OttSun.Canoe.ca – By Antonella Artuso, Queen’s Park Bureau Chief
More protection needed in provincial code, group says
Transgendered Ontarians want protection against discrimination spelled out for them more clearly in the provincial human rights code.
Rosalyn Forrester of the Trans Health Lobby Group and Canadian Transsexuals Fight for Rights said members of the transgendered community are not adequately protected under the existing code.
Transgendered people, who include transsexuals, transvestites and other individuals whose identities don’t conform to conventional notions of sex, face numerous difficulties trying to get jobs and housing, she said.
Forrester said some transsexuals lose their family doctors when they “transition” to the other sex because the physician claims they make other patients uncomfortable.
“Up until recently, police services would treat the transitioning person as the designated sex that they were born and not the sex that they were transitioning into,” she said. “And therefore, (transsexual women were) strip-searched by male police officers, housed with male populations.”