‘I’m a Girl and I Don’t Want To Go Through Boy Puberty’: How Alberta’s Draconian Laws Harm Trans Kids

For those of us in Canada, it is no secret that the anti-LGBTQIA+ Christian Nationalism familiar both in the United States and the United Kingdom has grown here over the past several years too.

Last year, trans folks breathed a sigh of relief when far-right hopeful Pierre Pollievre was narrowly beaten by Liberal leader Mark Carney during the general election. Canada has a parliamentary system, so folks here vote for members of Parliament instead of a president. The party that wins most seats in Parliament then forms a government.

“Pollievre has embraced much of the anti-trans discourse from abroad,” Journalist Mel Woods wrote in The Walrus in April 2025. “Last year, he spoke out against puberty blockers for young people and trans women in women’s spaces, arguing, in his words, that ‘female spaces should be exclusively for females, not for “biological males.”’”

That sigh of relief may be short lived, though.

Since becoming Prime Minister, Carney has—much like his British counterpart Keir Starmer—delivered a government of broken promises and ignored First Nation opposition to his natural resource projects in British Columbia and Alberta. Since being elected, he has managed to gain a parliamentary majority through osmosis. Five floor crossings — defections — and two by-elections officially gave Carney a majority in April, almost a year after the general election. Now the PM has unchecked power to pass his morally ambiguous plans.

The Liberal Party has “morphed from one that had a defined moral mandate” to a party with a “more corporate vision,” Dale Smith wrote in Xtra. He warns about some of Carney’s increase in executive power and unintended consequences for marginalized communities.

Despite this, trans rights in Canada remain mostly intact except within the western province of Alberta, known for its oil, gas and conservative politics.

In January 2024, the Albertan provincial government, led by Premier Danielle Smith, began what would be an almost two-year long fight for several sweeping anti-trans policy changes. The main transphobic laws they were pursuing were a ban on puberty blockers and other gender-affirming medical treatment for minors, and a ban on trans women competing in sports.

Then, in November 2025, after a court injunction had blocked previous attempts at this legislation, Smith’s government amended and subsequently passed — on Dec. 10 — this set of legislation once-and-for-all. Legislation that has decimated the rights and freedoms of trans people in the province.

Smith shielded her legislation from the obvious legal challenges using a little-known but highly powerful part of the Canadian Charter of Human Rights, known as the notwithstanding clause. This provision allows legislatures to pass laws that function “notwithstanding” the protections of other rights within the charter. She previously used it in late Oct. 2025 to force 51,000 teachers back to work after a three-week strike.

In a press release at the time, Smith justified the use.

“By invoking the notwithstanding clause, we’re ensuring that laws safeguarding children’s health, education and safety cannot be undone, that parents are fully involved in the major decisions affecting their children’s lives,”

“What that means in practice, is what we think has happened in Alberta,” Bennet Jensen, legal director at Egale, a 2SLGBTQI+ legal advocacy organization, told Trans News Network. “We have laws that are clearly unconstitutional, that clearly violate the rights of gender diverse young people, and in some cases adults as well. But our ability to go to court and get a result that would be meaningful for people on the ground—i.e. that the law is no longer in effect—has been limited.”

“The notwithstanding clauses are really unique and, frankly, a deeply unfortunate part of Canada's constitution.”

Why did they do this?

The fact that Smith’s government passed this legislation notwithstanding the human rights of Albertan trans youth and trans women afforded to them by the Canadian constitution suggests they lack confidence such legislation would hold up if challenged in court.

It wasn’t always like this. Just over ten years ago, Smith, who leads the United Conservative Party (UCP) in Alberta, was advocating in favor of young queer kids. Specifically, she supported schools allowing gay-straight alliances because students having to fight for their rights in court was “not reasonable.” She even met with a co-founder of the Trans Equality Society of Alberta to express that she wanted to be an ally for trans folks.

But Smith is a right-wing populist, and gravitates to issues that do well in the polls, mostly among conservatives, although less than a quarter of Canadians state they support the rights of trans athletes in polls. So because trans lives are so heavily politicized, Smith’s government forced trans kids to fight for their rights in court.

In a lawsuit against the Albertan government brought by Egale, the government’s lawyers cross-examined five trans children, at the time aged six to 12. The lawsuit ended with Justice Allison Kuntz of Alberta’s highest provincial court granting an injunction to halt the anti-trans legislation.

“There will be irreparable harm to gender diverse youth if an injunction is not granted,” Kuntz wrote in her decision.

“The evidence shows that the ban will cause irreparable harm by causing gender diverse youth to experience permanent changes to their body that do not align with their gender identity,” her decision continued. “There is nothing speculative about this evidence.”

For three months the injunction held off Smith’s legislation, but it didn’t come without a fight. Egale represented five trans young people who have, until last year, “had the benefit of being allowed to live who they are,” Jensen said. “The kids were generally doing great until these laws came into effect.”

Their testimony tells a powerful story that shows, despite what their legislators may think, these kids know who they are and what they want.

For some, that’s Lupron, an injection that suppresses hormone production.

“I’m not a Lupron fangirl,” Doe three, a 12-year-old girl from Calgary, said in her affidavit, “it’s an injection and it hurts. I think if you were to ask any average person if they wanted a painful injection, they would probably say ‘no thanks!’ However, if you gave them a choice between a painful injection or going through permanent physical changes of puberty that doesn’t feel right for who they are, I think most people would choose the injection.”

Doe three worries for the kids like her who might not be able to take Lupron if it gets banned.

“I don’t understand why grown adults would want to ban a medication some kids need so they can be themselves,” she said. “And, honestly, it’s unfair that I even have to worry about this, since it’s my body: What medication I take, and when I take them, should be my choice with the support of my parents and doctors.”

But that’s exactly what has happened. Initially, Egale were able to obtain a court injunction to halt the UCP legislation. The injunction held from June until September 2025. Then Smith reached for the notwithstanding clause, making clear she will be taking away healthcare for trans children whether they like it or not.

A separate rule system for trans people creates medical contradictions, though: Doe five, a ten-year-old trans and intersex girl from Calgary, doesn’t want the changes her body might go through.

As they were assigned male at birth but were born intersex, her body was physically altered to affirm this assignment. “The government is making it impossible for this to be fixed to affirm her true gender until she’s legally an adult because of her diagnosis of gender dysphoria,” one of Doe five’s moms declared in her affidavit. “Undoing the phalloplasties that created a phallus for my child or performing urogynecological alterations are now considered ‘sex reassignment’ for my child.”

The ramifications are serious.

“Not having access to blockers will inevitably result in irreversibly physical changes,” Doe five’s mom said. Changes that, “even with an abundance of home, community and psychological support,” she believed her daughter’s mental health will not survive.

Jensen said the kids and their families don’t understand why they’re being targeted, why their government would seek to take away healthcare that their parents and doctors support. “The idea that a government would purport to be pro-freedom and pro-parental rights, and insert itself into intimate parenting decisions has been really shocking for the families.”

“I’m a girl,” Doe three said, “and I (like most girls, I think) don’t want to go through boy puberty.”

So, for kids who seem more self-assured than I ever have, in-clinic gender-affirming hormone therapy will become an impossibility in the province. It is pushing the province in a dark direction.

Doe two, an agender ten-year-old, wrote at the time of filing the lawsuit that the changes had already contributed to a cultural shift.

“It has already changed how some teachers and kids treat me at school.” Doe two has struggled with being bullied at school and said that “visiting the gender clinic makes me feel safer and understood… I feel like I will have control over what happens to my body and be able to do what is right for me.”

Yet there is still light in Alberta, in the form of people like Pam Rocker, director and founder of Affirming Connections, an organization that works with places of worship across Alberta to become more affirming spaces for queer and trans folks. Rocker has also noticed a cultural shift. It’s no wonder, given Smith’s government’s sweeping attack on trans people. Smith and the United Conservatives have provided the scaffolding for that shift in Alberta’s culture.

The government’s evolving stance, which now targets trans women and trans children, has shown Rocker she needs to change strategy. Now, she chooses to engage communities to counter disinformation about queer and trans people. Events and workshops teaching people how to engage when someone is spreading misinformation and how to make communities safer for queer and trans people. That’s “as important as going to a protest,” Rocker told TNN. “We’ve got to move everything along in the different ways that we can.”

Disinformation is rife in Alberta thanks to the rise of the so-called parental rights movement, also rampant in the United States, promoted by the likes of the far-right Moms for Liberty. Groups like Parents for Choice in Education and Alberta Parents’ Union disseminate disinformation about “gender ideology” and sex education in schools including in rightwing newspapers and online petitions. According to independent research institute Policy Alternatives, Parents for Choice in Education even has influence over policymaking in Smith’s government. In the past, policy petitioned for by PfCE has later been passed by the United Conservatives.

Smith’s anti-trans package of bills also includes the Fairness and Safety in Sports Act, which bans trans women and girls 12 and above from any sporting event, league, club or team that is designated for women—professional or amateur. Changes in regulation now require the policy of such organizations to allow only people assigned female at birth to join. A policy that will mean enforced policing of athletes’ gender. Athletes or staff can challenge anyone they suspect is not a cisgender woman. The athlete would then be required to defend their membership and present a birth registration document, which cannot be changed.

“It’s a document I didn’t even know existed until this law came into effect,” Jensen told TNN. He has concerns over the accessibility of the document for anyone who is challenged—particularly for people who were not born in Canada and may not possess such a document. Alberta is “setting up a system for young women where their bodies are scrutinized, likely by adults associated with another team.”

Sport is sacred to many, a place to build self-esteem and well-being and connect with our bodies. Instead, in Alberta, for populations like trans women and cis women and girls, for whom participation in athletics isn’t always easy, Jensen said, “there are now additional barriers to participation. It’s created a system that I don’t think any of us would want for young women coming up.”

—Edited by David Forbes