British Columbia

There are no signs that 2026 will bring a slowdown in anti-trans legislation across Canada. While no new bills have become law since Alberta Bill 26/9 back in December 2025, new bills threatening trans youth and adults, some of which have reached degrees of extremism arguably even worse than in the United States, have regardless been introduced.

New to this update: every province will be tagged with a list of active anti-trans legislation and/or policies either in consideration or in effect. You can use this to make your own assessments.

Changes since July 2025

• Québec: Medium/High risk → High risk
• PEI and Nova Scotia: Moderate risk → “No reason to fear”
• All “low risk” provinces and Yukon have been re-categorized as “No reason to fear”
• Northwest Territories: Low risk → Medium risk
• Nunavut: Categorized as Medium risk

About this map

Since I began tracking anti-trans developments in Canada (as early as 2021, when I was fighting against the initial iteration of Québec Bill 2), I’ve had people ask me: “I’m planning on moving to Canada, where should I move?”. This question, unfortunately, has been asked to me way too many times since January 2025, when Donald Trump seized power in the United States: promptly, our southern neighbours have become a no-go zone for trans people, with hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons and (increasingly) refugees and de facto refugees. This question is equally relevant to trans Canadians themselves, as well as other trans migrants, who wish to be able to live and thrive in an environment where their existence isn’t consistently questioned.

I created my original anti-trans risk map in September 2023, inspired off of Erin Reed’s anti-trans risk map (last updated Feb. 2026), as an exercise in visualizing anti-trans hate across Canada. This was when the first concerted efforts to push anti-trans policy in Canada were taking shape, all alongside a tonne of anti-trans protests.

My focus is on documenting risk for both trans youth and adults, with the assumption that both are correlated. Most anti-trans legislation (and anti-2SLGBTQ+ legislation at large), within the Canadian context, either targets trans youth (targeting them either because they are under the age of majority, or because they are attending school) or trans women (see: transmisogyny).

Note: I consider both anti-trans intent and effect. Whilst my focus is still on the former, I will still consider the latter.

Note that this map only tracks legislated hate, and not the relative safety of different communities for trans folk across Canada. Significant judicial decisions will also be mentioned. The unfortunate truth is that it’s extremely difficult to map out, say, the occurrence of hate crimes or other forms of hate. Do not rely on this map as a sole gauge of the state of transphobia in Canada; there are a lot of minute details, sometimes going all the way to the neighbourhood level, which I simply cannot capture in one map!

The worst jurisdiction: Alberta

Active policies:

• Gender-affirming care ban for trans youth
  • Complete ban (with exceptions) for youth under age 16; 16-17 year olds require parental consent, notwithstanding the mature minor doctrine
  • Has been challenged in court, but the Alberta government blocked it using the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of RIghts and Freedoms — i.e. trans kids in Alberta do not have the right to life insofar as their healthcare is banned
• De facto sex ed ban in schools
• Forced outing of trans youth who come out at school
• Trans youth cannot use chosen name or pronouns at school without parental consent
• Trans girls and women age 12+ are banned from women’s sports, even recreational sports and physical education classes
  • Cisgender (non-trans) girls and women age 12+ are required to declare their sex (and in the case of youth, have a form signed by parents attesting their child’s sex) — and can have their presence in women’s sports challenged by gender vigilantes
• Book ban in schools (applies to certain graphic novels only)
• Regulated professions cannot require EDI education and cannot sanction members for transphobia

Alberta continues, even into 2026, to be the only Canadian jurisdiction to get the “worst anti-trans laws” label attached to it.

Bill 26, the gender-affirming healthcare ban law, was previously temporarily enjoined in court, thanks to the efforts of Skipping Stone and Égale Canada, which launched a court challenge the day after the bill received royal assent. The Canadian Medical Association has also launched its own lawsuit over said bill. However, the Alberta government has invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a legal provision that allows the government to disregard most of the various human rights that have been protected in Canada since 1982, through Bill 9, the so-called “Protecting Alberta’s Children Statutes Amendment Act”. Since December 19, 2025, gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth in Alberta is banned (with exceptions). The Skipping Stone/Égale lawsuit is still ongoing, though on different juridical grounds.

Bills 27 and 29, making sex ed opt-in-only in schools, forcibly outing trans youth and preventing them from using their names, and preventing trans women and girls from playing sport, have become law on September 1, 2025. They have been modified by Bill 9, to equally incorporate the notwithstanding clause.

Alberta also attempted to introduce a book ban. Initially, this applied to all books, including titles such as The Handmaid’s Tale. Following widespread backlash, the government would reverse course and apply the ban solely to graphic novels.

Bill 13, the Regulated Professions Neutrality Act (also known as the so-called “Jordan Peterson law”, named after the transphobe known for his opposition to granting human rights to trans people), became law on December 11, 2025. So far, the impacts of this law are most obvious with the Law Society of Alberta, which axed its EDI committee in response. The law prohibits professional regulators from punishing its members over their actions outside of the professional context, such as, for example, a doctor who says “trans kids do not exist” on the Internet. Whilst not a law explicitly targeting trans people, it is quite obvious that the United Conservative Party (UCP) introduced this bill for this express purpose.

Note: even though the UCP, the far-right party governing Alberta, has proposed as part of its policy playbook drag bans, gender marker change bans, and further leeway for on-campus hate speech — moves which suggest that Alberta will not back down, no matter what the Canadian Charter of RIghts and Freedoms states — no further developments have taken place on this front.

In second place (tied): Québec

Active policies:

• Trans prisoners are assigned to prisons solely according to genitalia
• Trans public servants are forbidden from using inclusive French, including they/them pronouns
• Trans teachers are forced to go by “Mr.” or “Ms.” in schools, to the exclusion of “Mx.” or even “Prof.”
• Schools are prohibited from building gender-neutral washrooms

The only new update in re: policies regarding trans people in Québec since my last update is that trans public servants have been ordered to not use inclusive French. This means that a public sector worker using they/them pronouns (iel in French) is effectively forced to misgender themselves and be misgendered at work.

With regards to trans healthcare, while no bans per se have been announced, the wait times for gender-affirming surgeries for trans adults have tripled owing to government budget cuts.

Three of the five major political parties in Québec (the CAQ (currently governing), PQ (currently leading in the polls), and the PCQ) are currently using transphobia in an attempt to score political points. This includes a recent case where a non-binary person got a $500 judgment against a hair salon, as well as a case of a hospital advertising free HPV (cervix) tests without mentioning the word “woman”; in the latter case, the hospital was ordered by the government to add said word, in spite of how much of a non-issue this is.

There equally is anti-trans litigation active in Québec to allow teachers to out their trans students to their respective parents. Note: I am a party to said case (as the representative for Juritrans, an intervening party).

Overall, the broader context in Québec suggests that further anti-trans developments can occur anytime. As such, Québec’s risk level has been bumped up even higher. The only thing stopping Québec’s risk level from being higher than Saskatchewan is its non-use of the notwithstanding clause against trans people (though, Québec hasn’t hesitated to use it against refugees and Muslim women).

In second place (tied): Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan still forbids trans youth from using their chosen names and pronouns in school without parental consent, and has used the notwithstanding clause to that effect. No further major developments have taken place since my last update.

In fourth place: British Columbia

In a dramatic escalation beginning fall 2025, British Columbia has seen the highest number of anti-trans bills in Canada. So far, I’ve been able to track down five of them (on top of two such bills prior to July 2025), all defeated at first reading:

• Protecting Minors from Gender Transition Act (8 Oct. 2025; defeated 40-48)
• Post-Secondary Institutions Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Prohibition Act (19 Nov. 2025; defeated 41-50)
• Public Flags Display Act (25 Nov. 2025; defeated 15-73)
• Gender Ideology and Child Protection Act (19 Feb. 2026; defeated 38-49)
• Human Rights Code Repeal Act (26 Feb. 2026; defeated 37-50)

These bills stand out from much of what’s going on elsewhere in Canada in three respects. First and foremost, the bills are thrown like shit on the window: they are introduced by fringe MLAs (most notably independent MLA Tara Armstrong and OneBC MLA Dallas Brodie). Second, they are moribund by the simple fact that the B.C. NDP and Greens have consistently opposed those bills at first reading, a practice they have reserved for bills that serve nothing but patent discrimination. Yet, third and most significantly, these bills go significantly further than their counterparts anywhere else in Canada.

Tara Armstrong’s Protecting Minors from Gender Transition Act is a copy-paste of U.S. model anti-trans legislation created by anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Do No Harm. It also is the first-ever use of the notwithstanding clause in the B.C. legislature. The Gender Ideology and Child Protection Act goes further by deeming affirming trans youth to be child abuse. The Public Flags Display Act is a flag ban bill, introduced explicitly to ban Pride, trans, and Palestine flags. And perhaps, most concerning, the Human Rights Code Repeal Act — a first of its kind in Canada, of which I couldn’t even find an equivalent in the United States of America — outright repeals every single anti-discrimination protection applicable in British Columbia.

Given the less-than-a-snowball’s-chance-in-hell possibility of these bills passing, yet the B.C. NDP still having passed legislation in the past disproportionately affecting trans people, forbidding some of them from changing their names for life, B.C. is maintained at a moderate risk level.

A notable improvement: Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia’s risk level has been lowered to “no reason to fear”, owing to its 2SLGBTQIA+ Action Plan, which contains a great number of positive commitments — such as a commitment to improve gender-affirming healthcare pathways. For a province under a conservative government, this is a surprising yet positive development — and easily the most significant positive development I can mention in the present update.

The Territories

The Northwest Territories has been re-classified as a medium risk jurisdiction, given real issues caused by lack of continuity of access to gender-affirming healthcare — a knock-on effect from Alberta’s anti-trans legislation.

Nunavut has been classified as a medium risk jurisdiction. This is subsequent to the fact that it is the last Canadian jurisdiction to implement a non-binary gender on birth certificates. three years after Québec — and when debating the implementation of said gender marker, 8 MLAs (out of 20 present) voted against, citing the bathroom predator myth. Just like in B.C., it’s too close to comfort for me to argue that there’s no reason to fear potential anti-trans developments.

I was debating whether the Yukon should face an increased risk level because a right-of-centre government (the Yukon Party) was elected. So far, I’ve no reason to fear: the Yukon Party has committed to Queer Yukon (the main queer organization there) that it’ll continue working on its next 2SLGBTQIA+ Inclusion Action Plan. This might be me being overly hopeful, but I’m hoping that all will turn out alright.

The federal government

My main concern with the federal government, for the time being, remains Bill C-12 — which effectively is the successor legislation to Bill C-2. It would allow revocation of immigration status, including mass revocations, under dubious “public interest” grounds. It would prohibit most potential refugee claimants from claiming asylum if they cross into Canada from the U.S. — despite the fact that there have been accepted refugee claims from trans U.S. citizens in Canada — and will bar any such claim from someone who’s been in Canada for more than one year — a provision which particularly affects trans migrants, who in many cases come out once in Canada. Migrant rights and civil liberties groups are rightfully concerned.

The Carney government has equally announced that it is exploring the possibility of a social media ban for young people. I remain concerned about the possibility of age verification propositions and other such measures which could disproportionately affect trans people without ID, on top of breaching their right to privacy — as well as the general implications of denying queer and trans youth access to resources. We’ll only know for sure where this will lead us if/when a bill comes out.

In the meantime, given Bill C-12, the federal government continues with its “medium risk with warning” qualifier.

…and the rest of Canada

No particular news has occurred out of Ontario, which remains a medium risk jurisdiction primarily because premier Doug Ford has previously hinted at parental rights discourse back in 2023 – and has not ruled out using the notwithstanding clause either (in general).

Manitoba remains a safe jurisdiction for trans people. The Constitutional Questions Amendment Act, forcing a reference to the Manitoba Court of Appeal for any Manitoba bill which passes with the notwithstanding clause, is a very good sign for a government committed to protecting trans people (and Charter rights at large).

Given that nothing makes me fear that PEI will have anti-trans developments anytime soon, its risk level has been decreased. Ibid for New Brunswick and Newfoundland, which are maintained as “no reason to fear”.

Methodology

Each jurisdiction is rated using qualitative measures, being notably the reach and severity of anti-trans legislation and government (provincial/territorial) policy, as well as what local political parties are discussing. Both the policies of the current party in power, the ones of any opposition parties with a certain likelihood of forming government, and polling for upcoming elections (with a higher weight going to imminent elections) are evaluated whilst qualifying a jurisdiction’s level of safety.

Any bill, policy, or law which intentionally harms a significant proportion of the trans community, or a socio-political climate favorable to making such legislation pass prior to or soon after the next elections, will bump a jurisdiction to ‘high risk’. The ‘worst anti-trans laws’ qualifier is reserved for jurisdictions which either ban gender-affirming care for trans youth, forcibly out trans youth to their parents, or otherwise has a combination of anti-trans laws and policies creating a climate so hostile to trans people that it would be analogous to a ‘worst jurisdiction’ under Erin Reed’s map.

On the other side of the spectrum, the ‘no reason to fear’ qualifier means what it means: I’ve got no reason to fear that any anti-trans developments will occur anytime soon. Jurisdictions that don’t fall either under this definition or the definition of “high risk” are categorized as “medium risk”.

Given that more porous nature of Canadian federalism than American federalism (for example, the Canadian federal government controls criminal law all across the country, unlike the U.S., where both states and the federal government have jurisdiction), “shield laws” per se can’t really exist in Canada, but any steps taken by a given government to defend trans people will be taken into account.