Western Standard - Raped by the system

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

00:00:21.760 It is Thursday, July the 31st. In the upside-down world of woke Canadian politics, where nothing

00:00:28.220 makes sense and appearance is always more important than reality. I thought I'd seen

00:00:32.800 everything in 50 years of journalism and government service. But this week we're talking about

00:00:37.960 the incredible practice of the liberal government of Canada to jail men who say they're women

00:00:43.960 in women's jails. The women are pushing back. No surprise there. There's an organization, 1.00

00:00:50.720 Cause Bar, which is leading the charge on that. And with me today is their lawyer, Chris Fleury.

00:00:57.180 Mr. Fleury, welcome to the show. Great, thanks for having me, Nigel. I'm glad you're here. Mr.

00:01:02.680 Fleury, you're legal counsel for Cause Bar, the women fighting this. You're with Charter Advocates,

00:01:08.060 and I think the case is being funded by the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms.

00:01:15.360 Lay it out for us. Yes, thank you, Nigel, again for having me. So this is a case challenging

00:01:24.000 what is the government's policy of placing male inmates, trans-identified male inmates,

00:01:30.640 male-to-female trans inmates, into female institutions.

00:01:36.420 This is a practice that fundamentally changed in 2017 following the passage of what was called Bill C-16.

00:01:46.040 So Bill C-16 amended the Canadian human rights legislation.

00:01:51.100 And also following that, there were amendments to Correctional Services Canada's governing legislation, 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 preoperative trans individuals could not be placed into a female institution.

00:02:20.900 So following basically the amendment of their, it's called a commissioner's directive, essentially their policy, the inmates will be placed presumptively according to their gender of their choice, the gender to which they identify, unless there are overriding health and safety concerns.

00:02:39.960 And I think what you might find interesting is that prior to 17, the government of Canada opposed the placement of these individuals into female institutions, including in court cases.

00:02:53.300 So there's a court case from the early 2000s called Kavanaugh, where a male to female trans inmate wanted to be placed in a female institution. They were denied. This person brought a human rights claim.

00:03:08.620 and the government of Canada opposed that and they opposed it in court and they brought expert

00:03:15.460 evidence which essentially said the risks presented by the transfer of these individuals

00:03:21.800 are just far too high and that case went in the government of Canada's favor. The person was

00:03:29.540 denied the transfer. Ultimately after the case they did complete the surgery and were transferred

00:03:36.260 But the point is that the government of Canada actually agreed in part with what we're arguing in this lawsuit right up until 2017 and the passage of this legislation.

00:03:50.220 Different party, different outlook, right?

00:03:54.360 That's right.

00:03:55.340 Yes. That Kavanaugh case that you just described, did you say that was 2003, 2004?

00:04:01.880 It was in that range. I don't have it in front of me.

00:04:04.440 I know it was before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and then it went to the federal court as well, which upheld the tribunal's decision.

00:04:12.300 So, okay, so 20 years ago, you know, it was a bit of a struggle, but somehow or other we got it right.

00:04:19.800 Let me just put it to you.

00:04:22.340 If some Nancy boy wants to go and do his term among the girls, is that a big deal? 0.95

00:04:28.560 there's and this is perhaps what people might be missing because the the penitentiary system is

00:04:37.540 I would say largely misunderstood by the Canadian population that it's just not something that

00:04:42.560 many people ever have exposure to so one thing that people might not know is that first of all

00:04:48.940 in addition to being convicted of a criminal offense most female inmates are themselves 0.84

00:04:56.060 victims. So they're disproportionately, wildly disproportionately likely to have been the victim

00:05:01.760 of physical or sexual violence at the hands of men. And that's who we are placing, who the

00:05:08.120 government of Canada is placing male inmates into. That's the population that is being exposed to

00:05:15.840 this. Well, I still grab the male inmates a little bit, Mr. Fleury. I'd probably use what

00:05:21.800 many people would consider an offensive term in characterizing them as effeminate, but are they?

00:05:29.700 Well, this is, and that's sort of where I was going, Nigel, is that there are fundamental,

00:05:37.000 it's not just about physical differences necessarily between men and women, although

00:05:41.240 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,

00:05:53.880 them finding themselves, them being essentially behaving differently in the carceral context.

00:06:03.760 So, for example, men are much more likely to have been convicted of a serious violent crime.

00:06:10.300 They're much more likely to be found guilty or to be designated as a dangerous offender.

00:06:15.500 they're much more likely to essentially be aggressive and act aggressively within the

00:06:21.360 prison system. And that's the population that is being transferred. We're not talking about the

00:06:28.120 average male, the average woman, the average trans person. That's not who we're talking about in this 1.00

00:06:33.600 case. We're talking about, as a starting point, individuals who have been sentenced to a penitentiary

00:06:40.320 term meaning more than two years in custody so they must have by definition committed a serious

00:06:46.500 violent crime and had a have a lengthy criminal record in most cases or both in order to even

00:06:53.640 find themselves in that situation and i mean there are statistics about this that the government of

00:07:00.780 canada has produced actually here's another one that i missed is that men are much more likely to

00:07:06.620 be sex offenders and convicted of a sexual offense than women are. And not only are men 0.94

00:07:13.400 disproportionately likely to have been found guilty of a sexual offense in relation to women,

00:07:19.420 the rate of sexual offenders among this population that is seeking transfer is just

00:07:25.500 disproportionately high. We're talking 40 to 50 percent are convicted sex offenders and are being,

00:07:32.100 Those are the individuals who are seeking transfer into a women's prison. 1.00

00:07:39.300 So really, we're talking about putting the wolves in among the sheep.

00:07:43.260 Now, I can't imagine that even our corrective system would actually have them sharing cells.

00:07:51.860 How are things organized in the prisons to keep the obvious from happening?

00:07:57.920 it the short answer is that it varies there are just like in a male institution a female 1.00

00:08:06.460 institution will have different cert security designations so you'll have a minimal a medium

00:08:12.320 and a maximum security in the maximum security you will get individual cells in some cases

00:08:19.520 trans persons are housed there there are community living units within the female institution

00:08:25.740 those do involve sharing what are essentially like cottages and being in a community living

00:08:34.180 situation if I can call it that sharing kitchens and bathrooms and this sort of thing with the

00:08:40.400 inmates I hope you're going to tell me that those community living facilities are not available to

00:08:49.320 somebody who's claiming to be a woman but has actually been convicted of raping women

00:08:53.900 And no, there's nothing precluding them from being housed in there.

00:08:59.440 And we have certainly heard from inmates to confirm that they are being housed in that sort of situation.

00:09:06.920 How are things working out?

00:09:09.740 We have heard the stories have been awful.

00:09:14.380 I'm not going to go into a tremendous amount of detail because it is still before the courts.

00:09:19.240 And some of this evidence hasn't come out yet.

00:09:22.460 But in general terms, we've certainly heard about physical assaults happening, sexual assaults, harassment, abuse, certainly psychological impacts on the part of the women who are, again, you can imagine someone who has been the victim of a physical or sexual assault then being confined in close quarters with essentially a man.

00:09:51.100 the impact that that might have on someone. And in the context of the carceral system,

00:09:58.280 it's about punishment, but it's also about rehabilitation. And part of our argument in

00:10:03.860 this lawsuit is that the placement of males within female institutions, not only does it 1.00

00:10:12.080 present these sorts of harms, physical and psychological harms, but it also impacts their

00:10:17.980 prospects at rehabilitation. So it's extremely, extremely concerning.

00:10:23.600 Mr. Fleury, how many men, trans men, are presently incarcerated in Canadian jails

00:10:30.260 within women's institutions? 1.00

00:10:34.100 We don't know exactly, unfortunately. There's no publicly available statistics to tell us this.

00:10:41.680 It's not a, the percentage of female inmates in and of itself is actually very, very low.

00:10:49.540 They're a small portion of the overall incarcerated population.

00:10:54.980 It's mostly men in federal institutions.

00:10:58.860 But the transfer of even, so it's in that context that the transfer of even a small

00:11:04.500 number, a handful of individuals can have a disproportionate impact.

00:11:09.180 Unfortunately, I can't say exactly how many that is at the moment.

00:11:12.760 Okay.

00:11:14.220 And how many women's jails are affected by this? 1.00

00:11:19.500 There's six across Canada.

00:11:21.380 So there's five, what we would usually think of as a penitentiary,

00:11:28.100 five located across Canada, as well as what's called a healing lodge,

00:11:32.900 which I believe is in Saskatchewan, which is also impacted by this.

00:11:36.460 so in terms of scale this is not a huge problem but in terms of principle it seems to me as an

00:11:48.320 editorialist and i'm not putting words in your mouth but it seems utter folly as well as deeply

00:11:54.840 evil to put the as i say the wolves in among the sheep i i cannot imagine who came up with this

00:12:02.480 an idea but who actually when you follow the trail of command from the prison warden through the

00:12:12.320 up through the bureaucracy to the department of justice and ultimately the federal cabinet

00:12:18.880 where does the responsibility for this decision rest it seems i i have difficulty answering that

00:12:28.480 question. The Bill C-16, as I imagined, or sorry, as I mentioned earlier, was passed by the federal

00:12:36.900 government of the time that was under Justin Trudeau and his cabinet. Justin Trudeau certainly

00:12:43.300 did make public statements prior to that. He was asked directly about the transfer of men into

00:12:51.160 women's prisons, and he did say this was, I believe, immediately prior to the changing of

00:12:57.720 the directive, he did say that that was something that they were considering. So it certainly,

00:13:05.140 it seems to go right to the top, I would say, in terms of Justin Trudeau and his federal cabinet.

00:13:13.160 Well, certainly every member of parliament who voted for that legislation, most of whom

00:13:19.420 obviously would have been liberals, has some responsibility for it. But it just seems,

00:13:26.820 It's one of those things, how can such a stupid situation come about, especially when you have referred to an earlier precedent where the courts had looked at it and decided, no, it's not a good idea, and then the government comes along and changes it. 0.58

00:13:46.240 Now, this case that you are now engaged upon, does it have the capacity to actually reverse the effects of that 2017 legislation that made all this possible? 0.55

00:14:03.540 So what precisely we're asking for in this case is a declaration that this particular, it's called a Commissioner's Directive, Commissioner's Directive 100.

00:14:16.240 is in violation of female inmates' constitutional rights.

00:14:21.520 Their right to life, liberty, security of persons, Section 7 of the Charter.

00:14:26.080 Their right under Section 12 to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.

00:14:31.540 And their equality rights under Section 15 of the Charter.

00:14:35.240 So we're asking the court to declare that this particular policy

00:14:39.000 is in contravention of their rights.

00:14:43.320 and then ultimately once we've done that then the the legislation will have to be amended

00:14:50.180 and in the amendment it would presumably put an end to this practice i mean i can't see how

00:14:58.680 you would amend it otherwise um that's me speaking as i might correct on that

00:15:04.800 there are um i would say it would be open to the federal government to attempt to uh bring the

00:15:16.640 policy back into line to where it was prior to 2017 which was uh pre or sorry post-operative

00:15:24.800 uh trans inmates um i don't want to get too graphic but essentially they've had the surgery 0.98

00:15:30.380 cutting off their bits. And those individuals could be transferred prior to 17 on a case-by-case

00:15:40.440 basis. It would be open to the federal government to attempt to bring the legislation back to that

00:15:46.180 state. We would oppose that. We would say it's certainly, there are serious risks that are

00:15:52.600 present there. It's not just about the presence or lack of genitalia. It's about physical and 0.56

00:16:00.340 psychological danger that's created by men in women's prisons. And that's not necessarily

00:16:07.120 alleviated just by a surgery. Mr. Fleury, let's just talk about, I think there was a particular

00:16:14.420 case involving a young man, I think this may be in BC, I'm sure you're familiar with it,

00:16:20.800 raped a baby and then ended up in a in a prison where there were mothers with their babies 0.98

00:16:27.440 can you just talk about that case a little bit and how it how it illustrates the the dilemma

00:16:33.040 we're dealing with here i've heard the i've heard the story i'm not um particularly familiar with it

00:16:40.620 um what i will say is that it is a it shows the problem with the system as it is that there is

00:16:48.920 as I said, a presumption that individuals will be placed in a penitentiary according to their

00:16:56.000 chosen gender. And that can only be overridden on the basis of proven health and safety concerns.

00:17:04.460 So essentially a proven risk. And it's a pretty high bar to prove that. And in this case,

00:17:12.240 notwithstanding that, as you mentioned, there are convictions for serious offenses involving

00:17:16.960 women and children uh they um the government of canada presumably uh did an assessment uh and did

00:17:25.000 not believe that there was a um a serious risk in that case of placing that inmate with uh with

00:17:32.420 female offenders and it is um as you say it's it's ludicrous it's uh the average person on 1.00

00:17:38.260 the street it's just never going to understand uh why this is happening and they're they're right not

00:17:43.200 to tell us about your client sir calls bar who are they and and frankly what are their chances

00:17:54.920 so cause bar is the canadian women's sex-based rights they're a national non-profit organization

00:18:02.860 they advocate across the country for as the name suggests women's sex-based rights in the context

00:18:10.180 of prisons, certainly. They've done a lot of advocacy work there, but also in the context of

00:18:17.720 bathrooms, changing rooms, sports teams, this sort of thing. Venues where traditionally there's been

00:18:26.800 a sex-segregated environment that now in 2025 we find these sorts of protections reversing.

00:18:35.040 And they're certainly advocating on behalf of women in that context broadly.

00:18:42.860 And so is it a new organization?

00:18:46.600 They are relatively new.

00:18:49.040 I don't have it in front of me in terms of exactly when they were founded.

00:18:52.820 It's certainly been within the last decade or so.

00:18:56.860 But to be fair to them, these issues, I don't recall them really existing a decade or so ago.

00:19:03.620 So they're responding to these new sorts of issues that we find ourselves with.

00:19:08.700 Now, are the women, and I'm sure it is mainly women, are the women driving this organization former inmates themselves?

00:19:16.740 There is one. One of their directors is a former inmate and is how essentially this case came to our attention is through her.

00:19:27.640 The rest of the women are just members of Canadian society, 0.93

00:19:32.500 if I can put it that way, who are deeply concerned about these issues.

00:19:36.520 Well, bless their hearts for coming forward.

00:19:39.740 Do they have a, you mentioned bathrooms, and that's pretty obvious.

00:19:43.220 Have they had any successes in that area?

00:19:46.920 So my understanding is that this is the first legal action that they've taken.

00:19:52.640 everything else has been

00:19:54.900 advocacy work that they're doing

00:19:57.160 so they hold protests

00:19:59.140 they do conferences and speeches

00:20:01.360 and this sort of thing

00:20:03.180 Okay, and

00:20:05.000 the Justice Center for Constitutional

00:20:07.580 Freedoms I think is fairly well known to

00:20:09.300 our readers and our viewers

00:20:11.600 but

00:20:12.560 they are funding this

00:20:15.440 defense

00:20:15.980 did they approach

00:20:19.200 Colesbar or did Colesbar come to them?

00:20:22.640 This case, you know what, I can't recall offhand exactly how that happened.

00:20:30.140 I know that this is something that the particular director who I was talking about,

00:20:35.860 who's been incarcerated previously, has certainly been thinking about for quite some time.

00:20:43.300 Okay, we're rapidly getting to the running out of time here,

00:20:47.100 but you mentioned Mr. Trudeau's personal opinions on the matter

00:20:53.980 and the success of the legislation that followed in 2017.

00:21:02.000 Mr. Trudeau obviously had a lot of ideas

00:21:06.440 that Western Standard viewers tend not to agree with,

00:21:10.120 and in fact, I think now that he is out of office, 1.00

00:21:13.160 It's probably safe to say that a majority of Canadians find these kinds of things utterly stupid. 0.99

00:21:21.460 But what is the genesis of a philosophy that could actually make the argument for putting men into women's jails 0.99

00:21:33.120 with a straight face saying that this was the fulfillment of the ultimate human rights?

00:21:41.960 where does that come from i truly nigel i i wish i had a good answer for you on that one

00:21:49.480 um as i said it's it's not something that we've uh seen you know 10 20 years ago it appears to

00:21:57.920 from my perspective have come out of left field uh that i again i i don't recall anyone talking

00:22:04.600 like this 10 or 20 years ago and if you had have said something like this to someone 10 or 20 years

00:22:10.140 ago, I think 99% of the population would have said that's absolutely crazy.

00:22:16.500 You know something, Mr. Fleury?

00:22:17.800 I think that the number would have been higher than 99% and that it still is. 0.75

00:22:24.800 Wish you good luck and everything that a lawyer needs to make the case.

00:22:31.100 This is actually a symbolic case.

00:22:34.120 If you can turn this one over, a lot of us will take tremendous encouragement for reversing 0.95

00:22:39.460 some of the folly and the stupidity that we have seen so thank you for joining us and i'm sure all 0.96

00:22:46.500 western standard viewers join me in wishing you well with this case thank you nigel ladies and 0.99

00:22:53.940 gentlemen, thank you for being with us. For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel

00:22:57.700 Hannaford.

Western Standard - August 01, 2025

Raped by the system

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