Transgender Rights Bill C-279 Suffers Senate Setback

NDP MP Randall Garrison’s private member’s bill addressing transgender rights, C-279, suffered a serious blow in the Senate this Wednesday. The bill, which seeks to fight hate crimes against transgender individuals by adding gender identity provisions to both the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act, was reviewed by a Senate committee which announced three amendments to the law. By amending the law, the committee essentially has restarted the process by sending it back to the House for approval, where it has already been passed twice.

While Garrison doesn’t object to the first two amendments, the third exempts places like crisis centres, prisons, as well as public washrooms and change rooms from the bill’s provisions.

Trans rights activists find the amendment to be offensive, and Independent Liberal Senator Grant Mitchell spoke on their behalf by saying, “That particular amendment is deeply troubling to transgendered people. I want to acknowledge here, on the record, the deep pain that it causes them.”

Critics of the bill have long nicknamed Bill C-279 ‘The Bathroom Bill’, suggesting that pedophiles and sex criminals might be able to use the bill as a way to avoid being charged for lurking in washroom.

Conservative Senator Don Plett spoke in defence of the amendment saying, “This was the major issue raised with us from concerned citizens across the country, most importantly from the operator of an abused women’s shelter on a First Nations reserve.”

Now that the bill has been reviewed by the Senate committee, it will return to the House, where it will await its turn for consideration. At that point, the House will have the option of accepting or rejecting the Senate’s amendments. Due to the expected timeline for the upcoming general election, many advocates of the bill fear that the bill will not be able to pass all of the necessary steps in both chambers of the federal government.