Pride groups and some health-care providers are harshly criticizing the Alberta government’s latest attempt to get feedback on its proposed gender identity policies — a private invite that requires participants to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
“If [Premier Danielle Smith] really wants to hear what we have to say, she can schedule a public hearing where those of us who are part of the medical community can be on record to say what we think about this,” said Dr. Jake Donaldson, a Calgary family physician who provides gender-affirming health care.
“I understand there are people who feel strongly about this and people who may not feel safe being vocal about these issues … but at the end of the day, this needs to be a public conversation.”
In an email obtained by CBC News, the provincial government invited 40 organizations and individuals to participate in virtual focus group sessions about its proposed policies. The new rules would affect student gender identity, youth gender-affirming surgeries and health care, and trans women’s participation in sports.
The email is signed by a senior policy adviser for Alberta Health. It notes that if invitees want to participate, they must sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).
You can basically assume that if Danielle Smith is doing it then it will be in bad faith
Bad everything else, too.
Its infuriating how much time and money they are spending to oppress less than 1% of the population!!!
For a group that keeps screetching about freedom they sure do hate it.
Whenever a conservative group attacks LGBTQ+ people - it’s always a distraction and/or low-risk, low-effort way of gaining support. They can attack less than 1% of the population and rile up support from their hardcore base at the same time. It also takes scrutinsing eyes off any other ongoing scandals or misdeeds the government is doing.
What’s more infuriating is that we have federal protections for gender identity already in place, so these policies could be subject to discrimination lawsuits from trans people, costing even more taxpayer money.
I’m not a lawyer, but I think it’s fairly obvious that there’s some sort of disparate impact on trans people happening here. It’s also a form of sex discrimination, but I’m not sure how far that argument would go in court.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Pride groups and some health-care providers are harshly criticizing the Alberta government’s latest attempt to get feedback on its proposed gender identity policies — a private invite that requires participants to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
In an email obtained by CBC News, the provincial government invited 40 organizations and individuals to participate in virtual focus group sessions about its proposed policies.
The new rules would affect student gender identity, youth gender-affirming surgeries and health care, and trans women’s participation in sports.
“As currently the only organization that has regular weekly programming with youth, 80 per cent of which identify as transgender … we definitely should be included in that,” said Esjay Lafayette, executive director of the Pride Centre of Edmonton.
“There’s no room for an NDA when human rights are at risk,” said Amy Mendenhall, executive director of HOME, a new “two-spirit, Indigenous, queer-led organization” advocating for youth in central Alberta.
There’s any number of reasons there could be NDAs involved," said Tom Vernon, a communications consultant with Crestview Strategy and a former political reporter in Edmonton.
The original article contains 887 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
