TRANSGENDER
Alberta decision gives mom hope
Sask. family waiting for change in wake of Alberta decision on transgender birth certificate
Fran Forsberg wants the Saskatchewan government to take a cue from Alberta and allow her transgender daughter to alter the sex designation on her birth certificate.
“I’ve been told so many times, ‘It takes time.’ But in the meantime we have children that are taking their own lives. The humiliation, the bullying,” Forsberg said in an interview.
Forsberg says her daughter Renn was born male, but began to express herself as a girl around the age of three. These days, Renn, 6, wears girl’s clothes and prefers the female pronoun.
Without sex-reassignment surgery, she is unable to get the gender on her Saskatchewan birth certificate changed.
“Renn has said right from the time she could verbalize that she is a girl. Who am I to say that she is not? You have to listen to our children,” Forsberg said.
Her renewed complaint comes on the heels of an Alberta decision earlier this week to grant a 12-year-old transgender boy a new birth certificate that recognizes him as male.
Wren Kauffman had filed a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission over the inability to change the sex on his birth certificate.
Kauffman was presented with the new document on Sunday in Edmonton during a Pride festival brunch hosted by the city’s mayor. An Alberta judge had ruled that the Alberta law dealing with birth certificates violates the rights of transgender people.
Forsberg has also filed a human rights complaint over Saskatchewan’s requirement for sex to be listed on birth certificates. Since then, she has heard nothing from provincial officials, she said.
In a written statement, Saskatchewan Justice Minister Gordon Wyant said he is still waiting on the human rights commission ruling and he does not know when that ruling will be made.
Forsberg wants the province to act now and not wait for the human rights commission to issue a ruling. Unlike the Alberta case, she wants gender removed entirely from birth certificates.
While she has “taken heat” for her decision to speak publicly about Renn’s case, she believes it’s for the best, she said.
“We have nothing to be ashamed of. If you are going to keep something hidden, nothing is going to change. This is not just about my daughter.”
In the 1970s, most provinces changed their laws so people could change their birth certificates after sex reassignment surgery. The revision left out transgender children, because people must be at least 18 for the surgery.
Ontario revised its law following a human rights tribunal ruling in 2012 that declared it discriminatory to require an actual sex change operation for a transgender woman to switch to female from male on her birth certificate.
That province now allows a change with a note from a doctor or psychologist testifying to a person’s “gender identity,” but the province set a minimum age of 18 and said it needed more time to consider the issue.