The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security is a registered charity in the state of Pennsylvania, USA. On 3 December 2024 they published a statement opposing the genocidal anti-trans bills in the province of Alberta, Canada. Below you can read a short summary of this very clear statement. (Click here to read their full statement.)

The Albertan United Conservative Party (UCP) Government in Canada introduced three bills directly targeting transgender youth in Alberta’s legislature on 31 October 2024. The Lemkin Institute condemns these bills as genocidal in nature and supports the legal challenges already planned by Egale and Skipping Stone Foundation, two Canadian organizations which advocate for 2SLGBTQ+ rights and freedoms. The Assembly of First Nations 2SLGBTQQIA+ Council has also released a statement opposing the bills. Alberta’s proposed legislation is a threat to the identities, lives, and wellbeing of all trans individuals living within Alberta, especially young ones.

“Genocidal anti-trans laws are just the beginning of a greater assault on the rule of law as such and on the value of individual life, whether trans or not.”

Three bills against trans peoples

The three pieces of legislation are aimed at controlling different aspects of trans peoples’ lives and erasing them from a variety of public spaces. The Health Statutes Amendment Act, 2024 is designed to prevent trans individuals from accessing necessary health care. It bans the prescription of hormone therapies or puberty blockers to minors – but only when administered as gender-affirming care. When needed for other medical conditions, the bill allows their use. Although the Act itself sets out which drugs are banned, it also grants the Minister of Health unfettered discretion to ban any drugs they wish.

The second bill, the Education Amendment Act, 2024 aims to erase trans youth from schools or endanger trans youth living in unsupportive homes, preventing them from accessing support of any kind by increasing governmental and parental interference and surveillance in [public] schools. It subjects teaching resources that mention gender and sexuality to Ministerial overview. For all students, it requires schools to notify parents of any request to be referred to by a new name or pronoun. For those 15 and under, the bill prevents teachers from using a preferred name or pronoun for a student without parental consent. The bill also subjects sex education to parental approval.

Lastly, the Fairness and Safety in Sport Act has as its goal the erasure of trans women and girls from sports. It prevents women and girls who were not assigned female at birth from participating in sports both in the education system and at the provincial level. The Minister of Tourism and Sport was unable to respond to questions about how necessary this legislation actually is, as the Albertan government apparently has no idea how many trans women and girls actually participate in sports in the province.

Misunderstanding population proportions

Overall, we get the impression that the Albertan government is having a hard time understanding demographics. It has crafted three pieces of legislation designed to make life harder for a whopping 0.37% of its population.* Whatever threat Premier Smith is worried about from the trans community, this response seems disproportionate and wasteful in addition to bigoted, mean-spirited and harmful, given how much red tape it will create.

* This, according to CBC News, based on 2021 census data, in which 12,480 Albertans answered that they do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

In consulting stakeholders to craft the bills, the Albertan government appears once again to have gotten confused about population proportions. Instead of consulting groups representing the 2SLGBTQ+ community (or the trans community in particular), Premier Smith turned toward a fringe minority – “detransitioners” – to craft its policy. Studies show that regret for transitioning occurs in around 1% of cases where trans individuals had gender affirming surgery. Instead of consulting the 0.37% of trans people in Alberta, Premier Smith mistakenly consulted the 1% of that 0.37% who had undergone gender affirming surgery as the proper group of stakeholders to consult – a tiny number not remotely representative of trans people.

Genocidal in nature

The Lemkin Institute finds the global rise in legislation targeting the trans community to be profoundly worrisome. Policies crafted to erase the existence of a small, marginalized group or to make their lives more difficult, especially in ways which are proven to increase suicide and incidents of hate crimes perpetuated against them, are genocidal in nature in that they target a very specific identity group for eradication.

Alberta is well aware that its policies will cause harm to trans individuals, especially trans youth, as evidenced by its explicit mention of such risks in the Education Amendment Act, 2024. Premier Smith has positioned these policies as a win for “parental rights.” The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention would add a caveat: These policies are a win for the rights of abusive parents. Weaponizing the abusers of a marginalized, vulnerable group through law is a clear manifestation of genocidal intent: It justifies, normalizes, and legalizes hostility for an identity group, empowering family members to use coercion against other, less powerful, family members, thereby encouraging the destruction of a young trans person both at home and in public.

Conclusion

These policies are crafted with a single intention in mind: to exaggerate the presence of and threat posed by an already marginalized group and then to erase their existence. This is genocidal intent in action. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security opposes it and stands in solidarity with its targets. We warn all Canadians that genocidal jaws rarely remain tethered to the initial target group – they tend to expand like a fungus to engulf ever-growing numbers of unwanted peoples. Genocidal anti-trans laws are just the beginning of a greater assault on the rule of law as such and on the value of individual life, whether trans or not.