No mainstream Canadian health body has even hinted that puberty blockers for children might be ill-advised

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First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

For both Canada and the U.K., it was right around 2015 that both countries went all-in on an “affirmation” approach to gender identity.

Up to that point, changing one’s gender was a stringent process reserved almost exclusively for adults. But in quick succession, both nations adopted a torrent of new laws, guidelines and codes that legalized “self-identification” and normalized “gender-affirming” medical interventions for gender dysphoric children and youth.

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A mere 10 years later, the U.K. has been plunged into a national reckoning that they may have just overseen one of the most damaging medical scandals of the last generation.

Canada, by contrast, is doubling down.

Last month, the U.K.’s National Health Service broke with its Canadian equivalent by stopping prescriptions of puberty blockers for children.

And then, this week the NHS dropped the Cass Report – an explosive official review into the British government’s approach to “gender services” care for minors.

Prepared by pediatrician Hilary Cass, the report concluded that there was never any reliable evidence for the various medical interventions that were routinely being prescribed to gender dysphoric youth. What’s more, Cass described a youth gender care system in which any criticism had been relentlessly quashed.

“There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop,” wrote Cass.

Even The Guardian – the paper of record for the British left – ran a front-page story this week saying that “thousands of vulnerable children” were subjected to “unproven treatments” pushed by a “toxic” ideology that viciously quashed all dissent.

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“Adopting a precautionary outlook seems prudent when dealing with life-changing treatments for young people when the long-term effects remain poorly understood,” wrote the paper’s editorial board in an accompanying statement.

All told, the British experience has been the polar opposite of Canada.

Earlier this year, a push by the Government of Alberta to restrict medical interventions for gender dysphoric youth was immediately condemned by virtually every health agency, academic department and left-leaning politician in the country.

In January, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith introduced a suite of changes to provincial transgender policy. Outside of some new mandates on female-only sports, the changes mostly had no effect on any trans Albertans over the age of 18. Trans women will even be allowed to continue going into women’s washrooms and change rooms.

But it was a different story when it came to minors. Gender-affirming surgeries were banned outright for Albertans under the age of 18. Puberty blockers and hormone therapies were banned for anyone under 16.

“Prematurely encouraging or enabling children to alter their very biology or natural growth, no matter how well intentioned and sincere, poses a risk to that child’s future that I, as premier, I’m not comfortable with permitting in our province,” Smith said.

And it was not a hypothetical. In the prior fiscal year before Smith’s announcement, eight Alberta minors underwent some form of chest surgery as part of gender affirmation.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau immediately accused Smith of fighting “vulnerable LGBT youth.” Health Minister Mark Holland said it “places kids at risk” and was “extremely dangerous.”

“Affirming gender, making sure that kids and families have the health care that they need on extremely sensitive issues, is so very important,” he said.

Groups from the Canadian Medical Association to the Canadian Paediatric Society to the Ontario Medical Association all employed much the same language.

“Ensuring children have universal access to a full range of medical care is essential for their well-being,” read a statement by Canadian Medical Association president Kathleen Ross. Without “comprehensive health care options,” Alberta was denying its trans youth the right to “the medical support necessary for authentic self-expression.”

The institutional reaction to the Cass Report has been much the same.

Kristopher Wells is the Ottawa-appointed Canada Research Chair for the Public Understanding of Sexual & Gender Minority Youth. Within hours of the release, he called it a “sham” assembled by conversion therapists in a country “that is virulently anti-trans.”

If Canada seems to be staying the course on policies that have already scandalized most of its European peers, it helps that large swaths of the United States are choosing to do the same thing.

This week, American essayist Wesley Yang noted that the issue has become the rare instance of Canada and the U.S. standing virtually alone on a social issue. On gun control, socialized medicine and free speech, among others, Canada has historically sided with Europe against the U.S.

But wrote Yang in a social media post, “child sex changes are one of those strange issues in which Canada seems to prefer being aligned with the US than with the UK and the social democracies of Northern Europe.”

Although Canada initially cut funding to UNRWA following Israeli intelligence reports that the agency had profound ties to terrorism and the October 7 massacres, Ottawa then restored funding so quickly that UNRWA never actually missed a dollar of Canada’s most recent pledge of $32 million. This week, the National Post’s Bryan Passifiume got an exclusive look at the intelligence dossier that Canadian diplomats would have needed to overlook before that funding was restored. It included:

If you happened to run into a former national leader in an airport last weekend, you can probably credit the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference, which wrapped up on Friday. The annual conservative gathering managed to score three former heads of government as keynote speakers: Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, former U.K. prime minister Boris Johnson and former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Just as new numbers emerge to show that Trudeau government efforts have done almost nothing to alleviate the housing crisis, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suddenly issued a Friday pledge to fix everything by 2031. In short, he promised to get 3.87 million extra homes built by 2031 – the precise number of additional homes that the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has estimated would be necessary to restore affordability to 2004 levels. To do that, Canada would immediately need to increase its rate of home-building by an incredible 100 per cent – and then keep it there for at least five consecutive years (and do it all amid high interest rates, and a continued sky-high rate of immigration). In a cursory analysis, housing economist Mike Moffatt did like one component of the new plan: A 10 per cent Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance for purpose-built rentals. A prior version of this policy is one of the reasons that Canada built so many four-storey walk-up apartments in the 1970s.

There hasn’t been a lot of good news out of the Canadian health system for quite some time now. But a trio of particularly illuminating health-care stories just happened to fall within a 24-hour period late last week:

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15.04.2024

No mainstream Canadian health body has even hinted that puberty blockers for children might be ill-advised

You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.

First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

For both Canada and the U.K., it was right around 2015 that both countries went all-in on an “affirmation” approach to gender identity.

Up to that point, changing one’s gender was a stringent process reserved almost exclusively for adults. But in quick succession, both nations adopted a torrent of new laws, guidelines and codes that legalized “self-identification” and normalized “gender-affirming” medical interventions for gender dysphoric children and youth.

Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.

Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.

Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.

Don't have an account? Create Account

A mere 10 years later, the U.K. has been plunged into a national reckoning that they may have just overseen one of the most damaging medical scandals of the last generation.

Canada, by contrast, is doubling down.

Last month, the U.K.’s National Health Service broke with its Canadian equivalent by stopping prescriptions of puberty blockers for children.

And then, this week the NHS dropped the Cass Report – an explosive official review into the British government’s approach to “gender services” care for minors.

Prepared by pediatrician Hilary Cass, the report concluded that there was never any reliable evidence for the various medical interventions that were routinely being prescribed to gender dysphoric youth. What’s more, Cass described a youth gender care system in which any criticism had been relentlessly quashed.

“There are few other areas of healthcare where professionals are so afraid to openly discuss their views, where people are vilified on social media and where name-calling echoes the worst bullying behaviour. This must stop,” wrote Cass.

Even The Guardian – the paper of record for the British left – ran a front-page story this week saying that “thousands of vulnerable children” were subjected to “unproven treatments” pushed by a “toxic” ideology that viciously........

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