In February 2024, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith took to the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) to announce a flurry of anti-trans policies. In a seven-minute, slick video set to spa-like music, Smith confirmed her “love” and “support” for trans people in the province, while simultaneously announcing a slate of impending policies aimed at regulating their inclusion in schools and sports and limiting their access to healthcare. Riding the wave of Conservative and right-wing support for “parental rights,” Smith framed the policies as the government protecting children from harm and expanding choice for parents.

 

Smith’s new policies include banning access to puberty blockers and hormone therapy for gender-affirming care for youth under the age of 16, except for those who have already started those treatments. For youth aged 17 and under, top and bottom gender-affirming surgeries will not be permitted (bottom surgeries have always been limited to those 18 and older). At school, Alberta youth under 16 would require parental consent to use chosen names and pronouns, and parental notification will be required for 16 and 17-year-olds. Classroom instruction on gender, sexuality, and sexual orientation will require parental notification and formal opt-in, and all third-party resource materials will need to be pre-approved by the ministry. Smith’s policies would also ban trans girls and women athletes from participating in competitive women’s sports; they will be forced to play in gender-neutral or co-ed divisions.

 

 

Hundreds of Albertan organizations and businesses have signed onto statements condemning Smith’s actions and rhetoric.

 

 

Critics of Smith’s new anti-trans agenda include The Alberta Medical Association, United Nurses of Alberta, Social Workers Association of Alberta, the Alberta Teachers’ Association, and the Canadian Paediatric Society who, in a statement to the Alberta premier, said, “We are deeply concerned that implementation of these policies will not only undermine the fundamental rights of transgender children and youth in Alberta, but will lead to significant negative health outcomes, including increased risk of suicide and self-harm.” 

 

Hundreds of Albertan organizations and businesses have signed onto statements condemning Smith’s actions and rhetoric. The local trans-affirming non-profit, Skipping Stone, is leading the legal response to impending policies alongside Egale Canada. National advocacy organizations, including Society for Queer Momentum, have called on Smith to walk back her announcements. In an opinion editorial for the Ottawa Citizen, Momentum’s executive director Fae Johnstone denounced the policies and criticized Smith’s government for not consulting with experts, stating, “If the Alberta government had issues with the existing policies, it should have approached the Alberta Medical Association to chart a path based in evidence. That didn’t happen.” 

 

 

 

 

The political response to Smith’s attacks on trans youth has been overwhelming on the provincial and national level, with Liberal and NDP leaders calling on Smith to withdraw her attack on trans youth. Responding to Smith’s announcement, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called on her to “Fight with us to defend the rights of vulnerable Canadians, don’t fight against vulnerable LGBT youth.”

 

Critics over and again cite evidence-based research linking gender-affirming care and inclusion to positive health and wellbeing, especially for trans and gender-creative children and youth. Trans people, their loved ones, and medical professionals who serve them have taken to news media, social media, and any other public platform they can find to remind Albertans that the harms of systemic and institutionalized anti-transness far outweigh any risks associated with medical interventions, sports competitions, or the use of chosen names. 

 

Following the announcement by Smith, Dr. Katie Greenaway, executive director of the gender-affirming Floria Clinic, collected 48 signatures from doctors and nurses in an open letter condemning the proposed policies. Greenaway named the policies as “a step in the entirely wrong direction. It does create a fear for trans people and a culture where it’s OK to discriminate against trans people in a context where they are already facing so many barriers to self-acceptance, to being accepted by their communities, and accessing care.”

 

 

 

 

Parental rights movement and the ‘phantasm’ of gender

 

With such an outpouring of condemnation of Smith’s policies, it is important to note that these policies have yet to be tabled, let alone passed. In her February video, Smith gave no sense of timeline for when these policies would be introduced in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Speaking as if new regulations on healthcare, schools, and sports would be immediate through a speech-act alone, it is no wonder that the term “draconian” has become synonymous with this slate of proposals. It was not until a press conference held the day after the announcement that the public was given any timeline for these forthcoming policies. With no formalized bills in hand, Smith’s United Conservative Party (UCP) won’t be tabling legislation until fall.

 

Why did Smith announce new policies seven months before she was ready to table them? Fear. In their newest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender (2024), gender studies scholar Judith Butler offers a global analysis of actors that promote fear and create fantasies around the concept of gender. Gender equity and gender diversity are positioned as a threat to a “natural gender order” and to the “traditional family.” Butler argues that those in positions of authority deflect attention from real crises—economic conditions, climate disaster, war—and channel social anxiety and fear into the idea that stability comes from maintaining (or returning to) “traditional” (and unscientific) ideas about sex, gender, and sexuality.

 

 

 

 

In Canada, much of the fear around gender has been stoked by the “parental rights” movement, which, while not a new concept in the country, has notably picked up steam since last summer. The combined efforts of groups Family Freedom and Hands Off Our Kids resulted in the national 1 Million March 4 Children last fall, with various groups planning demonstrations. The march called for the elimination of inclusive curriculum and the rejection of “LGBTQ ideology,” using rhetoric of grooming and pedophilia in marketing materials targeting 2SLGBTQIA+ people. 

 

In response to marches in Alberta, Smith told reporters she was “sympathetic to parents who want to preserve the innocence of their kids for as long as they can.” Far from a group of concerned parents demanding more engagement with their children’s schools, the “parental rights” movement is a strategic right-wing extremist group of activists and lobbyists. Groups like PAFE (Parents as First Educators)—the so-called “leading voice for the defence of parental rights in Canada”—view New Brunswick’s Policy 713 and Saskatchewan’s Parents’ Bill of Rights as wins for their movement. However, both of these bills aim to legislate the use of chosen names and pronouns in schools. Teresa Pierre, former president of PAFE, stated, “It started with (New Brunswick Premier) Blaine Higgs followed by Saskatchewan with the notwithstanding clause. Every time something new happens there is something building and getting stronger.” What is getting bigger and stronger is a movement motivated by hate—one that is being enabled by Conservative governments. 

 

The Canadian Anti-Hate Network maintains that “parental rights” are mobilized by running candidates for school trustee positions and school board meetings that reject inclusive curriculum, including banning books that promote “gender ideology” and “critical race theory.” Such actions by organizations like Alberta’s PAFE and the Canadian lobby group Association for Reformed Political Action mirror the extremist-designated group Moms for Liberty, which has set up more than 250 chapters in 45 states and cozies up to white nationalist groups like the Proud Boys. In Canada, violent protests at drag queen story times, calls to ban books in schools and libraries, and the prohibition of rainbow crosswalks and flags in municipalities reflect ongoing efforts to stoke fear around sex, gender, and sexuality.

 

 

 

A nexus of hateful politics

 

If Butler’s thesis is correct, that gender has become a phantasm through which diverse actors can coalesce, then it may come as no surprise that Smith’s suite of anti-trans policies in Alberta was welcomed by the anti-abortion organization Campaign Life Coalition. National President Jeff Gunnarson called Smith’s announcement “ground-breaking” and stated, “Children in every province need to be protected from mutilating surgeries that leave them permanently sterilized and scarred for life.” 

 

Pro-life advocates are capitalizing on the threads sewn by “parental rights” advocates between gender-affirming care treatments and fertility. At a media scrum following the announcement, Smith suggested that children are “permanently” altering their bodies “before even having sex” and alluded to puberty blockers as a source of sterility. Days later, conservative call center ProLife Alberta and Blue Direct sent Albertans robocalls asking them if minors should require parental consent to get an abortion in the province. This use of “parental rights” language in anti-abortion rhetoric is a glimpse into the future of Alberta under UCP reign.

 

While Smith’s policies have yet to be legislated, the chilling effect is already taking shape provincially. In Red Deer, a small city between Calgary and Edmonton, teachers in Catholic Regional Schools were told by the division’s superintendent to get rid of Pride-related flags and materials in classrooms and to report 2SLGBTQIA+ students’ identity disclosures in order to notify parents. They were also instructed to report if they overheard students talking about being in same-sex relationships. Not only do these directives implement new school policies that have not yet been ratified, they go beyond what Smith has announced will be tabled. 

 

 

“What anti-gender proponents seek to restore is a dream, a wish, even a fantasy that will reinstate order grounded in patriarchal authority.” – Judith Butler

 

 

It is clear that the premier’s policies do not necessarily need to be formally introduced for them to have an effect on trans rights and sexual health education in the province. The Alberta NDP alleges that Smith’s government removed 20 social media accounts affiliated with Alberta Health Services (AHS) that share sexual health education content, including AHS-affiliated social media accounts for organizations such as Calgary Zone, Teaching Sexual Health, and Healthy Parents, Healthy Children. Alberta’s Ministry of Health has not responded to questions about whether the ministry or the Government of Alberta instructed AHS to remove these social media accounts. This limiting of publicly available sexual health education came on the heels of the UCP’s decision to refuse the new federal Pharmacare plan, which would have covered the cost of contraceptives for every Albertan.

 

For Judith Butler, conservative attacks on reproductive rights are connected to fantasies of a traditional patriarchal past. “[What] anti-gender proponents seek to restore is a dream, a wish, even a fantasy that will reinstate order grounded in patriarchal authority,” they write. This “phantasm” of gender is at work in Albertan politics. It is clear that Smith and her government are afraid of gender. Or perhaps, they understand that the fantasy of restoring patriarchal order is a powerful tool to bring a range of actors and supporters under their (right) wing. 

 

 

 

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