News

OTTAWA, Ontario, June 14, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A small number of Conservatives were responsible last week for a swing in the vote that helped a private member’s bill pass its second reading that aims at giving what its sponsor calls “specific protections” to “transsexual and transgendered Canadians”.

Bill C-279, an Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (gender identity and gender expression) passed June 6 by a vote of 150 to 132. The bill would not have passed had the Conservatives voted the other way.

The Conservative MPs who supported the bill are the following:

Mr. Chris Alexander (Ajax-Pickering)
Mr. Michael Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills)
Mr. John Duncan (Vancouver Island North)
Ms. Kerry-Lynne D. Findlay (Delta-Richmond East)
Mr. Jim Flaherty (Whitby-Oshawa)
Mrs. Shelly Glover (Saint Boniface)
Mr. Laurie Hawn (Edmonton Centre)
Mr. Gerald Keddy (South Shore-St. Margaret’s)
Mrs. Cathy McLeod (Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo)
Ms. Lisa Raitt (Halton)
Ms. Michelle Rempel (Calgary Centre-North)
Mr. Bruce Stanton (Simcoe North)
Mr. Bernard Trottier (Etobicoke-Lakeshore)
Mr. Bernard Valcourt (Madawaska-Restigouche)
Mr. David Wilks (Kootenay-Columbia)

Numerous religious and pro-family organizations have opposed bill C-279, including the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the Catholic Organization for Life and Family, Campaign Life Coalition, REAL Women of Canada, and the Canada Family Action Coalition.

Critics warn that the bill furthers the sexual revolution’s ideology that gender is a purely fluid social construct that can be completely separated from one’s biological birth sex.

The bill’s sponsor Randall Garrison (NDP MP, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca, BC) said during debate of the bill on April 5 that the bill would “help complete what we might call Canada’s human rights project”.

The bill has now been referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights before returning to the house for a third vote, which if successful, would land the bill in the Senate.

See contact info for above MPs here.