I just want to add a couple of items. One is wait times. People are most at risk of attempting or completing suicide when they're told to wait. You can imagine it as being under water your whole life and finally coming up for a breath of fresh air, asking a doctor or someone to pull you out, but instead they push you back down because they say they don't know enough or you have to wait. When you're ready to change, you've perhaps shed your internalized homophobia or transphobia, you're ready to be who you are, and no one's there for you. You're told to wait. You have to wait two years, you have to wait six months, you have to go talk to someone you've never met, share intimate details of your life, get it written in a letter to prove you are who you say you are. It's very difficult.
I do actually have some local stats that I think are very valuable. I'll just share a couple of them.
Some 76% of trans people had to educate at least four different health care providers about their own health care. I don't know any other situation that's very similar. Some 53% had to educate their mental health providers and 48% their family doctors, 40% the clerical staff, 39% their psychiatrists. Psychiatrists are the ones who have the power to give you the diagnosis. That's pretty serious.
In Waterloo region, we know that most people have a primary care provider, but at least 23% of the doctors said they don't know how to provide that care. So people have to go elsewhere. More than anything else, people avoid hospitals, emergency rooms, medical offices and urgent care because of their gender identity and how they're going to be treated, putting their lives at risk.