If Canada's opposition party can do it, why can't Australia's?
Canada’s Conservative Opposition party has voted to protect children from LGBTIQA+ gender conversion therapies that chemically castrate and surgically mutilate them.
At its national convention in Quebec City at the weekend, a vote to prohibit medicalised gender change for minors was carried by 69 percent.
And 87 percent of delegates voted to keep biological males out of girls’ and women’s private spaces.
The motion said the party “believes that women are entitled to the benefits of women-only categories (e.g. sports, awards, grants, scholarships. Etc.”
The party has also defined woman as someone assigned female at birth.
While the Canadian Conservatives are ahead in the polls, parliamentary leader Pierre Poilievre has refused to commit to changing the law to protect children, girls and women if he is elected Prime Minister.
Asked about implementing the policy his party’s grassroots members voted for, Poilievre said:
"We've just got a whole book of new policy proposals passed through the convention.
"I'll be studying them carefully and talking with our caucus members on those policies, and when we've had a chance to do our homework we'll have more to say."
This is typical of the cowardice of leaders of major political parties.
Last year former Prime Minister Scott Morrison walked away from the idea of a government bill to save girls’ and women’s sports, despite it being championed by high profile candidate Katherine Deves and Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler.
The Canadian Conservative Party’s resolution said:
A Conservative government will protect children by prohibiting life-altering medicinal or surgical interventions to treat gender confusion or dysphoria, and encourage positive mental and physical health support for all Canadians suffering from gender dysphoria and related mental health challenges.
In three Australian jurisdictions – Queensland, the ACT and Victoria – it is against the law to discourage a child from going to a gender clinic.
These so-called anti-conversion therapy laws, which ironically allow gender conversion therapy but ban anyone seeking help for unwanted same-sex attraction or gender confusion, are supported by the Liberals in Victoria (they took the policy to last November’s election) and are not actively opposed by Liberals elsewhere.
NSW Independent gay activist MP Alex Greenwich has a bill in the NSW Parliament modelled on Victoria’s which mandates jail time for parents who seek to protect their children from the gender clinics.
The Victorian bill even bans prayer requested by a sufferer.
The Canadian Conservatives’ policy on child gender clinics, protecting girls and women and the definition of woman is the same as Family First’s.
It will be interesting to see if the Liberals and Nationals follow.