Thank you, Madam Chair.
I thank you the committee for its interest in this very important issue.
Maybe to start off I can simply share the experience here in New Brunswick. As some may know, we have been through a period of rather intense scrutiny. New Brunswick was the first province where the provincial government introduced so-called parental notification changes. In New Brunswick, it began with the claim that there had been hundreds of emails from parents who'd had bad experiences with the previous policy, which was to affirm and respect the choices of children if they chose to change the names or the gender identity pronouns by which they wanted to be addressed. There was an initial claim that hundreds of emails detailing bad experiences had come in to my office, which does have the power to compel documents. I asked for those and found, in fact, that there were four.
What is interesting is that, of the four emails that triggered the review of the policy, a number made reference to tropes that had become familiar to us in the child advocate's office. There were complaints of litter boxes and schoolchildren identifying as cats; claims of increases in attacks on children or women in women-only spaces; and, interestingly, a couple of references to the World Economic Forum. It's worth noting to the committee that many things can be traced back to a common information source. Indeed, we have seen an increase in the number of talking points and the number of bot accounts that repeat them.
The recent CPAC convention in the United States had a speaker who reminded people that the way to fight back against LGB rights was to isolate the T, and that trans people and changes in gender identity represent a new chapter that, unlike gay marriage or same-sex marriage, people have not had time to culturally digest.
It's the latest area where things might be new to people, and some of the same misinformation and misunderstandings are shared and amplified. We have seen a number of common ones, even in the traffic that we monitor here in the office—similar talking points—such as the idea that there is recruitment going on and that teachers are involved in conspiracies to keep things from parents. Some of those were the subject of a number of outside-the-province mail-ins and that kind of thing.
In fact, as a result of the recent changes, my office was directed by a legislative motion where, in the legislature, someone in protest of the changes asked us to have a public consultation to see where the public was. I have never had an issue in New Brunswick that drew so much out-of-province traffic, often repeating some of the same tropes.
As part of that review, we began interviewing families and teens themselves who are trans or have gone through some re-examination of their gender identities. The stories were heartbreaking.
One teacher said that since the matter has arisen, their child has had several incidents where they were told to kill themselves. There has been more religious targeting, with Bible verses screamed at kids. We have noticed an effort among some far right groups, even those outside the province, to recruit among religious or newcomer communities where these issues may still have some religious salience.
There were a number of folks who repeated to us in emails that if their child were trans, they would be thrown out of the house. The other trope that was common is that these were social, caused by societal pressure, that somehow it was just trendy to change gender identity, and that it wasn't real.
We know, of course, that the statistics indicate—and I'm sure some of my friends from Egale and other groups will share—that we have seen a significant spike beyond New Brunswick just in anti-LGBTQ2S violence, threats online, etc. We have seen more of an uptick in New Brunswick schools in the number of matters being dealt with in terms of harassment and threats against LGBTQ students.
In many ways, because of the panic-inducing rhetoric that again seems to have its source even outside Canada, let alone outside New Brunswick, repeating some of the same tropes that were present 30 years ago when same-sex marriage was debated—that there is recruitment and that there are links that, of course, don't exist between pedophilia and questioning your gender identity.... All of those have made a comeback.
I can tell you that, as an advocate, I have responded to a number of those. They all seem to use some of the same incidents. They all seem to quote some of the same things, including—interestingly enough—the common complaints about the World Economic Forum and litter boxes in schools.
We also are aware of cases in New Brunswick where two or three times children were thrown out by their parents from the home after being found to be trans or questioning their gender identity because the parents had come to believe some of the things they were reading online.
Certainly, in New Brunswick, the story has a somewhat happy ending in that the new provincial government has said that it will be amending the policy back to being affirming and respectful of every child, regardless of whether they're trans or not, to recognize the fact that children with capacity can, indeed, make choices around how they want to be called in day-to-day matters. They can choose their own name and pronouns, as any of us can.
The debate is not whether the state or the parent has the say; it is, in fact, when the child becomes capable of making their own decisions and when schools have to respect that.
I'm happy to—