The Radical White Paper Currently Tabled in Ottawa You Need to Know About

It contains a host of trans-related recommendations that can't be allowed to pass.

On June 19, 2023, NDP MP Randall Garrison tabled a White Paper on the Status of Trans and Gender Diverse People in parliament. A white paper is a Cabinet-approved document that introduces new government policy. This particular document was created with the goal of taking “trans rights” to their most absurd possible conclusions.

Randall Garrison / Facebook

The principal researcher of the white paper was a trans-identified man by the name of Dylana Thompson, a House of Commons intern. The introduction sets the stage by calling on the government to capitulate to the demands of trans-identified people by framing them as under attack:

Trans and gender diverse Canadians now enjoy formal human rights protections under the law with the passage of Bill C-16 in 2017. Following this monumental legal change, the Government of Canada needs to continue to make the necessary policy changes to make Canada a safer and more inclusive place for trans and gender diverse people. We have come a long way, but we have much more work to do.

Canada has an opportunity to be a world leader at a time when hate movements around the globe are trying to eliminate trans and gender diverse people from existence.

Note the constant forced teaming of “gender diverse people” with “trans.” It is no longer possible to not conform to stereotypes and simply be seen as a member of your own sex. Now, you are a “gender diverse” person.

According to Xtra, the Conservative Party of Canada actually denied Garrison permission to table the white paper, so Justice Minister David Lametti tabled it on his behalf.

There wasn’t much attention on the document until November 2023, when none other than Fae Johnstone, one of Canada’s most notorious trans activists, launched a petition to the federal government urging it to implement the white paper’s proposed policy solutions.

Later in the month, the Canadian Labour Congress urged members to sign the petition. In early December, UFCW—“Canada's most progressive private sector union”—did the same.

So just what does this white paper say? Well, the 22-page document contains 29 recommendations divided into 10 sections. You can read the full document for yourself, but I provide a briefer overview (along with some snarky commentary) below.

Section 1: Support and Empower Trans and Gender Diverse Organizations

To start, the Government of Canada should “commit to sufficient and stable” funding for “trans and gender diverse organizations,” both new organizations and those that already exist.

Section 2: Access to Gender-Affirming Healthcare

This section contains a lengthy preamble to its recommendations, starting with the assertion that “comprehensive gender-affirming care saves lives and money.” It references the thoroughly discredited World Professional Association for Transgender Health in arguing that procedures for “trans women” are not cosmetic but medically necessary. It also calls access to “hormones and puberty blockers” a “life or death” issue.

This is followed by seven recommendations which start with a call for comprehensive “gender-affirming care” in provincial, territorial, and federal jurisdictions. The government of Canada is also called on to fund “research and innovation in gender-affirming surgeries and other areas of gender-affirming care” and to “review testosterone’s status as a controlled substance” to suit the needs of “trans men.”

Section 3: Hate and Violence

According to the white paper, there is a “rising tide of anti-trans hate and violence at home and abroad.” No resources for this claim are provided. However, to address this tide of hatred, the government is called on to “take a clear stand” against it and to hold round table discussions to address “deadly cis male violence against trans women” in campaigns that are sensitive to “colonialism and racism.”

It is also recommended that the government create guidelines for how “GBV [gender-based violence] organizations” support trans and gender diverse people. Note that we no longer speak about “sex-based violence” as the assumption is that all organizations created to help women escape violent situations must serve males as well.

Finally, there is a recommendation I could get behind if only I could trust the government to carry it out with any shred of honesty and dignity:

That the Government of Canada collect better data on anti-trans hate and violence in order to understand the full scope of the issue.

Rather than honestly looking and reporting that people are never murdered in Canada for identifying as trans, any report on this issue would certainly consider women standing up for our rights as “hate and violence.”

Section 4: Identity Documents

This section begins: “When cisgender men and boys or women and girls assert that they are men and boys or women and girls, we don’t ask for more evidence. However, when trans men and boys, women and girls, or gender diverse people do the same thing, we ask them to jump through hoops to prove that they are the gender they say they are.”

The confusion being suffered here is because the author has forgotten or is choosing to obfuscate that identity documents record sex, not inner “gender” feelings. Nevertheless, to solve this confected issue, the government must allow people to change gender markers on all federal identity documents by “self-attestation.”

Section 5: Refugees

Here, the guide calls on the Government of Canada to provide a “clear path to safety for trans and gender diverse refugees.” No matter what terms we use to refer to people who are being persecuted for not fitting into sex norms and stereotypes, I have no issue with this. However, the government is also called to take it one step further and to:

end the discriminatory policy of denying coverage for all gender-affirming procedures and lead by example by implementing comprehensive gender-affirming care coverage for trans and gender diverse refugees and asylum seekers.

Section 6: Employment Equity

According to the document, “trans and gender diverse people are chronically unemployed and underemployed.” It blames this state of affairs on “prejudice and inequity.” The only recommendation here is for the government to “amend the Employment Equity Act to include sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.”

Section 7: Sports

Here is where the document begins its direct attack on the rights of women and girls, stating:

The Government of Canada needs to take a clear stand in defence of the rights of trans and gender diverse people generally and trans women and girls particularly to participate in sports. Policies that ban trans women and girls from sports lack credible scientific evidence.

This is the world we live in, a world where a white paper tabled in parliament believes that there is no evidence that males have an advantage over females in sport.

The sole recommendation here calls on Sport Canada to “take meaningful action” to stop sports organizations from adopting “trans exclusionary policies.”

The policies being referred to are policies that would protect women’s sports by ensuring they are open exclusively to females.

Section 8: Blood and Organ Donation Policies

While it is hard to top the previous section in sheer denial of reality, this section somehow does it. It calls out policies that “group trans women with men who have sex with men.” In other words, it is arguing that males shouldn’t be grouped with males when it comes to blood donation.

But wait—it gets even worse. Our country also apparently has an issue of dismissing and invalidating “non-binary” people by requiring blood donors to “identify as either male or female.”

To address these apparently very important issues, Health Canada is called on to ensure that all screening policies are “rooted in science.”

If only.

Section 9: Prisoners Rights

Again we have a full-blown attack on women, in particular the most vulnerable women in society: those who are incarcerated. The document notes that trans-identified people in Canada have the option of choosing their preferred prison during sentencing, but that a good deal of men requesting transfer after sentencing are still denied (no small comfort considering the types of monsters Correctional Service Canada has granted transfer to).

It then claims that “we know that trans and gender diverse people are at extremely high risks of sexual violence and other forms of violence inside prisons.”

On the contrary, Correctional Service Canada’s own data shows that trans-identified male prisoners are actually more dangerous than the typical male prisoner and are more likely to be incarcerated for sexual and violent crimes.

Despite the unimaginable level of cruelty it takes to think that these men should be locked up with women, the white paper explicitly prioritizes the “health and safety needs” of trans-identified prisoners and recommends that prisoners be listed according to their “gender identity” rather than their anatomy in databases.

It also calls on the government to provide “comprehensive gender-affirming care coverage for trans and gender diverse federal prisoners” because we have nothing better to do with our tax dollars.

Section 10: Sex Work and HIV Decriminalization

“Trans rights” and “sex work” go hand-in-hand for progressives (for some ungodly reason), so this section was not a surprise.

“Those most marginalized in our communities,” this section begins, “are the most impacted by the criminalization of sex work.”

In the completely inverted world that we live in today, it is the criminalization of an exploitative industry that is the problem, not the horrific industry that breeds human trafficking and rape itself.

Instead, the white paper recommends:

That the Government of Canada fully decriminalize sex work and repeal Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act and the provisions of the Immigration regulations that prohibit sex work.

Last but not least, Randall Garrison argues that HIV non-disclosure criminalization jeopardizes “the safety of trans women (many of whom are sex workers).” And so, he recommends that “the government of Canada remove HIV non-disclosure from the Criminal Code of Canada.”

In conclusion, the white paper calls for the implementation of these recommendations and insists that “this work needs to begin without delay.”

On the contrary, it is of crucial importance for women, children, and all Canadians that this white paper is wholly rejected and for our society to begin taking a different path. Whatever workable crumbs one could pull from it, like helping refugees or protecting employment rights, come from a wholly disordered perspective that does not recognize human sexual dimorphism and actively seeks to harm women and children.

This document's policy recommendations around providing children with puberty blockers and safeguarding male access to women’s sports and prisons are deranged, not to mention the myriad of issues in every single section.

As bad as things already are in Canada, this white paper makes it clear that they can get a whole lot worse. Our only hope is that it stays tabled until Trudeau is finally given the boot and that it never sees the light of day again.

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