Western Standard

00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.

00:00:21.780 It is Thursday, July the 31st. In the upside-down world of woke Canadian politics, where nothing

00:00:28.240 makes sense and appearance is always more important than reality. I thought I'd seen everything in 50

00:00:33.920 years of journalism and government service, but this week we're talking about the incredible

00:00:38.660 practice of the Liberal government of Canada to jail men who say they're women in women's jails.

00:00:46.040 The women are pushing back. No surprise there. There's an organization, Cause Bar, which is leading 1.00

00:00:53.080 the charge on that. And with me today is their lawyer, Chris Fleury. Mr. Fleury, welcome to the

00:00:58.780 show. Great. Thanks for having me, Nigel. I'm glad you're here. Mr. Fleury, you're legal counsel for

00:01:04.460 Cause Bar, the women fighting this. You're with Charter Advocates, and I think the case is being

00:01:09.780 funded by the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms. Lay it out for us.

00:01:16.280 Yes. Thank you, Nigel, again, for having me. So this is a case challenging what is the government's

00:01:25.320 policy of placing male inmates, trans-identified male inmates, male-to-female trans inmates, into

00:01:34.460 female institutions. This is a practice that fundamentally changed in 2017, following the 1.00

00:01:42.560 passage of what was called Bill C-16. So Bill C-16 amended the Canadian human rights legislation.

00:01:52.000 It also, following that, there were amendments to Correctional Services Canada's governing legislation,

00:01:58.240 which essentially protected trans persons from discrimination within the penitentiary system.

00:02:06.020 So after that, the government of Canada changed their policy. And up until that point, what were called

00:02:14.580 preoperative trans individuals could not be placed into a female institution. So following basically the 0.67

00:02:23.260 amendment of their, it's called a commissioner's directive, essentially their policy, the inmates

00:02:30.100 will be placed presumptively according to their gender of their choice, the gender to which they

00:02:36.100 identify, unless there are overriding health and safety concerns. And I think what you might find

00:02:41.800 interesting is that prior to 17, the government of Canada opposed the placement of these individuals

00:02:49.700 into female institutions, including in court cases. So there's a court case from the early 2000s called

00:02:56.780 Kavanaugh, where a male to female trans inmate wanted to be placed in a female institution, they were denied,

00:03:05.340 this person brought a human rights claim. And the government of Canada opposed that. And they opposed

00:03:13.740 it in court, and they brought expert evidence, which essentially said, the risks presented by the transfer of

00:03:20.940 these individuals are just far too high. And that case went in the government of Canada's favour. The person was

00:03:29.500 denied the transfer. Ultimately, after the case, they did complete the surgery and were transferred. But the point

00:03:37.980 is that the government of Canada actually agreed in part with what we're arguing in this lawsuit, right up until 2017, and the

00:03:46.700 passage of this legislation.

00:03:51.020 Different party and different outlook, right?

00:03:53.180 That's right.

00:03:55.260 Yes. That Kavanaugh case that you just described, did you say that was 2003, 2004?

00:04:01.100 It was in that range. I don't have it in front of me. I know it was before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal,

00:04:07.580 and then it went to the federal court as well, which upheld the tribunal's decision.

00:04:11.740 So, okay, so 20 years ago, we, you know, it was a bit of a struggle, but somehow or other, we got it right.

00:04:19.980 Let me just put it to you. If some Nancy boy wants to go and do his term among the girls, is that a big deal? 0.95

00:04:30.140 There's, and this is perhaps what people might be missing, because the penitentiary system is,

00:04:37.580 I would say, largely misunderstood by the Canadian population, that it's just not something that

00:04:42.780 many people ever have exposure to. So one thing that people might not know is that,

00:04:48.140 first of all, in addition to being convicted of a criminal offense, most female inmates 0.79

00:04:55.340 are themselves victims. So they're disproportionately, wildly disproportionately likely to have been the victim

00:05:02.300 of physical or sexual violence at the hands of men. And that's who we are placing, who the government

00:05:08.300 of Canada is placing male inmates into. That's the population that is being exposed to this.

00:05:16.300 Well, let's talk about the male inmates a little bit, Mr. Fleury. They, you know, I'd probably use what

00:05:21.740 many people would consider an offensive term in characterizing them as effeminate, but are they?

00:05:28.140 Well, this is, and that's sort of where I was going, Nigel, is that there are fundamental,

00:05:37.260 it's not just about physical differences necessarily between men and women, although

00:05:41.260 obviously those are present. There are profound psychological differences between men and women

00:05:47.580 that actually lead to them committing different types of crimes, them finding themselves,

00:05:57.100 them being essentially behaving differently in the carceral context. So for example, men are much more

00:06:06.860 likely to have been convicted of a serious violent crime. They're much more likely to be found guilty

00:06:12.140 or to be designated as a dangerous offender. They're much more likely to essentially be aggressive

00:06:18.620 and act aggressively within the prison system. And that's the population that is being transferred.

00:06:27.020 We're not talking about the average male, the average woman, the average trans person. That's not who 0.99

00:06:32.620 we're talking about in this case. We're talking about, as a starting point, individuals who have been

00:06:38.220 sentenced to a penitentiary term, meaning more than two years in custody. So they must have,

00:06:44.700 by definition, committed a serious violent crime and have a lengthy criminal record in most cases,

00:06:51.660 or both, in order to even find themselves in that situation. And I mean, there are statistics about

00:06:59.820 this that the government of Canada has produced. Actually, here's another one that I missed is that

00:07:05.260 men are much more likely to be sex offenders and convicted of a sexual offense than women are.

00:07:12.300 And not only are men disproportionately likely to have been found guilty of a

00:07:16.940 sexual offense in relation to women, the rate of sexual offenders among this population that is

00:07:23.580 seeking transfer is just disproportionately high. We're talking 40 to 50 percent are convicted sex

00:07:30.780 offenders, and those are the individuals who are seeking transfer into a women's prison. 1.00

00:07:39.100 So really, we're talking about putting the wolves in among the sheep. Now, I can't imagine that even

00:07:47.660 our corrective system would actually have them sharing cells. How are things organized in the prisons

00:07:54.220 to keep the obvious from happening?

00:07:59.500 It, the short answer is that it varies. There are, just like in a male institution,

00:08:05.980 a female institution will have different security designations. So you'll have a minimal, 1.00

00:08:11.820 a medium and a maximum security. In the maximum security, you will get individual cells. In some cases,

00:08:19.500 trans persons are housed there. There are community living units within the female institution.

00:08:27.100 Those do involve sharing what are essentially like cottages and being in a community living

00:08:34.220 situation, if I can call it that, sharing kitchens and bathrooms and this sort of thing with the inmates.

00:08:40.780 I hope you're going to tell me that those community living facilities are not available to somebody

00:08:49.820 who's claiming to be a woman, but has actually been convicted of raping women.

00:08:54.860 No, they, there's nothing precluding them from being housed in there, and we have certainly heard

00:09:01.500 from inmates to confirm that they are being housed in that sort of situation.

00:09:06.300 Well, how are things working out?

00:09:10.060 We have heard, the stories have been awful. I'm not going to go into a tremendous amount of detail,

00:09:17.340 because it is still before the courts, and some of this evidence hasn't come out yet. But in

00:09:23.500 general terms, we've certainly heard about physical assaults happening, sexual assaults, harassment,

00:09:32.220 abuse, certainly psychological impacts on the part of the women who are again, you can imagine someone

00:09:40.940 who has been the victim of a physical or sexual assault then being confined in close quarters with

00:09:50.060 essentially a man, the impact that that might have on someone. And in the context of the carceral

00:09:57.740 system, it's about punishment, but it's also about rehabilitation. And part of our argument in this

00:10:04.140 lawsuit is that the placement of males within female institutions, not only does it present these 1.00

00:10:12.620 sorts of harms of physical and psychological harms, but it also impacts their prospects at rehabilitation.

00:10:19.660 So it's extremely, extremely concerning. Mr. Fleury, how many trans men are presently incarcerated in

00:10:29.340 Canadian jails and within women's institutions? We don't know exactly, unfortunately. There's no

00:10:37.820 publicly available statistics to tell us this. The percentage of female inmates in and of itself is 0.89

00:10:48.220 actually very, very low. They're a small portion of the overall incarcerated population. It's mostly men

00:10:56.460 in federal institutions. But the transfer of even, so it's in that context that the transfer of even a

00:11:04.140 small number, a handful of individuals can have a disproportionate impact. Unfortunately, I can't say

00:11:10.620 exactly how many that is at the moment. Okay. And how many women's jails are affected by this? 1.00

00:11:19.500 There's six across Canada. So there's five, what we would usually think of as a penitentiary,

00:11:28.460 five located across Canada, as well as a, what's called a healing lodge, which I believe is in

00:11:34.060 Saskatchewan, which is also impacted by this. So in terms of scale, this is not a huge problem,

00:11:44.780 but in terms of principle, it seems to me as an editorialist, and I'm not putting words in your

00:11:51.020 mouth, but it seems utter folly, as well as deeply evil to put the, as I say, the wolves in among the

00:11:58.460 sheep. I cannot imagine who came up with this idea, but who actually, when you follow the trail of

00:12:08.620 command from the prison warden through the, up through the bureaucracy to the Department of Justice,

00:12:15.340 and ultimately the federal cabinet, where does the responsibility for this decision rest?

00:12:23.900 It seems, I have difficulty answering that question. The Bill C-16, as I imagined, or sorry,

00:12:32.700 as I mentioned earlier, was passed by the federal government of the time that was under Justin Trudeau

00:12:40.300 and his cabinet. Justin Trudeau certainly did make public statements prior to that. He was asked directly

00:12:48.540 about the transfer of men into women's prisons, and he did say, this was, I believe, immediately prior to

00:12:57.100 the changing of the directive. He did say that that was something that they were considering. So it certainly,

00:13:06.220 it seems to go right to the top, I would say, in terms of Justin Trudeau and his federal cabinet.

00:13:12.220 Well, certainly, every member of parliament who voted for that legislation, most of whom obviously

00:13:19.740 would have been liberals, has some responsibility for it. But it just seems, it's one of those things,

00:13:29.740 say, how can such a stupid situation come about, especially when you have referred to an earlier 0.98

00:13:36.140 precedent, where the courts have looked at it and decided, no, it's not a good idea. And then the 0.99

00:13:44.060 government comes along and changes it. Now, this case that you are now engaged upon, does it have the

00:13:52.860 capacity to actually reverse the effects of that 2017 legislation that made all this possible?

00:14:02.060 So what precisely we're asking for in this case is a declaration that this particular, it's called

00:14:12.220 a Commissioner's Directive, Commissioner's Directive 100, is in violation of female inmates'

00:14:19.580 constitutional rights. Their right to life, liberty, security of persons, Section 7 of the Charter.

00:14:26.220 Their right under Section 12 to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. And their equality rights

00:14:33.020 under Section 15 of the Charter. So we're asking the court to declare that this particular policy

00:14:39.580 is in contravention of their rights. And then ultimately, once we've done that, then the

00:14:47.180 legislation will have to be amended. And in the amendment, it would presumably put an end to this

00:14:57.100 practice. I mean, I can't see how you would amend it otherwise. That's me speaking. Am I correct on that?

00:15:04.700 There are. I would say it would be open to the federal government to attempt to bring the policy

00:15:17.100 back into line to where it was prior to 2017, which was post-operative trans inmates. I don't want to get 1.00

00:15:27.980 too graphic, but essentially they've had the surgery cutting off their bits. And those individuals could

00:15:37.580 be transferred prior to 17 on a case-by-case basis. It would be open to the federal government to

00:15:43.820 attempt to bring the legislation back to that state. We would oppose that. We would say

00:15:49.500 it's certainly, there are serious risks that are present there. It's not just about the presence or

00:15:56.860 lack of genitalia. It's about physical and psychological danger that's created by men 0.70

00:16:03.980 in women's prisons. And that's not necessarily alleviated just by a surgery. 1.00

00:16:10.860 Mr. Fleury, let's just talk about, I think there was a particular case involving a

00:16:17.020 young man, I think this may be in BC, I'm sure you're familiar with it,

00:16:20.620 that raped a baby and then ended up in a prison where there were mothers with their babies. Can you 0.88

00:16:28.700 just talk about that case a little bit and how it illustrates the dilemma we're dealing with here?

00:16:35.340 I've heard the story. I'm not particularly familiar with it. What I will say is that it shows the problem

00:16:45.660 with the system as it is. That there is, as I said, a presumption that individuals will be placed in a

00:16:54.300 penitentiary according to their chosen gender. And that can only be overridden on the basis of proven 0.64

00:17:02.380 health and safety concerns. So essentially, a proven risk. And it's a pretty high bar

00:17:08.060 uh, to, to prove that. And in this case, uh, notwithstanding that, as you mentioned,

00:17:14.380 there are convictions for serious offenses involving women and children. Uh, they, um,

00:17:20.540 the government of Canada presumably, uh, did an assessment, uh, and did not believe that there was a,

00:17:27.340 um, a serious risk in that case of placing that inmate with, uh, with female offenders. And it is,

00:17:33.980 um, as you say, it's, it's ludicrous. It's, uh, the average person on the street, 0.71

00:17:38.620 it's just never going to understand, uh, why this is happening. And they're, they're right not to.

00:17:46.060 Tell us about your client, sir. Cause bar, who are they? And, and, um,

00:17:53.580 frankly, what are their chances?

00:17:56.540 So cause bar is the Canadian women's sex-based rights. Uh, they're a national nonprofit organization.

00:18:03.100 Um, they advocate across the country for, as the name suggests, uh, women's sex-based rights,

00:18:09.020 uh, in the context of, uh, prisons. Certainly they're, um, they've done a lot of advocacy work

00:18:15.020 there, but also in the context of, uh, bathrooms, uh, changing rooms, um, sports teams, uh, this sort

00:18:23.100 of thing, uh, venues where, uh, traditionally there's been a, a, a sex segregated environment

00:18:29.100 that now in, in 2025, we find these sorts of protections, uh, reversing. They're, um, they're

00:18:36.220 certainly, uh, um, advocating on behalf of women in, in that context broadly.

00:18:42.940 And, and so is it a new, new organization?

00:18:46.700 They are, uh, relatively new. I, I don't have it in front of me in terms of, uh, exactly when they

00:18:52.060 were founded. It's certainly been within the last decade or so. Um, but to be, uh, fair to them,

00:18:59.500 that these issues, uh, I don't recall them really existing a decade or so ago. So they're,

00:19:04.380 they're responding to these new sorts of issues that we find ourselves with.

00:19:08.460 Now are the, uh, the women, and I'm sure it is mainly women, are the women driving this 1.00

00:19:12.860 organization, former inmates themselves?

00:19:15.580 Uh, there is one, uh, one of their directors is a former inmate, um, and is, uh, how essentially

00:19:24.300 this case came to our attention is, is through her. Uh, the rest of the women are, uh, just 1.00

00:19:31.020 members of Canadian society, if I can put it that way, who are deeply concerned about these issues.

00:19:36.300 Well, bless their hearts for coming forward. Um, do they have a, you mentioned bathrooms and

00:19:42.140 I mean, that's pretty obvious. Have they had any successes in that area?

00:19:45.420 Uh, so my understanding is that this is the first, um, legal action that they've taken.

00:19:52.620 Uh, everything else has been, um, advocacy work that they're doing. Uh, so they hold protests,

00:19:59.260 they do, uh, conferences and speeches and, uh, this sort of thing.

00:20:03.100 Okay. And, uh, the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, I think is fairly well known to,

00:20:09.340 to our, uh, readers and our viewers, but, uh, they are funding this defense.

00:20:18.140 Did they approach Colesbar or did Colesbar come to them?

00:20:23.180 This case, um, you know what, I, I can't recall offhand exactly how that happened. Um, I know that,

00:20:31.900 this is something that, uh, the particular director who I was talking about, who's been incarcerated,

00:20:37.020 uh, previously, uh, has certainly been thinking about for, uh, for quite some time.

00:20:43.580 Okay. We're rapidly, uh, getting to the running out of time here, but the, uh, you, you, uh, mentioned

00:20:49.980 Mr. Trudeau's personal opinions on the matter and the success of the legislation that followed in 2017.

00:21:00.620 Um, Mr. Trudeau obviously had a lot of, uh, ideas that Western standard viewers tend not to agree with.

00:21:09.980 And in fact, I think now that he is out of office, it's probably safe to say that, uh, a majority of 0.99

00:21:16.780 Canadians find these kinds of things utterly stupid. But what is the genesis of a, uh, of a philosophy 0.97

00:21:26.780 that could actually make the argument for putting men into women's jails with a straight face saying 1.00

00:21:35.100 that this was the fulfillment of the ultimate, uh, uh, rights of, uh, of human rights?

00:21:42.860 Where does that come from?

00:21:43.900 I, I, truly, Nigel, I, I wish I had a good answer for you on that one. Um, as I said, it's,

00:21:51.420 it's not something that we've, uh, seen, you know, uh, 10, 20 years ago. It appears to,

00:21:58.460 from my perspective, have, have come out of left field, uh, that I, again, I, I don't recall

00:22:03.740 anyone talking like this 10 or 20 years ago. And if you had have said something like this

00:22:08.700 to someone 10 or 20 years ago, I think 99% of the population would have said that's absolutely crazy.

00:22:15.260 Well, you know something, Mr. Fleury? I think that the number would have been higher than 99%

00:22:22.380 and that it still is. Wish you good luck and, uh, everything that a lawyer needs to make the case.

00:22:31.180 This is actually a symbolic case. If you can turn this one over, a lot of us will take tremendous

00:22:37.740 encouragement for reversing some of the folly and the stupidity that we have seen. So thank you for 0.99

00:22:44.220 joining us and, uh, I'm sure all Western Standard viewers join me in, and wishing you well with this

00:22:50.060 case. Thank you, Nigel. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us. For the Western Standard,

00:22:57.020 I'm Nigel Hannaford.

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HANNAFORD： Raped by the system

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