For seven days The Telegraph is running a series of exclusive essays from international commentators examining the impact of Canada’s progressive legislation on issues such as drugs, free speech, trans rights and assisted dying.
Our second essay is by writer and journalist Meghan Murphy, and examines Canadian attitudes and policies with respect to transgender ideology.
Canada, bastion of agreeableness, is facing an “extremist threat.” Who are these dangerous terrorists, threatening to destroy the maple syrupy vibes we have so long enjoyed in America’s very polite, but very dull, neighbour? Apparently, it’s the people who still recall the difference between mommy and daddy, and refuse to pretend otherwise.
Earlier this year, Canada’s intelligence agency, CSIS, warned of an impending “extremist” threat. Based on a report by the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC), CSIS determined that the “anti-gender movement,” made up of Canadian citizens concerned about the various impacts of trans ideology on kids, women, and free speech, could “inspire and encourage serious violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community.”
The concerns were rooted in nothing beyond words, ideas, and disagreement with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government’s chosen position, which was that transwomen were women and a child who expressed discomfort with their sexed body or with gender-related steretypes should be fast-tracked towards sterilization and experimental body modifications, no questions asked. While these “anti-gender” folks (better described as anti-gender identity ideology) might be considered mean by some, their disagreement with government policies and positions was completely fair and rational.
This has become the norm in Canada. The things labelled as “hate” generally fall into the category of ideological disagreement or politically incorrect rhetoric. Saying something like “transwomen are men” or “there is no such thing as a trans kid” is interpreted as not only cruel – “invalidating” someone’s identity,” erasing “trans people,” or even calling for the extermination of kids and adults identified as “transgender” – but dangerous, akin to calling for violence or genocide.
But of course that’s not true. Having been at the forefront of this debate for near a decade now, I can tell you that not once have I or any of the other women who have begun speaking up in recent years called for or threatened violence or genocide against those who claim to be an identity outside “sexed mammal like all other sexed mammals.” Rather, I entered this fight in defence of women and their sex-segregated spaces. I expressed concerns that men being allowed access to women’s transition houses, for example, could be dangerous. I explained that the idea that because a girl likes to play with trucks or a boy likes to wear dresses makes them literally the opposite sex more suited towards those stereotypes was sexist (and nonsense). I explained (rather politely, in my opinion) that I most certainly did understand “not feeling feminine” but that didn’t make me not female. It just made me human. None of us are living, breathing stereotypes.
What is true is that some trans activists have, from the get go, openly threatened and encouraged violence against the women who speak such blasphemy, or who offer, for example, the completely reasonable view that kids are not born in the wrong body, that human beings cannot change sex, that it’s not fair to make females compete against males in sport, and that women and girls need sex-segregated spaces for safety reasons.
The irony of being labelled some kind of terrorist threat after having been subject to the most vile and frightening harassment, protests, and actual threats (including having literally been chased down outside a feminist convention in San Francisco last year, including bomb threats at our events, including threats via email and on social media – too many to count, including having to hire private security and bodyguards for every event I do), is not lost on me, but is apparently lost on the Canadian government.
The good news is that despite efforts to turn reasonable disagreement into a terrorist threat, many Canadians aren’t falling for it.
Last September, the One Million March for Children saw tens of thousands across Canada stand up for parental rights and say no to SOGI123, the elementary school curriculum teaching gender identity ideology to kids. Politicians, the state-funded media, and urban progressives attempted to frame the events as hate rallies, but they all went very peacefully, with the exception of the Victoria, BC event, which I was scheduled to speak at, though my talk was shut down midway as protestors breached the cordoned off stage area to hurl themselves at speakers, terrify the families present, and in one case, punch a police officer.
That dissent in Canada against alphabet ideology is growing may be why Trudeau is taking a more authoritarian route.
Beyond categorising anyone who knows how babies are made as a terrorist, Trudeau’s Liberal Party is working to push through the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), which would qualify online “hate speech” as discrimination. Those accused, even anonymously, would be dragged through the Human Rights Tribunal, determining whether they be fined, placed on house arrest, or jailed. Again, for social media posts.
Arif Virani, Minister of Justice & Attorney General of Canada and sponsor of the bill, says the Online Harms Act will “keep people in Canada safe,” writing, “Online radicalization has led to increased hate and violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community.”
It’s all very strange and nonsensical, in large part because there has been no evidence hate or violence against LGBT people has increased in Canada. The only thing we’ve seen increase is pushback against the all-rainbow-everything 365-day Pride parade, rooted mainly in Canadians’ anger at being told they must accept kids being taught what is essentially state-mandated religion in school.
Moreover, violence and terrorism are already illegal. Were someone to actually perpetrate such a crime in Canada, they would be punished accordingly, obviously. What’s really happening in Canada is that citizens who refuse to toe the line are being set up to be charged with thought crime. Attend the wrong rally? Hold a politically uncouth sign? Ask the wrong question about male inmates in female prisons? Criminal! March around with a cardboard guillotine with the words “TERFs step right up” or hold a sign reading, “Millions of dead TERFs”? Totally fine. Those are just words after all.
Words for thee, jail for me!
The attempts to frame the disagreeable as a terrorist threat has not ended with CSIS. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) recently published their 2023 Environmental Scan, which explains that “Democracies around the world are under threat from large-scale movements and citizen protests.” In other words, there is a concern that Canadian citizens utilizing their democratic rights to dissent may threaten… democracy.
Under the “Hate, Extremism and Terrorism” heading, the report says, “Trends suggest that more women are gravitating towards far-right movements in Canada.”
That women have been singled out in the report is interesting. While Terf Island has been named as such on account of a woman-led movement fighting gender identity ideology, Canada has lagged behind. When I testified against Bill C-16, Canada’s gender identity legislation which passed in 2017, I was among only a few. I spoke out when almost no one else would, for years, wondering why Canadians lagged behind the rest of the world.
Even as evidence began to pile up about the harms of gender identity legislation and policy, Canada seemed stuck back where it began, ten years ago.
When WPATH Files were released in the US and the Cass Report was published in the UK what many of us already knew was made undeniable: these hormones and surgeries were experimental, kids were being rushed through these procedures without genuine consent, as there were lifelong consequences minors could not possibly contend with (nor were they being fully informed about side-effects and future impacts).
Yet in Canada, it was business as usual. The reports went mostly unacknowledged by media and our government representatives.
When Danielle Smith, leader of the Conservative Party and premier of Alberta, did act, announcing plans to ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and “gender-reassignment surgeries” for minors and require parental notification and consent for a school to alter the name or pronouns of kids, the response was dramatic. Federal employment minister Randy Boissonnault described Smith’s proposals as “the most draconian and harmful policies for young people in the country” and Alberta New Democratic Party (NDP) candidate, Rosman Valencia, tweeted an image of a protest outside Calgary City Hall showing a sign reading, “Smith will kill trans kids.” He added, “@ABDanielleSmith, you have blood on your hands.” Trudeau suggested Smith “fight with us to defend the rights of vulnerable Canadians” rather than “fight against the vulnerable LGBT youth.”
But concern for vulnerable youth is exactly what is driving efforts to stop the medicalization of kids deemed “transgender,” as well as efforts to keep males out of female change rooms and sports. The (rational) fear is that predatory men now have free access to spaces wherein girls and women are vulnerable – change rooms, prisons, shelters, and toilets. For all of eternity we have understood that women and children are vulnerable to men who might choose to abuse them. We as a society have put safeguards in place for that reason – this includes separate bathrooms, segregated by sex.
There have been numerous reports of men accessing girls’ change rooms of late, of men harassing and assaulting women in prison, of males beating females in their own sports competitions, of girls fast-tracked towards “transition” in an attempt to become “male,” only to realize too late that this endeavour was not only impossible, but undesired.
We had an opportunity to stop this all early on. It’s not as though the warning signs weren’t there. Not long after Bill C-16 passed, a man named Jonathan Yaniv rebranded as “Jessica,” and demanded a number of Vancouver-based aestheticians give him a “Brazilian bikini wax.” When they declined, explaining they didn’t offer that service to men, Yaniv threatened to sue for discrimination, claiming he was trans. He made headlines by dragging 16 of them through a Human Rights Tribunal just like the one Trudeau will allow who knows how many Canadians to be dragged through for crimes like “misgendering.” In 2019, I was banned from then-Twitter for just that – referring to Yaniv as “he.”
Canada watched this happen, and the warning was ignored. Now, the oh-so-feminist Justin Trudeau is campaigning against Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilivere on the basis that he is the one invested in protecting women’s rights. This is the same man whose party put forth and passed the very legislation that led us all into the clown car we all now travel in in Canada, wherein men are women and women are “menstruators.” Poilievre is looking to have a very good chance of beating out Canada’s golden boy in our next election not least in part due to his support for the Freedom Convoy and his recent extremist-adjacent statement, clarifying that “obviously female sports, female change rooms, female bathrooms should be for females, not for biological males.”
The terrorists are in the house!
Will the trans reign of terror end with sane politicians, voted in by Canadians finally coming to their sense? It remains to be seen. Otherwise, buy a ticket and get on board the train to, well, almost anywhere else. Canada is quickly becoming a lone soldier, left behind in a universal awakening to woke insanity. Once a source of envy, people no longer wonder what it’s like to live in such a peaceful, beautiful, sane country of polite people, but instead want to know “What the f**k is going on in Canada?”
