Health committee  Yes. We're working on a “train the trainer” network model so we can train more because some of the training has to be live training. Online modules only go so far.

Health committee  We're grappling with this in B.C. right now. There's been a fair bit of organized protest to the rollout of GSAs, and we think there's a ton of research to support that work. In B.C. we have a research centre called the SARAVYC. It has been able to show, by linking health data wi

Health committee  Not prominently. I think some of those groups that were protesting GSAs in schools would probably be some of the same groups that would invalidate the identities we're talking about and would suggest that it is a choice. You've heard everyone talk about conversion or reparative

Health committee  I'd say two-spirit is a really simplified English term to represent a set of very complex concepts. For me, in terms of my own position around being two-spirit, I've been following the breadcrumbs to figure out, first of all, my Cree Métis history and whether there is a word for

Health committee  Not strictly; I think it's just any therapy that's not honouring who an individual is and which attempts to erase or convert that person to a cisgender or heterosexual identity. I don't know of a sort of boilerplate definition that is being used commonly across groups or province

Health committee  The clinic is supposed to open this summer, with surgery starting in the fall of 2019. It will be in Vancouver Coastal Health Authority.

Health committee  I think our next challenge will be making sure that people have a very safe and smooth journey both into surgery and out of surgery. There's a lot of work to do to train, because our province is large. People are coming from many communities to Vancouver, so there is also travel

Health committee  These will be covered, and the door will remain open to Montreal, so people in B.C. will have additional options for surgery.

Health committee  At this time, it will be B.C. residents with MSP coverage who will have to access the Vancouver program. It won't have capacity to serve people from other jurisdictions.

Health committee  It should change over time. This program is part of an overall surgical strategy in B.C. to have appropriate wait times for all surgical services. This will be captured in that work provincially. It will take time to scale up, but over time the expectation will be that those surg

Health committee  Part of the announcement last November by our Minister of Health was also a scale-up around upper body surgery. We had only two health authorities offering chest and breast surgeries, and we have now, in the last year, moved to having those surgeries offered in every health regio

Health committee  I think there will be very few costs out of pocket in the new model in our province. I think what we'll see is improved ability to return to work and less down time for people. The surgeons are quite confident that complication rates will go down because the travel will be limite

Health committee  I'm not a trans person, so I can't comment on anyone's individual reasons, but these are complex surgeries, especially the masculinizing genital surgeries. There is quite a high complication rate at the best of times. I think it would depend on what really matters for that person

Health committee  I think some people who would have faced a lot barriers to travelling to Montreal may now be able to access surgeries, though people have to be fairly stable in their lives, and able to weather the recovery period, in order to access the surgery. We may see an increase.

Health committee  I'm not an expert on this topic, but I know there are very few people who actually go by X as their gender marker. I've heard from many folks in the community that they would rather see a range of options, or the removal altogether. It's a step in the right direction. I think we'