O, Canada! House of Commons Passes Transgender Rights Bill

The LGBT blogosphere is buzzing with the news that Canada's House of Commons by a vote of 143-135 has narrowly passed a bill banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity or gender expression.

The entire NDP and Bloc Quebecois caucuses and six Conservative members voted in favour of Bill C-389, allowing it to pass with a vote of 143-135 in the House of Commons Wednesday night. Some Liberals voted against the bill while others abstained.

The private member’s bill is now handed to the Senate — where the Conservatives have a majority — where it must pass before becoming law.

In terms of votes, the unelected Senate has historically followed the lead of its elected counterpart. But late last year, members of the upper chamber came under fire when they defied the opinion of majority of the House, and defeated an environmental bill.

The Leader of the Government in the Senate, Marjory LeBreton, said the bill will be treated the same way it was in the House, and “sees no evidence at all” to indicate any party lines will be taken.

The bill, sponsored by NDP MP Bill Siksay, would prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression through adding “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Canada Human Rights Act, and through adding transgendered and transsexual Canadians as identifiable groups in the Criminal Code’s hate crimes law.

It is very notable that an LGBT-supportive country like Canada, which legalized marriage equality way back in 2005, has only been able to get a bill passed through one house of the legislature banning anti-transgender discrimination in 2011. Here in the United States we are nowhere near to a national legal consensus on marriage equality and we haven't been able to pass a bill banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation despite trying since 1973! There are only 12 states which include the T in their LGB anti-discrimination laws.

And it is looking more and more unlikely that Canada's gender identity non-discrimination bill will become law this year:

Critics have dubbed the legislation “the bathroom bill,” claiming it would allow male sexual predators to invade women’s washrooms and change rooms.

[...]

The Conservatives, who have a majority in the Red Chamber, have adopted the tactic of using the Senate to block private-members’ bills passed by the House of Commons that don’t accord with the government’s agenda.

Legislation to force the government to act on climate change was defeated last year, while bills requiring Supreme Court judges to be bilingual, providing tax credits for university graduates who work in certain regions and offering restitution for Italian Canadians interned during the Second World War, lie in limbo.

Since Prime Minister Stephen Harper does not support the transgendered-rights legislation, it will doubtless face similar purgatory when it arrives in the Senate.

And with prospects for a spring election increasing, because opposition parties can’t bring themselves to support the upcoming budget, any legislation that isn’t on the brink of royal assent is likely to perish.

Hopefully if there's a Spring election, there will be a change in Governments from the Conservatives to the Liberals.