As many of you are probably aware by now, trans Americans are fleeing the United States in droves. Over 400,000 of them have been internally displaced within the United States, owing to a combination of anti-trans societal vitriol and genocidal legislation. Some are even considering claiming asylum here in Canada. However, anecdotally, most of the trans Americans I know who have moved here have used other means: citizenship by proof of lost Canadianness, USMCA worker visas, family reunification, and, especially for younger trans people, coming to Canada as an international student.
For the latter group, they might not be free of Donald Trump’s grasp after arriving in Canada – and not just through passports forcibly misgendering them. I’ve learned, trough multiple sources, that McGill University’s Wellness Hub — which includes a team of doctors offering general healthcare to its student body, including HRT (hormone) prescriptions for trans students — are no longer offering hormones… to trans U.S. citizens under age 19, pursuant to U.S. Executive Order 14187. These same doctors can, however, prescribe hormones to any other student at McGill, including international students from countries other than the United States. And as a reminder, the medical age of consent in Québec isn’t 18… it’s 14.
To make this clear: this doesn’t prohibit these same students from accessing healthcare off campus. However, with the linguistic barrier of learning French, finding a doctor, applying one’s international student-specific health insurance, and more, this is a significant added barrier and remains something that’s worth denouncing.
The official reason behind this ban — from what I’ve heard — is that McGill’s Wellness Hub had received a legal opinion whereas providing such healthcare would be too risky or can lead to liability issues. What I would consider the true reason behind this ban would instead be that U.S. hegemony has repeatedly allowed Donald Trump’s genocidal executive orders to reach beyond the borders of its own country. This actually isn’t the first time U.S. policies affect Canadian doctors. Back in early 2025, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) created a form allowing Canadian doctors providing trans healthcare to be snitched on through a “whistleblower form” (to the exclusion of countries other than the U.S. and Canada): only after repeated inquiries from The Breach and Pivot was this taken down. I suspect that McGill’s ban, and the legal opinion in question, is directly tied to this.
I’ve had families reach out to me personally, asking, “Is Montreal a safe place for my child to move to?”. Many of them are just typical American families, only that their child is trans and they cannot see their child suffer in silence while the government tries to kill them. These are oftentimes families who have uprooted their entire lives from red (U.S.) states to blue states before said states end up capitulating to the same executive orders — and they look at the map I’ve created as a last resort, in a bid to find a way out. If U.S. politicians were able to prohibit healthcare abroad for any other group of people (say, for diabetes patients who can’t afford insulin in the U.S.), we’d have an unprecedented international scandal. Yet, because this is about trans people, who are being targeted with over 3,000 anti-trans bills in the U.S. and dozens of them in Canada, it’s somehow fine.
McGill has betrayed its most vulnerable students — some of whom went to McGill specifically to escape Donald Trump’s policies — through compliance with an executive order that has no force and effect in Canada. The Québec Ministry of Health had stated, in the aforementioned Breach interview, that “the actions of the United States government regarding gender-affirming care for children do not influence the guidelines that Quebec has established for this care.” So why is McGill applying these discriminatory, genocidal standards imposed by a foreign government, instead of the healthcare guidelines and human rights laws applicable here in Québec?
Stay tuned for McGill’s Trans Patient Union‘s upcoming statement! They will have a call to action.