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Premier Smith’s Violation of the Rights of Transgender Youth

Gavin Cook
Department of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University
SOCI-216: Canadian Society
Dr. Donna MacDonald
March 15th, 2024
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At the beginning of February, the Premier of Alberta, Danielle Smith, announced her

proposal for changes to the policies surrounding transgender youth in the province. The

announcement came with a list of proposed policies, including limiting gender-affirming care for

minors, making puberty blockers (a medium by which transgender youth can suppress the effects

of puberty, thus allowing them to hormonally develop not as their assigned gender but as their

preferred gender) illegal for youth under the age of 15, and mandating that parents and teachers

are both informed of and consent to a preferred name change (Dawson, 2015). These proposed

policies stem from the notion that youth are not developed enough as humans to be capable of

making such life-altering decisions, and as a result should not be allowed to make those

decisions at all. The main citation for this idea is a source named Lois Cardinal, someone who

underwent gender-reassignment surgery while young and later came to regret it. It is said by

Smith that they have consulted several sources on this matter and have gotten a wide range of

opinions to properly determine if these policies are necessary as well as what the policies should

be – but should these sources be trusted? Should the rights of transgender youth be determined

by those who have not been transgender youth, those who do not know the experiences they go

through, and the percentage that regret the decisions they made to undergo gender-reassignment

surgery? The article addressing this bill and the sources behind them is from the Global News,

titled “Alberta says it consulted widely in drafting controversial transgender rights policy” by

Heather Youex-West, does not give a direct opinion on this matter but does propose another

perspective from someone the article keeps anonymous by referring to simply as Dave. It

discusses how Dave, another person who underwent gender-reassignment surgery as a youth,

does not regret going through with the surgery, as if he were to continue living the life he had

lived prior to the surgery, he is certain he would have committed suicide and would not be here
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today. The juxtaposing positions demonstrated by Lois Cardinal, someone who regrets their

surgery, and Dave, someone who would not have lived to this day without it, shows the

complexities of this issue, as well as the issues in the consultation Premier Smith is seeking when

it comes to deciding on these policies.

The article presents a biased perspective on the matter at hand, providing perspectives

from both sides of the article. It Cardinal, on the side of Smith saying, “I have a mental disorder

called gender identity disorder.”, but also quotes a medical professional against the bill stating

“This is a well-accepted, evidence-based intervention that would be prohibited by this bill” when

discussing the effects the policy would have on puberty suppression, which she advocates for as

being an accepted and recommended practice by the World Professional Association for

Transgender Health. The article does lean towards being against the bill as it provides more

sources on people speaking out against it; however, as this is a human rights issue, by being

slightly biased towards the side that is for human rights, the article is better to read as it does not

feel like it is justifying blatant, objective violations of the rights of youth. Under International

Law under the Convention of the Rights of the Child, “Child participation is (inextricably) linked

to a child’s best interest.” (Bala & Houstan, 2015, para. 2). Youth have the right to give their

voice on a matter which directly concerns them, and this matter is no different as it effects

transgender youth; however, according to the original news article from the CBC, the only

people consulted on this matter were other adults well past the age that these changes affect.

And, as someone who was a transgender youth in Canada, being able to speak on issues that

directly affect you is essential to ensuring the solutions to those issues are ones that work for

you, rather than against you. Therefore, although the article contains biases against the proposed

bill, they are biases towards human rights and thus biases that should be accepted.
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The issue is framed as a problem by the article. As previously mentioned, it does not use

language directly that implies any sort of lean to one side or the other, but it uses more references

to the side that is against the proposed bill than it uses for the side that is for the bill. The

references it uses are also blatantly against the bill, leaving no room for debate on if the quotes it

is using are with or against it. The references it makes most prominently are from a medical

professional who argues that puberty suppression and gender-affirming care are backed by

science and safe to undergo for children, which is further backed by a study from the Hastings

Center Report that examined transgender youth treatment and concluded that “Once allowed to

transition, these children typically relax and the signs of stress, distress, and disruption dissipate,

if not disappear altogether” (Drescher & Pula, 2014, para. 25), the Canada Research Chair for the

Public Understanding of Gender Minority youth who said Smith and the rest of the Alberta

government failed to properly consult those who should have been consulted, and as mentioned

previously, Dave, who underwent gender-reassignment surgery as well and had a much different

perspective to Cardinal. These perspectives, contrasting to the only source to the contrary being a

quote from Smith herself. Shows that the article is clearly attempting to tell the reader that the

proposed bill is something that is illogical and not based on protecting children but aimed at

stripping rights from transgender youth. It can be further inferred that the article aims to show

the reader a more positive spin on the situation with Dave’s perspective, discussing what

allowing transgender youth to go through procedures to express themselves can do for the health

of those youth. Transgender people, including youth, have high rates of suicide across time and

space compared to the general population. “The suicide rate among transgender individuals in

India is about 30%” (Virupaksha et al., 2015, pp. 505) this statistic is about transgender

individuals in India, but it can be generalized to Canada as well. The suicide rate of transgender
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people is high for several interrelated reasons, but for transgender youth particularly, a lack of

gender-affirming care, parental support, peer support, and other resources adds to the statistic.

From that statistic alone, it can be inferred that if transgender youth were no longer allowed to

seek puberty suppression, required to have their preferred name / pronouns told to their parents,

and denied other forms of gender-affirming care, the suicide rate of transgender youth in Alberta

would increase. Another factor of this issue is the proposal that students in schools would be

required to inform their parents and teachers about any preferred name and/or pronoun changes.

The article briefly touches on Smith citing this to be for the parents right to know what is going

on with their child, it can have a detrimental effect to any student whose identity differs from the

identity their parents are aware of. A child’s preferred name, regardless of their gender identity, is

the name that they are most comfortable being referred to as. The reason they may choose to go

by this name at school, surrounded by their peers, may be because they are hesitant to allow their

parents to know they have interest in changing from the gender they were assigned at birth. This

could be because the parents are transphobic, and if they were to discover their child is

expressing a transgender trait, they could force the child to stop at best, and hurt them because of

it at worst. A study into the effects of using a preferred name and keeping it to the comfort level

of the person concluded that “there was a statistically significant decrease in depressive

symptoms, suicidal ideation, and suicidal behaviors, after adjusting for degree of social support

and demographic variables.”, saying that using the person’s preferred name made their overall

mental health better – and it can be assumed from this that the opposite is also true; violating the

youth’s trust by telling a parent about their preferred name/pronouns, and thus indirectly

preventing them from comfortably using that name, you make issues they may have like

depressive symptoms and suicidal behaviors much worse.

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The article’s biased perspective may be based on the author’s own opinion on the matter,

One of the quotes used in the article from Wells is “It is clear these policies have been developed

on ideology rather than any scientific evidence.” This runs contrary to the earlier quote in the

article by Smith stating they had been consulting several sources, thus making it a sound

decision. Ideologies that go against transgender people have existed for as long as transgender

people have existed – it is not uncommon for people who are not transgender to have the belief

that there is something wrong with being transgender for a number of reasons, religious beliefs,

family beliefs, social standards, etc., especially reinforced by the fact that the DSM considered

being transgender, or transsexual / having gender identity disorder as a mental disorder, causing

professionals to believe that not identifying with the gender you were assigned at birth is a

mental irregularity “Many physicians and psychiatrists criticized using surgery and hormones to

irreversibly and, in their view, incorrectly, treat people suffering from what they perceived to be

a delusional condition in need of psychotherapy and reality testing.” (Drescher, 2010, pp. 3) it

was believed that these people were suffering from delusions, irrational thoughts which they

believed to be real. As a result of this and other factors at play, it was taught vertically and

horizontally that someone who wants to identify as something besides what they were assigned

at birth, they were either suffering from a mental disorder or purposely going against the grain

for one reason or another. This is coupled with the shaky legalities surrounding transgenderism in

Canada; how there were little direct laws surrounding transgender rights beyond the 1982

additions to the Quebec charter of human rights “Protection under the Québec ground of civil

status dates back to 1982,” (Singer, 2020, pp. 3), how “there was little focus on the fact that the

federal human rights act was one of the last jurisdictions in Canada to add explicit trans grounds,

or on the limited jurisdictional reach of the federal act”, meaning laws did not directly address
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transgender people and thus inadvertently allowed for prejudice against transgender people,

creates a strong belief. A belief this strong and prevalent even to this day, when the DSM-5 no

longer classifies gender-identity disorder as a legitimate disorder, can affect even those who are

transgender, such as Cardinal – who the article, by showing Dave’s perspective, implies is

experiencing this prejudice towards herself because of experiences she may have had in her life

that cause her to believe that her being transgender is unnatural and wrong. The issue that comes

from this is that Cardinal is one case of a person who regretted gender-reassignment surgery,

while there are millions of other transgender people who do not regret undergoing surgeries in

their youth that, like Dave, may have saved their lives.

It is important to consider the full extent of Cardinal’s view as well to understand the full scope

of this issue. As previously mentioned, Lois Cardinal states that she regrets undergoing gender-

reassignment surgery when she was 21, an age she considered youth, and has come to advocate

strongly against it, leading to her involvement in Smith’s proposed bill. Cardinal said that she

believed it should be an adult decision, implying that she, as a 21-year-old, was not mentally

mature enough to be making the decision to undergo her surgery – and saying she suffers from a

disease called gender identity disorder, which the DSM-5 no longer recognizes as a legitimate

disorder. She claims the reason it is no longer recognized in the DSM-5 is because it was edited

by the “trans movement” to spread an agenda. The article clearly does not give validity to this

statement as it includes this section alongside other support for Smith’s bill before giving much

more support against Smith’s bill, and Cardinal’s statements, by showing several more quotes

against it. However, even though her opinion appears to be influenced by anti-trans groups, there

is merit to her words that should not be discounted entirely. Transgender people are like any

other people in the way that they are all different people who have different views, beliefs, and
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experiences. It would be illogical to assume that every transgender person wants to undergo

gender-reassignment surgery or that every transgender person would be satisfied with their

decision across the board; it is also unreasonable to assume that all youth who identify as

transgender will continue to identify that way throughout their teenage years and into adulthood,

as they will go through countless experiences and learn more about themselves. Therefore, the

simple idea that gender-reassignment surgery should not be permitted for people below a certain

age has merit, it prevents young people from making a choice they might regret. However, the

legal age for a person to undergo gender-reassignment surgery is already 18 years old in Canada

according to an article by the CBC, but also “surgical options… aren’t considered until ‘very,

very late into care’ – and almost never for patients under 18” (Goodyear, 2023), meaning even if

a youth is striving for surgery, any medical professional will not consider it until gender-

affirming care has gone on long enough for it to be deemed that the surgery will be beneficial for

the person’s mental health and wellbeing in the long run, and Smith’s bill will make this virtually

impossible despite that by limiting the less intense resources like name changes and puberty

suppressants. Despite the demographic of people that have regretted their surgeries, there is

mountains of evidence to suggest that the surgeries make transgender people’s lives significantly

better “Numerous studies show that being on a treatment procedure, including hormone

treatment, is associated with lower rates of psychopathology”, “Lower rates of suicide in

individuals with gender dysphoria are related to being in treatment for gender dysphoria and

better social support”. “Keeping in mind all of the psychological changes, we conclude that

presently, gender reassignment is the best possible intervention available for improving gender

dysphoria” (Yildizan et al, 2014, pp. 8-9). It is scientifically sound to say that giving children the
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option to seek and receive gender-affirming care is linked to an increase in their overall

wellbeing.

Global News itself is a left-wing leaning news publisher according to the AllSource

record of media biases. As such, the opinions it expressed and the topics it goes over may be

skewed towards issues that are of rights violations and against right-wing leaning publications.

This is evident in how Smith is a member of the conservative party, a party typically associated

with rights violations, particularly for anybody outside of the wealthy, white, cisgender male

demographic. This bias could influence the public to lean towards the idea that Smith’s proposed

policy is a rights violation and is discriminatory towards transgender youth, as well as against the

rights of children to participate in issues concerning them as it discusses more opinions against

the policy than it does opinions in support of the policy.

The key findings of this examination of the Global News article are that Premier Danielle

Smith is proposing a policy that will limit the rights of transgender youth in regard to receiving

gender-affirming care, the article is a left-leaning perspective that highlights the opposing views

to this. The article could have gone into greater detail by offering context first, as I had to go to

another news article to find the actual policies Smith was proposing, but I do not believe it could

have benefited from being less biased; a bias does not mean a source is illegitimate, particularly

when the issue at hand is a direct attack on a group of people who did not instigate an attack. If

the article attempted to justify Smith’s proposed policy in any way, it would prompt readers to

potentially lean towards agreeing with Smith and give more support to a harmful proposal.
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References

Child Participation: The right to participate. The Canadian Bar Association. (2016),

https://www.cba.org/Publications-Resources/Practice-Tools/Child-Rights-Toolkit/

theChild/Child-Participation#:~:text=A%20child%20who%20is%20capable,the%20child

%27s%20age%20and%20maturity

Drescher, J. & Pula, J., (2014), Ethical issues raised by the treatment of gender-variant

prepubescent children., The Hastings Center Report, https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.365

Drescher, J. (2010) Transsexualism, Gender Identity Disorder and the DSM, Journal of Gay &

Lesbian Mental Health, 109-122, 10.1080/19359701003589637

Goodyear, S. (2023), How gender-affirming health care for kids works in Canada, Canadian

Broadcasting Centre, https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/gender-affirming-care-youth-

1.7021529

Singer, S., (2020), Trans rights are not just human rights: legal strategies for trans justice,

Cambridge Core, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-law-and-

Vance, S.R, (2018)., The importance of getting the name right for transgender and other gender

expansive youth, Journal of Adolescent Health,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.07.022

Virupaksha, H.G. et al., (2016), Suicide and suicidal behavior among transgender people,

National Library of Medicine, https://doi.org/10.4103%2F0253-7176.194908

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Yildizhan, B.O et al (2014), Effects of sex reassignment surgery on quality of life and mental

health in transsexuals, ResearchGate (29:1) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0924-

9338(14)77643-6
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Appendix

“Alberta says it consulted widely in drafting controversial transgender rights policy”,

Heather Yourex-West, 2024, Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/10281751/alberta-says-it-

consulted-widely-in-drafting-controversial-transgender-rights-policy/

Article regarding the proposed policy by Premier Danielle Smith in regards to limiting the

resources available to transgender youth for the sake of preventing youth from making a large

decision they could come to regret later in life.