Oh, Canada

In this story I want to show you, trans people are banned from boarding airplanes in Canada. You may be stunned to learn this because there was no legislature like this passed through the parliament. Well that’s because this was put in place through the Ministry of Transportation, which is currently run by a conservative. So, even though his country has laws about discrimination, he has effectively written a rule that discriminates on every trans person who doesn’t conform to the gender designation on their identifying documents.

This is how bad laws get through without a vote. Someone gives a middle manager power in a bureaucracy to make up his own rules without getting upper management to approve the plans, and without checking to see if those rules contradict anything else on the books about, say, human rights or civil liberties. And now that it’s in place, it will probably take a lawsuit and court order to get the ruling struck down.

The law just recently went into effect, and as of yet, no reports have surfaced of it being enforced. But it would be great if ya’ll Canadian readers might ring up your local MP and ask them to look into why the Ministry of Transportation has chosen to discriminate exclusively against trans people.