Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to table a petition today signed by many people from greater Vancouver, who in fact signed it at this past summer's pride festival in Vancouver, in support of full and explicit human rights protection for transgender and transsexual Canadians.
They note that transsexual and transgender people are victims of discrimination, harassment and violence because of their gender identity and expression and that they are often denied employment, housing and access to trans-sensitive health care and often have difficulty obtaining identification documents because of their gender identity and expression.
The petitioners are calling on Parliament to support a private member's bill that I have tabled, Bill C-389, that would add gender identity and expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination to the Canadian Human Rights Act and would also amend the Criminal Code to include gender identity and gender expression as distinguishing characteristics and as aggravating factors to be taken into consideration at the time of sentencing and in hate crimes legislation.