Juno News - The renewed effort to get Bill C-16 modified or repealed

00:00:00.000 There has been a recent grassroots revival of women taking on Bill C-16. To refresh your

00:00:10.260 memory, Bill C-16 was introduced in the House of Commons in May 2016 and enacted into law the

00:00:17.060 following year, in June 2017. Bill C-16 added the terms gender identity and gender expression

00:00:23.540 to the Canadian Human Rights Act and to our criminal code. A lot of the initial discourse

00:00:28.980 around Bill C-16 was centered around pronouns and compelled speech, not necessarily the tensions

00:00:35.040 or potential conflicts between the rights of trans people and the rights of women. Many high-profile

00:00:40.220 speakers, such as Jordan Peterson, Gad Saad, Megan Murphy, and others, spoke out against the bill at

00:00:45.940 Senate hearings. However, a lot of women are still concerned about how Bill C-16 might impact female 1.00

00:00:53.040 designated spaces, so particularly how biological males who self-identify as women become entitled

00:01:00.540 to enter female spaces, such as female changing rooms, washrooms, prisons, and shelters. Take 1.00

00:01:06.920 the example of Madeline, formerly Matthew, Harkes. Harkes is a serial sexual offender who began

00:01:14.020 identifying as a woman in 2014. It is unknown whether Harkes has undergone any kind of gender-affirming

00:01:20.520 surgery or process. And according to a 2006 psychiatric assessment, Harkes has an all-encompassing

00:01:28.880 preoccupation in sexually abusing young girls. Harkes was moved to women's prison after claiming to be 1.00

00:01:36.600 trans. And while he was locked up with female inmates, he was convicted of sexually assaulting

00:01:42.740 at least two women. Another example. Gyms such as Good Life Fitness allow members to use the changing 0.97

00:01:49.640 room of the gender that they identify with. But if a woman were to approach management to complain about 0.89

00:01:56.500 a male-bodied person being in the women's changing room, she would be violating the no-judgment philosophy 0.99

00:02:02.560 of Good Life Fitness, and she could have her gym membership revoked for bringing up her concerns.

00:02:08.480 The women's rights organization Canadian Women's Sex-Based Rights, or COSBAR, is one group that is

00:02:14.780 trying to get Bill C-16 repealed or at least seriously examined, according to COSBAR's creative

00:02:21.740 communications director Esmeralda V. Doing similar work is an Ontarian woman named Tracy, who has been

00:02:28.880 contacting members of parliament all over the country and asking them to modify or repeal Bill

00:02:34.640 C-16. Barely any political officials have responded to her. But one MP, conservative Ted Falk, wrote this

00:02:42.460 to her in an email. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights was tasked with studying this bill

00:02:48.300 to consider ways to improve it. Instead, the committee decided not to study the legislation at all

00:02:53.880 after hearing only from the Minister of Justice and her staff. While the normal procedure would be to

00:03:00.160 hear from a variety of witnesses so parliamentarians can consider if a bill should be improved upon,

00:03:05.940 no such interaction was allowed. And indeed, if you look at the public online records, they show that

00:03:14.380 the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights only hosted five witnesses during their study of Bill

00:03:19.580 C-16. One witness was then Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, who was the MP that first

00:03:26.420 introduced Bill C-16. And the four other witnesses were Department of Justice staff. So no outside

00:03:33.360 organizations or experts came to testify in front of the committee on the impacts and consequences of

00:03:39.220 Bill C-16, which is really quite unusual for a major bill like this one. And the weirdness around this bill

00:03:45.400 isn't limited to the lack of expert testimony. One activist named Jennifer Ann noticed a gender-based 0.99

00:03:52.660 analysis, so a GBA, also now known as a GBA plus, had not been performed on Bill C-16. But back in 1995, the

00:04:01.960 government of Canada had committed to performing a GBA on all future legislation and policies in order to

00:04:08.920 eliminate gender inequality. However, a GBA on Bill C-16 was nowhere to be found. A Quebec-based women's

00:04:17.320 rights group, Pour les Droits des Femmes, had asked the government way back in November 2016 to release

00:04:23.160 the GBA. But the entire report was deemed cabinet confidence material, and no pages were releasable.

00:04:31.560 Shortly after the October 2019 election, Jennifer launched a House of Commons e-petition. And as the first

00:04:38.040 step, she obtained the necessary 500 signatures. But as the next step, Jennifer has to find an MP

00:04:44.440 willing to sponsor and present the petition. But as the petitioner, Jennifer is limited to contacting a

00:04:50.360 maximum of five MPs, and each MP is given 30 days to accept or decline the petition before their

00:04:57.640 opportunity to sponsor it expires. Jennifer started contacting conservative MPs who had voted no to Bill

00:05:03.960 C-16 back in the day. When I interviewed her, she told me she thought finding an MP to work with would

00:05:09.720 be a walk in the park. However, her first choice of MP, Candice Bergen, did not respond in 30 days,

00:05:15.560 and the opportunity expired. The second MP, Diane Finlay, declined the petition. Her third choice, Alain

00:05:22.920 Reyes, sent her an email saying he would not take it on. Gérard Deltel also recently refused, which means

00:05:30.280 Jennifer can pick only one more MP before her e-petition is nullified, and that'll be it. 0.99

00:05:36.040 It appears that MPs might be scared of appearing transphobic by taking on this petition. But it is

00:05:42.520 explicitly stated in Parliamentary Resources that sponsoring an e-petition does not necessarily mean

00:05:48.840 that the Member of Parliament supports its content. So they're simply acting as an intermediary.

00:05:54.120 Will any MP take this on? Will any MP be willing to reopen the discussion on Bill C-16? Only time

00:06:02.760 will tell, and these women are on the front lines of getting us those answers. 1.00

00:06:07.320 Thanks for watching. I'm Lindsay Shepard for True North.

Juno News - February 01, 2020

The renewed effort to get Bill C-16 modified or repealed

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