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First, the good
news. Although Canada has had a Conservative federal government for the last
eight years, a fusion of the former Progressive Conservatives and Reform
Parties, and although that government has cut funding to the Charter Challenges
legal aid programme, the Harper administration's version of social conservatism
isn't as virulent as the Republican counterpart south of the border in the
United States. Apart from a feeble foray early in its tenure, the Harper
administration hasn't touched marriage equality, although it does have cold feet
about federal antibullying legislation. Nor has it acted against women's
widespread access to abortion rights, a legacy of Morgentaler v Canada, the
Canadian Supreme Court decision that decriminalised abortion across Canada. And
the Harper administration is also pragmatic enough to recognise that given that
the Canadian Medical Association has declared neutrality over the subject of
assisted suicide and won't oppose decriminalisation, and that assisted suicide
has massive public support, it needs to move with the times on that issue as
well. This has outraged Canada's inflexible, dogmatic and extremist Christian
Right organisations, which still ruminates against abortion and homosexuality
and continually express disdainful statements about the Harper administration,
unfavourably comparing it to the US Republican Party. However, Canada is not
the United States- the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a robust, open-ended
constitutional document, and Canadian society is far more liberal and secular
than their southern neighbour.
This isn't to say
that the Harper administration doesn't pander to religious social conservatives
on other issues. One of them is sex work. While Australia and New Zealand tend
to favour pragmatic decriminalisation as the best framework to deal with sex
worker occupational health and safety issues, Canada initially made a prudent
Supreme Court decision striking down the provisions of the Criminal Code that
prohibited sex work, back in December 2013, Attorney-General (Canada) v
Bedford and Others. Unfortunately, and despite abundant evidence from New
Zealand about the positive occupational health and safety consequences of
decriminalisation from our Prostitution Reform Act 2013 provided to the Canadian
House of Commons and Senate select committee in Ottawa, the Harper
administration ignored this firm evidential basis for positive and practical
reform and lurched backward into prohibitionism. Granted, they did so under the
guise of the "Nordic" prohibitionist model, which criminalises client purchase
of commercial sexual services in theory, but has actually resulted in repressive
intensified policing, particularly against street sex workers in its native
Sweden. The passage of this punitive legislation, Bill C-36, occurred in
October 2014 and was understandably bitterly fought by Canadian sex workers
rights groups, given the destructive impact this has had on Swedish sex workers,
driving many into unsafe occupational venues. Hopefully, with the Harper
administration trailing in the polls, the issue will be positively revisited if
Justin Trudeau's Liberal Opposition win the forthcoming Canadian federal
election in October 2015.
If that proved
frustrating, so have prolonged attempts by Canadian LGBT organisations to add
gender identity to Canada's antidiscrimination Human Rights Act- much like our
own sorrows and stubborn resistance to its direct inclusion during the tenure of
our own centre-right Key administration. Fortunately for transgender Canadians,
Canada is a federal nation, and provincial antidiscrimination laws are more
inclusive. Happily, Manitoba (2012), Newfoundland and Labrador (2013), the
Northwest Territories (2004), Nova Scotia (2012), Ontario (2012), Prince Edward
Island (2013) and Sasketchewan (2014) all have trans-inclusive
antidiscrimination laws, which means that only Alberta, British Columbia,
Quebec, Yukon and Nunavut lack such protections. At the federal level,
centre-left New Democrat MP Randall Garrison has been trying to insure the
passage of Bill C-279, the second attempt to insure federal Canadian
antidiscrimination and hate crimes legislation includes gender identity. Like a
previous attempt, Bill C-389, Bill C-279 passed the lower Canadian House of
Commons, but was stymied by Harper administration select committee obstructions
and then derailed with a grotesque "bathroom bill" amendment designed to prevent
transgender people using the ablutionary facilities of their reassigned gender.
This occurred because of the backward religious social conservative elements
from the prior Alberta-based Reform Party within the current Conservative Party.
However, the good news here is that most of the Liberal, New Democrat, Bloc
Quebecois and Green caucuses voted for C-279. In the event of a change of
federal government after October 2015, there may finally be progress for the
long-suffering transgender community.
Recommended:
Attorney General (Canada) v
Bedford and Others [2013] :http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/13389/index.
do
"Canada Supreme
Court strikes down prostitution laws" BBC News: 20.12.2013:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada- 25468587
Egale Canada:
Transgender Rights:http://egale.ca/category/trans- rights/
Egale:
"Disappointing Senate decision exposes transgender people to threats and
violence" Egale: 26.02.2015:http://egale.ca/trans-rights/c-279-senate- committee/
Not Recommended:
Bill C-36 (Canadian
Parliament: Debates, Submissions and Text-October 2014):http://www.parl.gc.ca/LegisInfo/BillDetails.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Bill=C36&Parl=41&Ses=
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