Written by Karen Finlay for Women are Human
On November 21, 2019, a group of Canadian women publicly launched a petition calling for the repeal of “the most retrograde legislation to be passed during contemporary times.” As legislation that “infringes upon women’s rights to be defined as female and to have legal sex segregated spaces”, the petition states that Bill C-16 is essentially “state-sanctioned gaslighting”.
Bill C-16, passed in June 2017, added “gender identity or expression” to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Canadian Human Rights Act. A number of women are becoming increasingly concerned that “C-16 has been abused and weaponized by many rights-campaigners who have not been acting in good faith”.