{"id":102988,"date":"2017-05-18T00:20:03","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T04:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=102988"},"modified":"2017-05-18T00:20:03","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T04:20:03","slug":"transgender-community-ndp-urge-trudeau-government-to-change-travel-regulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/05\/18\/transgender-community-ndp-urge-trudeau-government-to-change-travel-regulations\/","title":{"rendered":"Transgender community, NDP urge Trudeau government to change travel regulations"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u201cUltimately,<\/a>
\u201cUltimately, access to air travel or any type of transportation is … a fundamental service that’s out there. It just sends the wrong message.\u201d (Photo: frankieleon\/ Flickr<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA \u2013 Jennifer McCreath has a fear of flying of a different sort: a fear she won’t be allowed on board.<\/p>\n

McCreath, a 43-year-old transgender woman in St. John’s, N.L., takes issue with a federal regulation that prohibits airlines from transporting anyone who \u201cdoes not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification presented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doing away with the regulation is a cause the federal NDP has been pushing for five years, and one for which Justin Trudeau expressed support before becoming prime minister.<\/p>\n

It’s also one the federal Liberal government should be all over, given its self-proclaimed reputation as the party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, McCreath said in an interview Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt all comes back to the notion of equality,\u201d said McCreath, who described having to wait for two hours in a holding area before a flight to the United States in 2011, when she was in the process of changing the gender on her birth certificate.<\/p>\n

The Canadian regulation, she said, gives officials too much power in cases where someone doesn’t look like the gender indicated on their identification.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, access to air travel or any type of transportation is … a fundamental service that’s out there. It just sends the wrong message.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trudeau’s cabinet has the ability to change the regulation immediately, said Randall Garrison, the NDP’s critic for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer issues.<\/p>\n

The regulation has nothing to do with safety and does little more than subject transgender Canadians to public humiliation and obstructs their fundamental right to travel, Garrison said.<\/p>\n

He noted Trudeau himself raised the issue both in the House of Commons and on Twitter in 2012, when he was an opposition MP.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he supported removing this discriminatory regulation then,\u201d Garrison asked during question period Wednesday, \u201cwhy as prime minister has he taken absolutely no action?\u201d<\/p>\n

The question came one day after Transport Minister Marc Garneau introduced a new passenger bill of rights, a response of sorts to last month’s sensational viral video showing airline security forcibly dragging a passenger off a United Airlines jet.<\/p>\n

The Liberal government is looking at the transgender issue, Garneau responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will have more to say in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that came as cold comfort to transgender Canadians who were on Parliament Hill on Wednesday to push for the passage of the government’s Bill C-16, a ban on discrimination on the basis of gender identity or gender expression.<\/p>\n

If passed, the legislation would make it illegal to deny someone a job or to discriminate against them in the workplace on the basis of their gender identity or how they outwardly express it.<\/p>\n

It would also amend the Criminal Code to extend hate speech laws.<\/p>\n

Fae Johnstone, a 21-year-old social work student at Carleton University who helped to organize Wednesday’s rally, sees the current travel regulation as \u201coppressive\u201d and \u201ctransphobic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t look like the gender marker that is on my identification,\u201d said Johnstone, who identifies as neither a man nor a woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think it is very fair that if I tried to travel that because I’m trans, because I present differently than they expect me to, that they wouldn’t let me travel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Liberal government also says it is working to address gender identity on passports \u2013 an issue already tackled in countries like Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat work is continuing,\u201d Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould told the Senate legal affairs committee earlier this month.<\/p>\n

For her part, McCreath said she hasn’t been back to the United States since 2011, a trip she used to take at least once a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt left a very bad and sad taste in my mouth,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned very quickly that just because I’d had … (sex-reassignment) surgery didn’t necessarily mean I was going to find full acceptance in the world as a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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