ONTARIO, October 19, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — All Ontario minor hockey coaches and trainers must complete training on transgenderism as part of an Ontario Human Rights settlement reached with Hockey Canada three years ago.
The ruling dates back to a 2013 complaint filed with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal by Jesse Thompson, a girl who identifies as a boy.
Thompson said at the time she felt “outed” because she wasn’t allowed in the boys’ locker room or the girls’ locker room.
Hockey Canada agreed to a settlement in September 2014 that included its Ontario associations putting gender identity training in place for their more than 30,000 coaches and trainers by 2017.
Hockey Canada also agreed to revise its Ontario co-ed dressing room policy.
The ruling applies to three associations: Hockey Eastern Ontario (HEO), the Ontario Hockey Federation and Hockey Northwestern Ontario.
According to the HEO website, coaches and trainers were required to complete a course on gender identity and a course on the new co-ed dressing room policy by October 1 if already assigned to a team. If assigned by the end of the month, they had 30 days to complete the two courses.
Each of the online courses takes about two hours to complete, reported the Ottawa Citizen.
The course on gender identity and expression includes “definitions of sex/assigned sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, gender diverse and transgender,” it reported.
At the time Thompson launched her complaint, Hockey Canada’s Ontario members required boys and girls to dress in separate change rooms after age 11, a policy “applied based on anatomical sex, not gender identity,” according to an Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) 2016 statement.
It reported Hockey Canada’s Ontario members amended the co-ed dressing room policy to state that players:
“have the right to use a dressing room that corresponds with their self-identified gender identity; will be addressed by their preferred name and referred to by pronouns corresponding with their gender identity; and are entitled to privacy and confidentiality about their trans status.”
The OHRC stated these steps would be implemented “in consultation” with homosexual activist group Egale Canada, which it described as “an expert on gender identity issues approved by the OHRC.”
Jeremy Dias, founder of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity, told the Ottawa Citizen this development is “a huge step.”
His group runs “the only Ontario-funded LGBTQ training program in sports in the whole province, so we’re a huge fan of these new plans, and are interested in seeing where these associations take them,” Dias said.
But Gwen Landolt of REAL Women of Canada views the situation differently.
An inevitable consequence of “trans-inclusive hockey” is that boys who identify as girls will want to play in the girls’ league, Landolt said, adding that transsexuals are estimated at .05 percent of the population.
“We’re caring about this minute number of so-called transgendered,” she said. “Everybody has to accommodate them in their change rooms.”
Ontario minor has hockey girls-only leagues as well as co-ed teams for girls who opt to play with the boys, and is open to children from age 5 to 17.
The hockey association should be “concerned about the strength, stamina, physique and other specific male characteristics of a man who wants to play on a women’s team,” Landolt told LifeSiteNews.
“It’s absolutely lacking in common sense, and it’s just a trend or a fad, which is going to be destructive,” she said.
“What girl wants a 16-year-old male in her change room?”