Transgender Bill C-16 quickly passes through Justice Committee

Committee decides not to hear any witnesses

OTTAWA (CCN)

The Justice Committee passed transgender Bill C-16 back to the House of Commons Nov. 2 with no hearings or public consultation. That has some groups upset.

The committee approved the bill adding gender identity and expression to the Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act after hearing only one witness, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould.

Bill C-16 has now returned to the House of Commons and will be up for a third reading vote soon that could send it to the Senate well before Christmas. It passed a second reading vote Oct. 19, with sizeable support from all parties.

“This bill is a political statement which will be followed with programs of employment equity and amelioration,” said REAL Women of Canada in a news release. “This significant bill is an embarrassment to Canada. It is based purely on politically correct ideology, not facts or evidence and is being rammed through Parliament in a highly undemocratic manner.”

REAL Women said discussions at the Justice Committee showed “no one understood the meaning of the expressions ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ which were supposed to be protected.”

The bill would lift “the transgendered into an explicit category of law,” REAL Women said. “This has not been done for any other group such as First Nations people or other vulnerable individuals who also experience discrimination.”

The pro-life, pro-family women’s group warned the bill will have “wide ranging impact” because it applies to the federal government “as an employer and service provider and to the federally-regulated private sector, including crown corporations, inter-provincial and international transportation companies, telecommunications, the postal service and chartered banks.”

Campaign Life Coalition’s Ottawa lobbyist Johanne Brownrigg said the recent controversy over University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson’s refusal to use new gender-sensitive pronouns raises concerns the bill will harm freedom of expression. Peterson has come under fire for YouTube videos defending his right not to be forced to use speech that violates his beliefs.

“He expects to be hauled up before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal for not using ambiguous pronouns,” she said. “His lucid, thoughtful arguments are falling on deaf ears.”

Medicine, law, the teaching professional, and businesses “will be threatened by the imaginary offenses created by this bill,” she said. The bill is not about discrimination but about freedom of speech, she said.

Conservative MP Ted Falk, the vice-chair of the Justice Committee, said he was “surprised and disappointed” the committee chose to go quickly to clause by clause approval of the bill after hearing from Minister Wilson-Raybould. “There were only four clauses, so it went quickly,” he said.

“There was no opportunity for stakeholders to comment on the bill, either for it or against it,” he said.

The Conservatives did not put forward any amendments. “We had anticipated there would be time to do a study on the bill,” he said. When the committee decided not to do a study, “we didn’t have amendments that were ready to go.”

“A lot of immigrants and religious groups have very strong opinions on human sexuality,” Falk said. “The concern is whether there will be freedom of speech limitations because of this bill.”

The contentious issues of whether a bill like this would pave the way for men who identify as women to use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms were not discussed, he said.

Falk, however, was the only committee member who opposed the bill. Fellow Conservative MP Michael Cooper, a Catholic who has been identified as prolife, voted for it both at second reading and at Justice Committee.

“I don’t think Bill C-16 would interfere or infringe upon the rights of individuals to express beliefs grounded in their faith,” Cooper said. Nor does it affect bathrooms or locker rooms.

“Bill C-16 doesn’t change anything in terms of the law right now in terms of how the Canadian Human Rights Act has been interpreted by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and the courts,” he said. “It doesn’t add anything, it merely clarifies existing law.”

“It is narrow in scope,” he said. “It only applies in terms of areas that are regulated by the federal government.” He declined to comment on the provincial human rights legislation in Ontario, Alberta or other provinces.

Cooper did say, however, he was disappointed the Justice Committee did not hear more witnesses.

When Minister Wilson-Raybould appeared Oct. 27 she told the Justice Committee the bill “does not mean the grounds are completely open-ended or that people can claim protection on a whim.”

She also said that the bill’s proposed amendments will not lead to criminal prosecution of those who “express disapproval of diverse gender identities or expressions.”

The amendments “respect freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expressions in a free and democratic society,” she said. “The criminal prohibitions on hate propaganda impose a narrow limit on expression.”

The limits target “extreme and dangerous speech that one, advocates genocide; two, wilfully promotes hatred; or three, incites hatred in a public place, likely to cause a breach of the peace against vulnerable groups.”

“The target is speech that promotes unusually strong and deeply felt emotions of detestation or vilification, which is far from the expression of religious faith, dissenting views, or even opinion that some may find offensive,” she said.