A human rights tribunal in British Columbia recently fined a man $750,000 for public statements he made opposing a school board’s promotion of gender ideology. The tribunal found his comments, speeches, and social media posts brought “injury to their dignity, feelings, and self-respect.” The same tribunal fined a woman $10,000 for privately disagreeing with a friend’s gender transition.

In Canada, enforcing gender ideology comes at a steep cost: the suppression of free speech, the erosion of medical integrity, and harm to the wellbeing — perhaps even the future fertility — of young Canadians. And it is all justified as a necessary sacrifice for the “greater good” of a tolerant society, an ideal now woven into Canada’s national identity.

The scientific evidence against so-called gender transition, however, is mounting. Most countries around the world are beginning to realize it — except Canada.

In 2024, the United Kingdom moved to ban puberty blockers outright. Australia’s state of Queensland prohibited puberty blockers in January, while New Zealand imposed strict controls in November. In February, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons released a position statement on gender surgery, warning against its potential harms.

Yet every Canadian health agency claims affirmation is the default solution for gender dysphoria. The Canadian Pediatric Society recommends accepting one’s gender identity as valid — even six-year-olds. The same organization explicitly dismissed the findings of the Cass Review, a landmark study that discovered the weak evidentiary basis for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

Such stark defiance of evidence-based care is nothing short of negligence — not surprising for a country that now includes death in its definition of health care. But negligence alone is an insufficient explanation. Canada is not catching up with the rest of the world to dismiss medical transition because their commitment to it is rooted in ideology, not science. And it is propagated by elites through a centralized system of top-down planning.

First, legislation enforces affirmation of gender identity. Canada passed a ban on so-called conversion therapy in 2021, defined as a practice designed to “change a person’s gender identity to cisgender.” But the “conversion therapy” of changing a person’s body to match their gender identity — which is defined in a circular way — is allowed. In fact, it’s effectively mandated. Those convicted under this law can receive up to five years in prison. There are no carve-outs for adults seeking sex-affirming therapy to help them with gender dysphoria.

Where there is no law directly prohibiting speech, Canadian courts create one. The latest examples both come from British Columbia: the man fined $750,000 for public statements and the woman fined $10,000 for a private conversation.

Such outrageous penalties have a chilling effect on speech. Absent any serious dissent, the monolithic worldview promoted in Canadian schools, hospitals, and traditional media will continue unchallenged. And the children don’t stand a chance.

Consider Julia Malbogat, a Toronto mom who wrote in 2021 about her daughter “coming out” as transgender. During a family trip to their cottage, her daughter said that she’s a boy, to which Julia replied with a simple “ok.” When asked how she knew, the child pointed to the school’s Rainbow Alliance, a grade 4-6 club teaching “sexual and gender diversity.” Julia dismissed the possibility her child was mistaken and noted that surgery wouldn’t be an option until 16. By then, she assumed the dysphoria would be “insistent, persistent, and consistent” enough to justify medical intervention.

But how could someone’s gender dysphoria be anything except persistent if they are affirmed from the moment it is expressed? Gender-confused children rarely hear a serious alternative from schools or clinicians — though some later wish they had. Ask the detransitioners.

The largest study of detransitioners in Canada and the United States suggests that many who reversed a gender transition wish doctors “took a more neutral approach to care.” The participants reported feelings of alienation, emphasizing the high social cost of detransition. One woman said she was “ghosted” by the doctor who did her mastectomy. Treating gender identity as immutable and patients as infallible leaves minors, who are already going through emotional and physical changes, at risk of serious harm.

Look no further than their chosen cultural symbols. Publicly funded spaces across the country are decked out in pride flags, including city halls, legislative assemblies, walkways, libraries. This imagery is so pervasive in places of cultural importance that a first-time visitor might mistake it for the national flag.

In the absence of their rich traditions, Canadians have united around a new vision of the good. This new orthodoxy is summed up well in Bill C-4’s preamble, which states that conversion therapy “propagates” the myth that “cisgender identity is to be preferred over other gender identities.” While Canada elevates the dubious idea of an inner, gendered essence, it denounces the view that our bodies are essential to who we are.

That is a philosophical claim, not a scientific one. Science can’t disprove it.

Until Canada re-examines its commitment to this new orthodoxy, it will keep ignoring the warnings — until the damage is too widespread to dismiss.

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Liana Graham is a research assistant in domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation.

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