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On Wednesday, October 8th, British Columbia became the second province to introduce a bill to ban medical transitioning for minors. However, while such a ban was proposed and then passed by the governing party in Alberta, the Protecting Minors From Gender Transition Act was introduced by a member of the fourth party in the BC Legislature, MLA Tara Armstrong of OneBC.
Here is how she introduced the bill:
Members, I stand before you today not only as a member at this Legislature but as a mother. British Columbia is sleepwalking through the greatest medical scandal in modern history, and it’s our kids who are at risk. In B.C. today, doctors are causing irreversible harm to children with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries. These interventions rob children of the human right to grow up with their bodies intact and to one day have children of their own. B.C. schools add to this harm by socially transitioning children with new names and pronouns, often kept secret from parents. Gender clinics in B.C. are even performing double mastectomies on healthy young girls by the age of 14. All because we fell for the lie — a lot of us did — that children can be born in the wrong body. It’s not true though. Every child is beautiful just as they are. No drugs or scalpels are needed. Every jurisdiction in the world that has conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature has found no credible evidence to support this practice. So let’s all make it stop. This should not be a partisan issue. This bill will bring B.C. in line with the U.K. and other progressive European countries that have banned harmful and unscientific social and medical gender transition procedures for minors. In our schools, it will stop them using the wrong pronouns, keep boys out of girls’ bathrooms and remove gender ideology from school libraries and curriculum. It will stop doctors from attempting to change the sex of minors. In short, it will end this unbelievable era of indoctrination and medical malpractice. Please join me as we restore sanity to this province and provide the loving care that every child deserves.
It was a great speech. But sadly, the Protecting Minors From Gender Transition Act didn’t even make it past first reading in the legislature. MLAs voted 48-40 that the bill not pass first reading, meaning MLAs did not even have the opportunity to read the contents of bill before defeating it. This is very unusual but not unprecedented. Last year, the BC legislature did the same thing when BC Conservative leader John Rustad introduced a bill on segregating publicly funded sports by sex.
In both cases, the majority of MLAs were so captured by gender ideology that they refused to even read bills that question gender ideology, much less have a substantial discussion about it in the legislature.
More than just a ban on medical transitioning
MLA Armstrong’s bill would have gone further than any legislation in Canada in removing gender ideology from medicine and from education.
It would have defined “male,” “female,” and “sex” as based on biology rather than being arbitrarily assigned at birth or based on a person’s subjective belief. It defined gender as “the psychological, behavioural, social, and cultural aspects of being male or female.” In other words, the bill views gender as being the outworking of our biological differences.
The bill would have banned all forms of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender surgeries aimed at addressing “the minor’s perception that his gender or sex is not male/female.” This would have gone further than Alberta’s recent legislation, in part because Alberta’s age of majority is a year earlier (18 in Alberta, 19 in BC). But Alberta’s legislation only prohibits puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for ages 15 and under but permits 16- and 17-year-olds to access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones with parental, physician, and psychologist approval. Alberta’s law has no restrictions past age 17.
The Protecting Minors From Gender Transition Act proposed heavy penalties for medical transitioning minors, including “suspension of the healthcare professional’s ability to administer healthcare or practice medicine for at least one year.” Furthermore, the bill would have made any medical professional who provided medical transitioning to a child liable for any physical, psychological and emotional harm to the child caused by the medical transition for the next 25 years. The bill also would have prevented professional liability insurance from covering this liability, shifting the risk entirely to health care providers and providing another deterrent.
Additionally, the bill would have prohibited the use of public funds, property, or time to pay for or promote medical transitioning for minors. This would exclude the provincial Medical Services Plan or BC PharmaCare Plan from covering the cost of these procedures or guidance on government websites on where minors could undergo medical transitioning in another province.
But the bill wasn’t just about medical transitioning. It also dealt with gender ideology and social transitioning in schools. The legislation would have required school employees to notify parents within three days if their child wishes to socially transition. School staff would have been forbidden to use pronouns that are inconsistent with a student’s sex, regardless of parental notification or consent. This goes a step further than Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s laws that permit the use of pronouns based on gender identity with parental consent.
Further on the school front, the bill would have required schools to prohibit students from using an opposite-sex restroom, locker room, or changing facility. School staff would not be permitted to use any material or offer any program that encouraged or normalized a social transition or a medical transition. Whether this clause would entirely ban SOGI teaching resources, pride paraphernalia, or gay-straight alliance clubs is unclear.
Finally, the bill invoked the notwithstanding clause to shield it against the courts striking it down as a violation of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Opponents of Alberta’s ban on medical transitioning for minors have used the Charter to challenge Alberta’s law. While some of these legal cases are still underway, an Alberta judge did grant a preliminary injunction preventing the ban on puberty blockers from going into effect, as she opined that it might violate the Charter.
This is not the end
The introduction of this bill gives cause for hope in the cause of banning medical transitioning for minors, despite its quick demise. It shows how the desire to limit these harmful interventions isn’t just limited to Alberta but is present elsewhere in Canada. It shows that these objections aren’t just limited to private citizens or on social media but shared by politicians who are willing to raise this issue in the legislature. And it shows that, despite the defeat of the bill, many MLAs are willing to vote to ban the practice. The legislation failed in a relatively close vote, 48-40.
This legislation may be defeated in British Columbia for now, but the campaign to let kids be is only gaining momentum.
Image and audio source - The Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. (Oct 8, 2025). BC Legislature Livestream [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8KOX5oRWSo