The Alberta government has invoked the Charter’s notwithstanding clause to prevent court challenges to a trio of laws impacting transgender youth and adults.
The clause is part of a bill now before the house, and Premier Danielle Smith says the move is necessary to protect children’s health and well-being.
She says their health could be jeopardized if challenges to the laws are tied up in court for a long time.
The notwithstanding clause allows governments to override Charter rights if deemed necessary as a way to balance the authority of both politicians and the courts.
The clause relates to laws that put restrictions on student pronoun changes at school, on girls’ and women’s sports, and on medical therapies for young people looking to transition.
Two of those bills are facing court challenges on the grounds they are harmful and unconstitutional.
I am livid. I can not put my anger into words right now.
The “strong, Conservative woman” claims that her party doesn’t use the notwithstanding clause “unless the stakes warrant it.”
Right, because clearly the biggest threat in Alberta is trans people. Not lobby money from the oil and gas industry, not the rising cost of living, not the mental health and addictions crisis, it’s clearly a group that makes up 1% at max of the population of the province.
Calling herself a “strong woman” is so unbelievably rich when all she seems able to do is effortlessly punch down on the everyday person. Like awww, how cute, she’s fighting fucking Big Teacher and Big Hormones, fuck off. “Strength” in defending the status quo requires zero effort whatsoever as it simply means doing fuck all, and I will be unapologetic in saying that she is doing nothing but continuing women’s status as objects by acting as a mere chess piece for the male CEOs in oil and gas and other profitable industries that direct her and the UCP’s decisions through political donations.
Un-fucking-believable.
identity politics is the easiest way to give populous something they didn’t ask for but feel like they always needed it