(Quebec) A major amendment to the Civil Code included in the reform of family law arouses the anger and indignation of trans people. They accuse the Legault government of making a huge “step backwards” by requiring Quebeckers who wish to change the designation of their sex on their birth certificate that they undergo genital surgery.
In the imposing Bill 2 tabled Thursday by the Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, Quebec modifies the conditions required to obtain a change in the designation of sex on civil status documents. The government foresees that such a request must in the future “be accompanied by a certificate from the attending physician confirming that the medical treatments and surgical operations undergone make it possible to conclude that a structural modification of the sexual organs has changed his apparent sexual characteristics. permanently ”.
For trans people, who do not all have genital surgery for different reasons, this aspect of the bill is a major step backwards. Since 2015, they were no longer required to undergo such an operation to change the sex listed on their birth certificate.
“People feel betrayed. It is a step backwards which is very discouraging. The Minister [de la Justice] does not come to solve a problem, it creates a problem, ”laments the Executive Director of the Quebec LGBT Council, Ariane Marchand-Labelle.
“Require a [opération], it is discriminatory, it violates the privacy and it violates the bodily integrity of trans people. We are in a situation of complete retreat. As an expert on trans rights, [j’estime qu’]we are really facing an openly discriminatory law [à leur égard] », Adds Quebecer Florence Ashley, transfeminine doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto.
A new gender identity
The office of the Minister of Justice justifies this modification to the Civil Code by affirming that it responds to a recent judgment of the Superior Court which invalidated articles deemed discriminatory against trans and non-binary people. Justice Gregory Moore wrote that “this case highlights the difference between sex and gender identity and the discrimination that can occur when the law treats them as synonyms.”
In its reform of the Civil Code, Quebec therefore proposes to distinguish between sex and gender on civil status documents. The government thus wants to allow citizens who request it to have a “gender identity”, female, male or non-binary, registered in their birth certificate.
Trans people and rights groups lament what they think looks like a coming out forced, since only trans or non-binary people will, according to them, do the administrative procedure to obtain a mention of gender identity on their civil status documents. They are also concerned that a person’s sex and gender identity may sometimes be at odds on these documents (for example, if a trans person whose sex at birth was male, who has not had an operation). genital, asks the Registrar of Civil Status to enter a female gender identity on the birth certificate).
In an interview, Minister Jolin-Barrette’s office specifies that civil status documents will not put in opposition the mention of sex and that of gender identity, in such a case. Quebec is not in a position to specify the effect that these changes to the Civil Code will have on other administrative documents, such as driver’s licenses, which display the gender of persons.
An apparent decline
McGill University Law School Dean Robert Leckey believes creating a new gender identity statement in civil status documents, while forcing an operation on those who want to change their sex, is a “flashback for no good reason.”
According to him, Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette returns “with the old model against which trans communities fought in several provinces”, which risks “violating [de nouveau] their fundamental rights ”.
I wonder what consultations the Department undertook with the trans community before advancing these proposals. It affects a minority of Quebecers, but we still have to hear them.
Robert Leckey, Dean of McGill University’s Faculty of Law
Ariane Marchand-Labelle, of the Conseil québécois LGBT, asks the government to allow citizens to change their sex on civil status documents by offering a third way to those who identify neither as a man nor as a a woman, so that they declare themselves “non-binary”.
The debate begins in Quebec
The leader of the Liberal Party of Quebec, Dominique Anglade, believes that the Coalition futur Quebec “does not understand the reality of trans people”.
“We are forcing trans people to go for genital surgery. This is unacceptable and it goes against the right to equality and the right to personal integrity. It’s really serious, ”accuses Jennifer Maccarone, official opposition spokesperson for the LGBTQ2 community.
The Executive Director of the Coalition of LGBT + Families, Mona Greenbaum, also laments that the government plans to allow only people who have requested that a non-binary gender identity be entered on their birth certificate to be declared “parent”. Rather than mother or father, on their children’s birth certificates.
Bill 2 of the Legault government will be studied in a parliamentary committee and will be the subject of public hearings.
116: Number of pages contained in the imposing bill 2, Law on the reform of family law in matters of parentage and amending the Civil Code in matters of personality rights and civil status
39: Number of laws amended by Bill 2
Source: Official publisher of Quebec