, even if this is contrary to the parents’ beliefs, it could in turn also threaten the freedom to form independent schools or to educate children at home.
Most parents – at least two-thirds and as high as 86 percent in some provinces – are not ‘gender-affirming’. This means that many parents might intervene, redirecting and countermanding their child’s gender meanderings. To Julia Malgobat, human rights commissions, much of academia and the nation’s educational establishment, such parental intervention is horrifying and must be stopped.
And make no mistake: there is immense momentum to erode and, it seems, negate parents’ authority to guide their children’s education and social/sexual development. Julia Malgobat, for example, mother of the trans-identifying 11-year-old mentioned earlier, does not think parents have a right even to know their child’s gender identity. “Not all kids have the luxury of an LGBTQ+ tolerant home,” she warned in the same article, flagging a survey that suggests “fewer than one in three transgender and non-binary youth find their home to be gender-affirming.”
Her proposed solution: “Band together to make sure the most important rights in this discussion – the rights of children to freely express their gender – are upheld and uplifted.” Malgobat said she was involved in Zack’s gender transition only because she had “earned the privilege of Zack’s true self.” In this case, a mystical, spiritual “boy” in a female body. This makes Malgobat a gender-affirming parent, worthy of children’s (and government’s) trust.
Do parents have a legal right to know about their child’s gender identity changes at school?
Yes. Canadian law and international agreements affirm that parents have the primary right to direct their child’s education and development, particularly regarding moral and religious issues. Parental rights are also recognized by the UN as fundamental.
But most parents – at least two-thirds, according to the above-cited nationwide poll, and as high as 86 percent in some provinces – are not. This means that many parents might intervene, redirecting and countermanding their child’s gender meanderings. To Malgobat, human rights commissions, much of academia and the nation’s educational establishment, such parental intervention is horrifying and must be stopped. But what about children’s right to receive the protection of the people who know them best and love them most? What about the right of children to protection against an ideological fad that may lead them down a road to infertility, sexual dysfunction and other serious health problems?
The Dangers of Social Transitioning
The first major phase of a gender transition is known as “social” transitioning and involves adopting a new name and pronouns, publicly identifying as a member of the opposite sex, and related steps. But socially transitioning into a different gender at a young age is a bad idea, blinding caregivers to comorbidities and often leading to worse gender dysphoria – the sense of alienation from and significant discomfort with one’s sex. (The now-orthodox definition of gender dysphoria is subtly but materially different: distress due to a “mismatch” between one’s “gender identity” and one’s “sex assigned at birth.”) Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, the UK and the U.S. are all rethinking and retreating from policies that facilitate medical (pharmacological or surgical) transitioning, with some also cautioning against encouraging social transitioning.
As the UK’s expert, independent and comprehensive Cass Review found last year, “social transition” is “not a neutral act” but an “active intervention” that “may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning.” The Cass Review also found no evidence that transitioning socially improves a child’s mental health. According to the evidence, the oft-repeated claim by transgender advocates (frequently parroted by the news media) that failing to affirm a child’s transgender feelings leads to suicide is simply false.
One thing social transitioning does accomplish is making physical or “medical” transitioning – the use of puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones and various “gender affirming” surgeries – more likely, along with all the accompanying risks and health complications. Activists and school staff who help a child socially transition put that child on a path toward what amounts to medical mutilation. Morally if not legally, this is child abuse.
The Cass Review’s Final Report noted (page 41) “that children who present with gender incongruence at a young age are most likely to desist before puberty, although for a small number the incongruence will persist.” Most kids, in other words, just grow out of it. But a socially transitioned child, the report found (pp. 162-163), is far more likely to retain a transgender identity into adulthood. And once a child is given puberty blockers, that decision usually proves fateful, as nearly all children who start puberty blockers go on to receive cross-sex hormones.
This alone explains parents’ desire to know what is going on with their children at school. By the time a child is convinced he or she is trapped in the wrong body and needs medical treatment, a concerned parent will be in a very difficult position. Hence, an imminent social transition is absolutely something that parents should be informed of, so they can decide what course is best for their child. Keeping parents informed about their children’s development and requiring parental permission for important decisions helps keep schools accountable and children safe.
Saskatchewan Pushes Back
In August 2023 the Government of Saskatchewan introduced a policy known as Use of Preferred First Name and Pronouns by Students, forbidding school personnel from using a student’s preferred name or gender identity without parental permission for students 15 and under. It was very similar to New Brunswick’s policy. In response, the UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity successfully sued for a court injunction to prevent the policy’s implementation.
Calling the injunction “judicial overreach”, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe introduced Bill 137, The Education (Parents’ Bill of Rights) Amendment Act, 2023. Bill 137 codifies parents’ right to act as the primary decision-maker with respect to their child’s education and development, requiring parental consent before a child begins changing gender identity, and asserts various rights to be informed about school policies and lessons and their child’s records and performance. The law also requires giving parents two weeks’ notice before presenting any “sexual health content” (which often includes highly explicit material) in schools, enabling parents to withdraw their child.
Pushing back: Introduced by Premier Scott Moe (top), Saskatchewan’s Bill 137 secures parental rights to be fully informed about their children’s sexual orientation and development. Shown at bottom, opponents of Saskatchewan’s soon-to-be-passed legislation rally in Regina, October 2023. (Source of photos: The Canadian Press/Heywood Yu)
Should parents be concerned about “gender-affirming” practices in schools?
Yes. Schools are socially transitioning children—using new names, pronouns, and encouraging gender identity changes—often without parental consent. This can set kids on a path toward further interventions such as puberty blockers, hormone treatments and irreversible surgeries. This can entail long-term health risks, including infertility.
To safeguard itself against the inevitable legal challenges, Bill 137 invoked the “notwithstanding” clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. UR Pride’s legal challenge was then amended to target Bill 137 as a violation of the Charter. Despite the government having protected its law against judicial invalidation via the notwithstanding clause, the litigation continues.
Alberta Takes the Lead
In December 2024 the Government of Alberta passed a suite of bills that push back against gender ideology’s dominance. Bill 24 amends and strengthens the Alberta Bill of Rights. Bill 26, the Health Statutes Amendment Act, protects children from “gender affirming” pharmaceutical and surgical intervention. Bill 27, the Education Amendment Act, prevents schools from socially transitioning children at school. Finally, Bill 29, the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, protects female-only sports. It is a powerful package of legislation.
Alberta’s Bill 27 requires public school boards to obtain Ministerial approval before hosting external presenters or resources related to gender identity, sexual orientation or human sexuality. It empowers parents to choose whether to opt their child into lessons on those subjects, and ensures they will be adequately informed.
Bill 24 adds to the Alberta Bill of Rights’ preamble an acknowledgment that the “free and democratic society existing in Alberta” is “founded on principles…that honour and respect…the position of the family in a society of free people and free institutions.” This language mirrors the Canadian Bill of Rights (1960). While the preamble is not an enforceable legal provision on its own, it sends an important signal that Alberta’s lawmakers and courts should interpret fundamental freedoms in ways that protect family integrity rather than pitting children against parents. While this route was arguably not as strong as amending the province’s Human Rights Act, Alberta’s Bill of Rights does take formal precedence over any other provincial statute unless a particular statute expressly says otherwise.
On the education front, Bill 27 requires Alberta’s teachers, principals and school staff to obtain parental consent before agreeing to use a student’s preferred pronouns or a new name, if the student is younger than 16. Permission is not required for students aged 16 and up, but parents must still be notified. Beyond that, Bill 27 requires public school boards to obtain Ministerial approval before hosting external presenters or resources related to gender identity, sexual orientation or human sexuality. Relatedly, it empowers parents to choose whether to opt their child into lessons related to those same subjects, and ensures they will be adequately informed by requiring school boards to provide at least 30 days’ written notice of such instruction or content.
Bill 29 requires schools and certain athletics organizations to establish policies for each relevant sport that comply with government policy; the bill itself does not establish any rules regarding female-only sports. Joseph Schow, Alberta’s Minister of Tourism and Sport, says the government intends “to ensure biological female athletes are able to compete in biological-female-only divisions” and “that transgender athletes have meaningful opportunities to participate in the sports they love of their choice.”
Alberta’s recently enacted Bill 26 prohibits puberty blockers for anyone under 15 and “gender affirmation” surgery on all minors; consequently, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith (top) was accused of interfering politically in health care. Shown at middle, students walk out of Leduc Composite High School to protest Bill 26 in Leduc, Alberta, February 2024. Alberta’s government continues to allow Gay-Straight Alliances (bottom) in schools. (Sources of photos: (top) The Canadian Press/Jason Franson; (middle) The Canadian Press/Amber Bracken; (bottom) yksin, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
“Politics is how it began”
On the health-care front, Alberta’s Bill 26 prohibits prescription of puberty blockers and hormones to treat gender dysphoria for children 15 and under. It permits minors aged 16 and 17 already receiving these drugs to continue and other 16 or 17-year-olds to receive such drugs if they have approval from a parent, a physician and a psychologist. There are no restrictions for adults.
Bill 26 also prohibits “gender affirmation” surgery on all minors. This includes removal of internal or external sex organs and surgically constructed simulacra of external opposite-sex organs. Regrettably, Bill 26 uses the misleading phrase “sex assigned at birth.” By contrast, several U.S. states have legislated on this subject using “biological sex”, “genetic sex” or simply “sex”, which can be defined in law as being based on a person’s genetics and reproductive development.
That minor criticism aside, this is an important law – the only one of its kind in Canada today. Edward Les, a Calgary paediatrician who has written several papers on this issue for the Aristotle Foundation on Public Policy and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, calls the bill “entirely reasonable” and “wholly in line with safeguards being introduced in a number of European countries.”
In response, critics have accused Alberta Premier Danielle Smith of interfering politically in health care. But it was the “progressive” left which had pressured governments, universities, medical associations, hospitals and other health-care institutions to exclusively support a “gender-affirming” approach to helping children experiencing gender dysphoria. Theirs was less a medical than a political campaign. As Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage, recently commented, “If it seems odd that the spell of pediatric gender medicine should have been ended by politicians and not physicians, consider that in America, politics is how it began.”
Same in Canada. Ontario’s Affirming Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Act of 2015, for example, applied only to health-care providers and led to world-renowned child psychologist Ken Zucker being fired from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. His sin? Zucker did not automatically affirm young people’s transgender identities, instead favouring a wait-and-see approach that focused on helping children feel comfortable in their bodies. His approach was based on sound medicine, including a long record of cases showing that gender dysphoria usually resolves itself, while gender-affirming medical interventions have serious side effects.
For his patient-focused prudence, Zucker was accused of practising “conversion therapy”, which traditionally referred to helping a homosexual become heterosexual. Nonetheless, Canada subsequently passed a criminal ban on “conversion therapy” that among other things prohibits any effort to change a person’s gender identity to “cisgender”, i.e., normal. Canada thus forbids helping someone become comfortable that he or she is inescapably male or female and that the healthiest option is to avoid unnecessary chemical and surgical alterations to their body.
Politics also captured professional associations. As Joseph Zanga, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Pediatricians, said of his organization’s change to a gender-affirming approach, “This is not the voice of the average pediatrician [but] the position of a few activists that have captured key committees at these medical societies and are using the bureaucracy to ensure the voice of regular pediatricians isn’t heard.”
As Stephen Levine, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio and an expert on gender dysphoria, observes, “Nowhere in medicine has free speech been as limited as it has been in the trans arena.” Levine notes that letters to editors of medical journals, medical papers and presentations dissenting from gender ideology are all being suppressed.
Parental Rights Hypocrisy?
Alberta Premier Smith has been accused of hypocrisy for not allowing parents to choose “gender-affirming care” for their children. The counter-argument is that whatever such “care” may constitute, it is not health care. That is because gender-affirming care does demonstrable harm to young human bodies. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones may cause infertility with sustained use. Hence the Cass Review notes the need for fertility counselling and preservation (for example, by freezing the patient’s gametes) in relation to hormone treatments. Certain surgeries which often follow hormone treatments, such as hysterectomies, cause irreversible infertility as a matter of course.
Alberta’s Education Act still requires schools to permit and support gay-straight alliances. These extra-curricular clubs may be used to expose students to gender ideology and distribute activist and ideological literature. They should not be exempt from oversight; this loophole must be closed.
Unlike with risky but genuine medical interventions – transplanting the heart of someone with severe cardiac disease, say – “gender-affirming” care offers no demonstrable benefits for minors. The same is true for social transitioning, according to a recent study that “failed to find superior well-being in socially transitioned young people.” Accordingly, it can be said that Alberta’s government is not interfering with anyone’s access to health care, it is protecting minors from dangerous experiments.
Alberta is now far and away the Canadian leader in curtailing gender ideology as it relates to children and teen-agers, but there’s more it could do. For example, the ministerial oversight of teaching resources established by Bill 27, which is supposed to keep inappropriate materials out of schools, does not apply to GSAs. And Alberta’s Education Act requires schools to permit and support GSAs. These extra-curricular clubs may be used to expose students to gender ideology and distribute activist and ideological literature. They should not be exempt from oversight; this loophole must be closed.
In addition, the messaging in and surrounding Alberta’s recent bills makes no apparent attempt to rebut gender ideology’s core claims. Smith skilfully presented Bill 26, for example, as preserving children’s ability to make irreversible choices for when they are adults. At the same time, Smith promised to recruit gender-affirming surgeons to Alberta so that nobody will need to leave the province for such procedures. As for the education policy changes, Smith defends them in terms of respect for parental oversight, without speaking against the gender ideology that parents are concerned about. Let’s compare this approach with the U.S.
What are some policies being implemented to protect parental rights in schools?
Provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan have introduced policies requiring schools to obtain parental consent before using a student’s preferred name or pronouns, or before providing lessons on gender ideology. For example, Alberta’s Bill 27 mandates that parents be informed and given the option to opt their child into lessons related to these topics. involved in their children’s education and development.
The White House Ramps up the U.S. Counterattack against Gender Ideology
More than 25 U.S. states have recently passed laws restricting or prohibiting the provision of “gender-affirming care” for minors. The newly inaugurated Donald Trump Administration has ramped up this campaign with a series of Executive Orders. The first, called Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government, explicitly rejects gender ideology’s core claims as incoherent and harmful, and defines women/girls and men/boys by sex, and sex as determined by biology. This sets the foundation for the next four orders.
The second, Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation, aims to end funding for any institution providing puberty blockers, sex hormones or surgery for gender transition to anyone under 19. It calls out the “junk science” relied on by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and orders all federal agencies to rescind or amend policies that rely on that organization’s guidance. It orders the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct a literature review on best practices for caring for children with gender dysphoria. Reports of hospitals cancelling surgeries followed shortly after Trump issued the order.
The third executive order, Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness, directs the U.S. Department of Defense to update its standards to account for the “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria.” It declares that adopting a transgender identity and expecting others to collude in such a fantasy “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”
The fourth, Ending Radical Indoctrination In K-12 Schooling, directs the Secretary of Education and other agencies to create “ending indoctrination” strategies to eliminate federal support for gender ideology in K-12 “curriculum, instruction, programs, or activities” or in “teacher certification, licensing, employment, or training,” and to cease funding for schools that support the social transition of a minor, including through concealment from parents. This executive order directs the same agencies to create plans for protecting parental rights (pursuant to several applicable U.S. laws).
The fifth, Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports, is the shortest and fairly self-explanatory. Much of it is directed at the Secretary of Education, requiring protection of women and girls’ sports categories based on the definitions set out in the “restoring biological truth” order described above. This order also had an immediate dramatic effect, with for example the U.S. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) immediately pledging to operate according to the new guidelines.
Canadian Conservatives Need to Get Serious
The U.S. counter-campaign against gender ideology has developed immense momentum and delivered impressive results to date. Like many other recent developments in the U.S. – many of them headlined if not actually led by Trump – the pushback against transitioning children and teen-agers and restoring the centrality of parents in the education of their children is likely to reverberate in Canada as well, and hopefully beyond what has already taken place in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Still, it will be anything but a slam-dunk. Eric Kaufmann, a Canadian who is Professor of Politics and Director of the Centre for Heterodox Social Science at the University of Buckingham, England, cautions in his 2024 book The Third Awokening: A 12-Point Plan for Rolling Back Progressive Extremism that although it may seem the Western world has passed “peak woke”, the ideology has deep roots in our “meaning-making institutions”.
American conservatives have figured out that continuing to kowtow to gender ideology’s dominance while trying to preserve choices for dissenting parents – to opt kids out of certain lessons or enrol them in private school – is inadequate and unsustainable.
The generations being formed by these institutions, Kaufmann warns, are far more woke than older generations. To avoid an ever-more deeply-entrenched cultural Marxism, he urges elected officials to “implement sweeping and sustained reforms to the country’s meaning-making institutions – especially public schools and universities.” This seems to be something the left understands and conservatives, in Canada at least, are scared even to try.
Ontario, for example, has had a nominally Progressive Conservative government since 2018, but you wouldn’t know it from public school board policies, the content of which might shock parents. Consider a sampling of the Toronto District School Board’s policy:
- “Provincial legislation requires school board leaders to ensure staff are educated in gender diversity, advocacy and anti‐transphobia education, in challenging gender stereotypes, and in using gender neutral and inclusive language.”
- “[S]chool board and school staff are expected to challenge gender stereotypes and integrate trans-positive content into the teaching of all subject areas.”
- “Librarians must acquire trans‐positive fiction and non‐fiction books for school libraries and encourage the circulation of books that teach about gender non‐conforming people.”
- “A school should never disclose a student’s gender non-conformity or transgender status to the student’s parent or guardian without the student’s explicit prior consent.”
- “All students have a right to safe restroom facilities and the right to use a washroom that best corresponds to the student’s gender identity, regardless of the student’s sex assigned at birth.”
- “All students, including transgender and gender non‐conforming students have the right to be addressed by a preferred name and pronouns.”
- “[Students can] participate in gender segregated sports and physical education class activities in accordance with each student’s gender identity.”
To restate: These statements have been issued by a school board that nominally answers to Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford. This should be an embarrassment to conservatives in Canada’s largest province, but it is hardly even talked about. Jordan Peterson was right to be so concerned about the addition of “gender identity” to federal human rights law and criminal law – which had occurred several years earlier in most provinces.
American conservatives have figured out that continuing to kowtow to gender ideology’s dominance while trying to preserve choices for dissenting parents – to opt kids out of certain lessons or enrol them in private school – is inadequate and unsustainable. It is time Canadian conservatives learned and applied that lesson as well. They have Canadian public opinion, international momentum, science, medicine – and the truth – on their side.
John Sikkema is a lawyer in Ottawa and the Director of Law and Policy for the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA).
Source of main image: EJ Nickerson/Shutterstock.
