Liberal government 'monitoring' Alberta law banning trans athletes from female sports

OTTAWA — Liberals say they’re keeping a close eye on the rollout of a new Alberta law that prohibits transgender athletes from competing in female-only athletic divisions.

“Our government believes in a sport system that provides opportunities for all Canadians to participate and excel in sport, including the transgender community. This means a sports system that is welcoming, inclusive, safe, fair, rooted in good governance and operations,” Alyson Fair, a spokesperson for Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden, said in an email.

“Using sport to discriminate against the trans community is wrong, and to the detriment of an already vulnerable, excluded, and marginalized community … There must be a path forward for sport in Canada where the integrity and fairness of sport categories are preserved, while at the same time, human rights are respected,” she added.

Fair said that her office and that of Women and Gender Equality Minister Rechie Valdez will be closely monitoring the law’s implementation this fall.

“Ensuring the integrity and fairness of the female category remains crucial, especially in elite and high-performance sport. To emphasize, this is not a license to discriminate,” wrote Fair.

Several prominent Liberals, including then prime minister Justin Trudeau, accused Alberta’s government of targeting vulnerable minors for political gain when the policy was announced last year, as part of a package of laws affecting trans youth.

Trudeau called these measures, which also included mandatory parental disclosure for school pronoun changes and a ban on medical transitions for children under 16, the “most anti-LGBT policies” anywhere in Canada.

Alberta’s new sports law, which came into effect at the start of the school year, requires all female athletes aged 12 and older to submit an attestation form indicating they were assigned female at birth.

The policy is enforced via a complaint system that allows concerned parties to trigger a review of the eligibility of individual athletes by submitting a confidential challenge form to the relevant school board or provincial sporting organization.

The completed form must include information that supports the grounds of the challenge.

If the challenge is found to have sufficient grounds, its subject will be notified and required to produce birth registration documents.

Athletes deemed to have misrepresented their birth gender, or who refuse to hand over the requested documents, will be permanently barred from competing in any female sport in Alberta.

Vanessa Gomez, a spokesperson for Alberta’s Ministry of Tourism and Sport, said the law includes robust safeguards against false and malicious challenges.

“(B)oards of in-scope entities may impose reasonable sanctions against any person who, in the opinion of the board, challenges the eligibility of an athlete in bad faith. Such sanctions may include, but are not limited to, written warnings, code of conduct violations, or any existing policies and procedures that an in-scope entity may have in place,” wrote Gomez in an email.

Gomez declined to give an example of information that would support the grounds of a hypothetical challenge, saying this question would be better directed to the various boards that will be enforcing the policy.

The respective school boards of Calgary, Edmonton and Medicine Hat didn’t immediately respond to emails about how they’ll evaluate challenges and supporting information under the new law.

Blaine Badiuk, a Lethbridge, Alta. resident who took part in government consultations on the policy, said she’s taking a wait-and-see approach to the rollout.

“I think there has to be some kind of challenge mechanism in place to give the policy teeth, but it’s something that needs to be handled with the utmost discretion,” said Badiuk.

Badiuk, who is trans, says she hopes the challenge process won’t incentivize the amateur sleuthing of certain female athletes based on their appearance, a phenomenon known as “transvestigation.”

“Information supporting the grounds of a challenge can’t be something like ‘she’s too tall’ or she has short hair,” said Badiuk.

The furore over trans athletes has already spurred ugly scenes at girls sporting events. A 2023 incident at a British Columbia school track meet where a male spectator demanded that a nine-year-old participant prove her gender made international headlines.

National Post rmohamed@postmedia.com

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