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Alberta

‘Liberal’ parents of gender-confused kids among supporters of Alberta’s proposed ‘transitioning’ ban

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Parents whose kids have undergone medical or surgical ‘transitioning’ say that Premier Danielle Smith’s policies will spare other families from ‘the heartache their families have been through.’

As highlighted in a recent Epoch Times report, parents whose kids have undergone medical or surgical “transitioning” say that Smith’s new policies will only benefit families in general and spare them from “the heartache their families have been through.”

On January 31, Smith announced what is perhaps the strongest pro-family legislation in Canada, protecting kids from life-altering so-called “top and bottom” surgeries as well as other extreme forms of transgender ideology.

According to Crystal, a mom from Calgary, her son Noah, when he was in Grade 9, had a friend who made a “transition” from a female to a male. Her son had noted he was what is called a “trans ally,” but suddenly he began to identify himself as “she/they.”

“Fast forward to the early part of Grade 10, and out of the blue I get a text from my kid while he’s at school saying, ‘I’m now identifying as she/they,’” said Crystal, who said she is “quite a liberal parent.”

However, despite being a “liberal,” she admitted that she did not have an easy time with her son changing names and using different pronouns.

“Out of the blue is this vitriol towards me when I didn’t get it right,” she said, adding she then just decided to call her son “kiddo.”

However, Noah then told her he wanted hormones. Crystal and her ex-husband had thought Noah was just going through a phase, as he was “well known” for this.

“He would try on different so-called ‘identities’ like a jock, a nerd, a rapper,” Crystal said, and even as he was supposed to be “transitioning,” took on a look of a “goth.”

Alberta’s forthcoming regulations include a ban on so-called “top” surgeries (mastectomies, breast constructions) as well as “bottom” surgeries (vaginoplasties, phalloplasties) for children ages 17 and under. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones are also restricted to those age 16 and older but only with parental consent.

Smith said her United Conservative Party (UCP) government will soon introduce legislation that, if passed, would bar doctors in the province from medically or surgically “transitioning” children under age 17. The new legislation will also mandate parental consent for pronoun changes in school. Coming in the fall will be additional legislation that bans men who claim to be women from competing in women’s sports.

Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) praised Smith’s decision to introduce legislation to ban doctors from chemically or surgically “transitioning” children, calling it a “political miracle.”

Crystal’s line in the sand for her son: ‘No medical affirmation’

When the Alberta government was researching its new policy regarding banning surgically or chemically “transitioning” children, Crystal said she was one of the parents they talked with to get feedback.

She admits at the time she was not a fan of Smith or her party, but now says she is “doing this right.”

Crystal noted that if this policy had been in place only three years ago, all the heartache could have been avoided.

“This is blowing up relationships,” she said.

When speaking to her son, Crystal noted that her “line in the sand will always be [that] there will be no medical affirmation.”

As a result, she then said she was “hit with the vitriol.”

Due to Crystal having had to deal with her son wanting to become something other than his birth sex, she contacted parents with similar situations via a group called Our Duty.

After connecting with parents on the site, Crystal noted how her son Noah “checks a lot of the boxes” with other kids who say they are transgender.

She said that kids in these situations all use the same “script” of saying they are going to “kill myself if I don’t get the proper medical intervention if you don’t use the pronouns.”

“It’s the constant threat of suicide,” she noted.

Complaint filed against doctor who gave hormones

Despite Crystal trying to delay her son wanting to undergo a “medical transitioning,” she did book an appointment with a doctor to talk about hormones.

However, after being referred to a clinic to further talk about her son’s matter, she said the personnel were “aggressive.”

Crystal noted how the clinic was constantly emailing and calling her to make an appointment for her son, and she was told she had to have all the paperwork and blood work done before the meeting.

She said that this made “no sense,” so she told the clinic that she was “not signing a consent form.”

When she went to the appointment with her son, she was taken to a room with a doctor alone and was told that this appointment was not for her but for Noah.

The doctor only spoke with her for 10 minutes and was already willing to prescribe her son hormones. At this point, she confronted the doctor for not doing a thorough psychological assessment or any other screening. The doctor mentioned to her that while she was able to oppose the treatment, she could end up in the courts and that he would testify on Noah’s behalf. He then said he had always won in similar situations with other parents.

Crystal filed a complaint with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta against the doctor regarding her experience with her son, but for the time being, is not making public his name.

Her son later went to that doctor alone and started to take hormones. It was at this point she realized she had no control over the situation.

Crystal said that in the past her family doctor along with a child psychologist did not affirm Noah’s gender dysphoria. She noted that it was only the “gender experts,” all of whom had “zero history with my child,” who suggested this.

“They did not solicit the qualified professionals we had in place,” she said.

As for Noah, who is now in grade 12, the doctor who had the complaint against him told Noah that it was his mom who did this, which made her son mad.

“I will never forgive you for this,” he told her.

He then ran away from home and told people that he was not “safe” at home with his mom.

“I just want to be your mom,” she had mentioned to him.

While many so-called “gender-affirming care” workers claim that the effects of puberty blockers can be reversed, according to Dr. Jane Anderson, vice president of the American College of Pediatricians, as per The Epoch Timesthe hormones can severely impact brain development.

Puberty blockers can cause heightened depression, severe mood swings, and weight gain.

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Alberta

Media melts down as Danielle Smith moves to end ‘transitioning’ of children in Alberta

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From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

After Alberta’s Danielle Smith put forth legislation to protect kids from being gender ‘transitioned,’ the Canadian media went on a predictable melt down, citing ‘experts’ who blatantly lie to advance the LGBT agenda.

A year after announcing her intention to combat transgender ideology and protect children, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has tabled three pieces of UCP (United Conservative Party) government legislation: 

  • The Education Amendment Act 2024 will require parental consent for “socially transitioning” children under the age of 16 (changing a child’s name or “preferred pronouns”). The bill also gives parents an “opt-in” option for any sexual or content at school. Smith has emphasized that the Alberta Teaching Profession Commission has the power to discipline teachers if they decide to break the law. 
  • The Health Statues Amendment Act 2024 will ban the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors, as well as prohibit sex change surgeries on minors. 
  • The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act will ban trans-identifying men from female sports teams.  

Together, these three bills represent the most definitive pushback against gender ideology in Canada by any premier. Smith’s decision to announce her intent to pursue such legislation and then wait has turned out to be politically savvy—it has given the UCP government a good look at the LGBT response, and during that time the U.K.’s Labour government has successfully fought to maintain a similar ban in the courts and publicly rebutted many of the scare tactics used by LGBT activists.

Smith and the UCP are thus walking into this debate with eyes wide open, and are clearly certain that the public is on their side (it is) and that the legislation can survive the court challenges surely coming from LGBT activists. The policies are clearly popular with the UCP party’s base, who handed Smith a staggering 91.5% approval rating in her leadership review at UCP gathering in Red Deer last Saturday.  

The party also passed 35 policy resolutions, including several that indicate the UCP’s willingness to go further in fighting transgender ideology, with resolutions that would restrict “exclusively female spaces” like bathrooms and changerooms to females and designating transgender surgeries as “elective cosmetic procedures” not funded by the taxpayer. The motions received near-unanimous support.  

The Canadian press, unsurprisingly, is working hard to present policies that the vast majority of Canadians support as an attack on fundamental norms (albeit norms that only surfaced in the last few years and were never presented to voters). Global News ran the headline: “Alberta unveils 3 sweeping bills affecting trans and gender-diverse youth.” It is important to note that the press accepts the premises of transgender ideology as the starting point for their reporting, with heavy usage of nonsensical phrases like “gender-diverse youth,” which implies that there are many genders. 

In fact, Global News and other Canadian outlets trotted out talking points that have been definitively rebutted by the U.K.’s Cass Review and multiple medical studies—in fact, even the New York Times has been reporting on the permanent harms of puberty blockers over the past several years. An example from Global News: 

Alberta parents of gender-diverse youth like Haley Wray believe the new laws will give kids less choice — especially when it comes to health-care that is not permanent but instead, gives kids time to work through their identity struggles. 

‘Hormone blockers are a very valuable tool,’ Wray said, explaining they have a very small window of effectiveness to pause, but not prevent, puberty. ‘It is reversible because nothing changes. And what that does is it allows youth and families to have that that pause, that break to explore further, validate, understand what this means and know that permanent changes aren’t happening.’

Wray believes the proposed legislation will make the province a less safe place for tens of thousands of Alberta kids who aren’t straight. It’s why, Wray says, a growing number of families with transgender children are now grappling with whether Alberta is a place they can stay. ‘I know people who have, and I know people who genuinely feel like there is likely nowhere to go,’ she said. 

This is incorrect. Puberty blockers cause permanent damage, and children may be rendered permanently sterile after taking them for a relatively short period of time. Puberty is not something that can be “paused,” and it frequently causes irreversible rather than reversible damage. Smith and her government understand this, which is why they have decided to pass this legislation—not, as nearly every press outlet claimed, to “target trans youth,” but to protect them. 

The CBC chimed in with sentences like this one: 

Terms like ‘biological female’ and ‘biological male’ can be used to imply that transgender people are still their assigned sex at birth, despite their identity. 

To translate: a scientifically accurate and precise statement is now an ideological one, but inherently ideological language invented by the transgender movement over the past decade is, in fact, technically accurate. People can identify as anything they want; it is irrelevant to their biology. The CBC presents pointing this out as some sort of propagandistic attack on vulnerable people. 

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National PostNational ReviewFirst Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton SpectatorReformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture WarSeeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of AbortionPatriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life MovementPrairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

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Alberta

Alberta calling for federal election! Premier Smith demands feds scrap dangerous oil and gas production caps

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Premier Danielle Smith, Minister of Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz and Minister of Energy and Minerals Brian Jean issued the following statement on the proposed federal oil and gas production cap:

“This production cap will hurt families, hurt businesses and hurt Canada’s economy. We will defend our province, our country and our Constitutional rights.

“Make no mistake, this cap violates Canada’s constitution. Section 92A clearly gives provinces exclusive jurisdiction over non-renewable natural resource development yet this cap will require a one million barrel a day production cut by 2030.

“The evidence is overwhelming. Three reports from reputable firms have shown that these regulations will sucker-punch Canada’s economy, a million barrels cut every day according to S&P Global, $28 billion a year in lost GDP according to Deloitte, and up to 150,000 lost jobs according to the Conference Board of Canada.

“The losses to GDP mean billions a year will disappear from the economy. Billions that won’t be going towards new schools, hospitals and roads, all for a reckless ideological scheme that will not reduce global emissions.

“Ultimately, this cap will lead Alberta and our country into economic and societal decline. The average Canadian family would be left with up to $419 less for groceries, mortgage payments and utilities every month. Canadian parents and workers will suffer while Justin Trudeau outsources the duty to provide safe, affordable, reliable and responsibly produced oil and gas to dictators and less clean producers around the world. We could be the solution. Instead, Ottawa would rather sacrifice our ability to lead.

“Tweaks won’t work. This cap must be scrapped. Alberta’s government is actively exploring the use of every legal option, including a constitutional challenge and the use of the Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act. We will not stand idly by while the federal government sacrifices our prosperity, our constitution and our quality of life for its extreme agenda.”

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