Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks during a news conference in Calgary on Friday, Oct. 13, 2023. A professor who specializes in the law and children's rights says policy changes affecting transgender Albertans are concerning. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol
CALGARY – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says changes underpinning new policies surrounding transgender youth will come in the fall legislature sitting.
Smith is also not ruling out using the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to preserve the new policies.
Smith’s United Conservative government is imposing new rules and restrictions on youth changing their names or pronouns at school and getting hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery.
The province will also be clamping down on transgender female athletes competing against women and girls in sport, and mandating parental consent for all sex education instruction in schools.
Smith says the rules are designed to stop youth from making life-altering biological decisions before they are mature enough to do so.
Critics – including LGBTQ advocates, the federal government and Alberta’s Opposition NDP ““ say the changes are cruel and will further stigmatize and alienate transgender youth already facing abuse and high rates of suicide.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on Feb. 1, 2024.
