If tenacity is a virtue, MP Bill Siksay, NDP critic for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, certainly seems to have his fair share of it. You have to give him credit. He has been focused. On his third go round, Siksay found success in bringing Bill C-389 to the attention of our Canadian Parliament.
The private member’s bill passed in mere minutes at the Justice and Human Rights Committee on November 2nd, 2010. The vote was 9-2, with Conservative MPs Brent Rathgeber and Stephen Woodworth opposing. It was then introduced, May 15th, passed first reading May 17th, and then, more recently, passed the report stage on December 8th with 143 votes in favour and 131 against.
This bill, if passed into law in 2011, will amend the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) to “include gender identity and gender expression as prohibited grounds for discrimination.” Egale Canada stated that it would “add crimes motivated by transphobia to the list of crimes treated by the Criminal Code as potential hate crimes…affording transgender, transsexual, cross-dresser, intersex, gender-queer, gender non-conforming and gender-open individuals clearer protection against discrimination.”
The Trans Alliance Society is on a mission to raise awareness that “transgender and gender-variant individuals suffer disproportionately higher rates of discrimination, unemployment, denial of services, addictions, infectious disease, depression and suicide.” They do not believe that the Charter laws that protect all Canadians on the basis of gender and disability are explicit enough. Read the rest of this entry »
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