I think, first and foremost, that there's a rising push all around the world to repoliticize the rights of queer and trans people. That's what exists. It's on the superstructure here, and they use great rhetoric to do it. It's brilliant communication: It's the language of parental rights, and no one opposes parental rights. We have a gut reaction to supporting the rights of parents.
This is never about parents.
These policies are about those most vulnerable young people who are not ready or are not comfortable about coming out at home.
What these policies do, beyond their devastating impact on the kids who will be forced back into the closet in these provinces, is create a social environment where hate becomes more normal. Those kids who are already bullying these young folks are more likely to do so, more likely to mistreat them. What that leads to ultimately, in a conversation that's so polarized, is that when a trans kid does come out to their parents and those parents aren't supportive, the kid ends up on the street.
We know that 25% to 40% of the homeless young people in this country identify as members of the queer and trans community. If you are a homeless young person, your ability to start a business is quite a bit different from what it would be for somebody coming from a context like mine, and so the economic opportunity of those folks is immediately curtailed because they don't have a home and they aren't able to access education and they aren't able to go to university—and they're definitely not going to hear about these programs on government websites.
All of that contributes to a social and economic impact on our communities. In some cases, it will force families to leave their jobs. If you are a parent in Alberta right now and your kid needs access to gender-affirming health care, you will no longer, in the fall, be able to access that care. If your kid needs that care to survive and to make every day a little less painful from what we know is evidence-based care, that family's only choice is going to be to leave the province that they live in. That comes with a significant cost, and it comes with that kid also losing their friends.
I'm a military brat. We moved all the time. I got over it, but if you're a kid who is struggling, if you're a kid who needs health care, that is such a horrible impact on every aspect of your identity.