The 2024 UCP AGM Policy Resolutions

The UCP's policy resolutions were published on the party website the other day.  It's about as bad as you might expect, worse if you're a transgender person.   

Let's take a look, shall we? 

By the Numbers

There are 35 policy resolutions, of these 10 directly or indirectly target transgender people this is roughly 30% of the total resolutions - aimed at a group that is less than 1% of the population.  The remainder are largely rooted in an assortment vaguely paranoid beliefs about the world and government.  

The Resolutions

Explicitly Anti-Transgender Resolutions

This is an obvious attempt at direct erasure.  There is exactly zero evidence of there being a problem beyond the fevered imaginings of idiots.  

I do find the attempt at "precise language" here to be quite funny.  The phrase "biological females who were female at conception" really demonstrates just how utterly clueless the anti-trans types are about the complexity of biology, and in particular human development.  (You really need to watch that video). These  clowns keep trying to write things in law in a way that excludes transgender women (in particular).  

Ah, here we go - the direct attack on medical support for transgender people in the health care system.  Of course, they'll ignore a plethora of other "cosmetic" treatments that AHCIP covers for various reasons - those are all okay because they don't involve what they think people have in their pants. 

Sure, let's make it harder for transgender people who don't fit into the gender binary. Implicit to this would be subsequent efforts to ban people from changing the sex designation on their ID.  

Indirectly Anti-Transgender Resolutions

These typically contain coded language that while they don't explicitly attack transgender people, are clearly designed to further marginalize.  

Resolution 4 is coded language that is ultimately designed to be weaponized against people who belong to sexual or gender minorities.  The goal here is to shove 2SLGBTQ people firmly back into the closet they existed in prior to the 1970s.  This will be used to attack any kind of material that its proponents view as "pornography" - which will inevitably mean going after anything that portrays 2SLGBTQ lives and sexualities.  

Down the road, it will also be used to attack any form of comprehensive sex education materials. This is a gift to the anti-woman types who want to suppress female autonomy.  

Ah yes, "parental rights".  This is designed to undermine the idea that children gain rights as they mature.  The argument being made is essentially "children aren't capable of knowing themselves", when the reality is far more complex.  Human development is complex, and we really shouldn't be making decisions about children based on our individual discomfort with certain subjects. 

Also notable is the language which suggests that comprehensive sex-education material, such as that under the rubric of SOGI is labelled as "dangerous",  while SOGI has been clearly shown to reduce the rates of bullying in BC schools. 

Anti-Minority Resolutions

These affect minorities in general, but will impact on the well-being of transgender people as well as other visible minorities.

Oh, attacking "DEI", are we?  Of course they are - because inevitably someone who hates transgender people is going to hate other minorities too.  Not because those minorities are intrinsically bad, but because they're different in noticeable ways.  This kind of attack will simply hand more power to the "dominant" culture people simply because DEI requires you to think about your biases when hiring. 

This is a favourite line of attack.  Conservatives don't like the Human Rights Commission mostly because it has to make decisions that balance the rights of all Albertans.  To claim that religious freedoms are not being respected only makes sense when you think that your religion gives you the right to treat another person like garbage. 

Again, this kind of attack is designed to render one of the arbiters of fairness moot, which will only serve to increase the levels of hate and bigotry that visible minorities face in their day to day lives. 

Vouching is important for a lot of people for a variety of reasons.  In particular, it affects transgender people because it's damn hard to change your ID to match your identity.  Lots of transgender people do not have ID that matches their day to day presentation because of the obstacles the government puts in place.  This will disenfranchise a lot of transgender voters.  

Further, we have to also recognize that those of us who move in this country can also find ourselves suddenly disenfranchised simply because it takes time to change documents and get new ones issued.  Vouching is one of several tools which enable us to still be able to vote even when we are in that in between space.  

"What about voter fraud?"  - To which the only comment I have is that the amount of fraudulent voting that takes place in any election in Canada is so small as to not even add up to swinging one riding outcome, much less an entire election.