Public Safety committee  I'm sorry, I couldn't speak to that.

Public Safety committee  I can speak to some of the jurisprudence that exists. As I am aware, it does exist at the tribunal level with respect to searches. Again, I can speak to the practice with CBSA, where the language is “sex” in the Customs Act, but that's interpreted and applied in a manner to respe

Public Safety committee  A bit, unfortunately.... I couldn't speak beyond the CBSA context here.

Public Safety committee  Thank you. With respect to “gender” being defined in law to date, I would just repeat my earlier comment that there are not a lot of examples of the use of “gender” in the statute books to date.

Public Safety committee  There are not many. There are a few, and to some extent they're used interchangeably, “sex” and “gender”. One example may be the Corrections and Conditional Release Act that speaks both to “gender” and “sex”, and they tend to be used interchangeably. The fact that there aren't

Public Safety committee  Exactly. That's in terms of CBSA's operational practices. “Sex”, in terms of the Customs Act, is interpreted and applied purposively and contextually, not simply in a biological or limited manner. For CBSA, with respect to transgender searches, they provide a choice of officers i

Public Safety committee  In the agreement? “Sex” is used as the term.

Public Safety committee  In terms of the Customs Act authority—and at some point I'll turn to CBSA to describe their transgender search practices—is the point that it does have to be interpreted in a manner consistent with respect for gender identity and expression. In terms of same sex, perhaps I coul

Public Safety committee  Thank you. Yes, for this provision, the language of “sex” is consistent with similar authorities found in the Customs Act to conduct searches. That is in section 98 of the Customs Act. In both cases, the language of “sex” must be interpreted in a purposive and contextual manner

Public Safety committee  Yes. The language with regard to a search by an officer “of the same sex” is in the Customs Act, at section 98.

Public Safety committee  He did pass the buck. We see that the term “gender” has not been used frequently in the legislative corpus to date and particularly not in the analogous context. Again, that's why the language of “sex” from the Customs Act was relied on here.

Public Safety committee  It would be Canadian regulation, so the reference to regulations would be Canadian.