As you may or may not have read this week, it seems that under current travel regulations in Canada, transgender individuals can be prevented from merely boarding a plane. In a recent post, I wrote about the violations of every day rights faced by T* identified people, and this is a prime example.

This story was first reported by Christin Scarlett Milloy who highlighted the relevant section of the Identity Screening Regulations:

5.2 (1) An air carrier shall not transport a passenger if
(a) the passenger presents a piece of photo identification and does not resemble the photograph

(b) the passenger does not appear to be the age indicated by the date of birth on the identification he or she presents

(c) the passenger does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents

Damn it Canada, you used to be cool! This revelation comes hot on the tails of the widespread confusion over marriages of same-sex couples performed in Canada (for more see CanuckJacq’s post ) The current conservative government seems to be doing their best to remove any sort of “LGBTQ heaven” image that Canada has. These travel regulations were set in place by the Conservative Minister of Transportation, Denis Lebel, and the full set of regulations can be rea here (.pdf). As you can see, they further state:

(2) Despite paragraph (1)(a), an air carrier may transport a passenger who presents a piece of photo identification but does not resemble the photograph if

(a) the passenger’s appearance changed for medical reasons after the photograph was taken and the passenger presents the air carrier with a document signed by a health care professional and attesting to that fact

With that section they are demanding that a Trans* person carry a medical document with them when they travel, which is a pretty unfair onus of responsibility to be putting on anyone-travel is stressful enough without having to remember a doctor’s letter, or more to the point, without the added stress of having to go to see a doctor to obtain the relevant document, which will probably also cost a lot of money, just for the appointment. And what then of the T* people who would not be able to obtain said documentation?

As Christin Milloy also points out in her blog post, summing it up better than I could ever hope to:

So for non-operative transgender persons, for gender nonconforming (genderqueer) persons, and for the vast majority of pre-operative transsexual persons, it is literally impossible to obtain proper travel documentation marked with the sex designation which “matches” the gender identity in which they live.

This is obviously a ridiculous situation for people to be left in, and even though there’s be no reports that anyone has been stopped so far, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s a worrying precedent. It’s my second “Is this real life?” moment in under a week… I’m going to hide under a duvet now, wake me up when the world makes sense again.

There is a petition that you can sign if you want to take action.

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