QUÉBEC — A Quebec government committee that issued a report Friday on gender identity says it is concerned about how gender identity issues have become polarized and recommends deepening the province's knowledge base on the issue.
The committee's mandate was to paint a portrait of the situation in Quebec following a number of incidents in the province in 2023. The report is being released at a time when other provinces are also grappling with similar concerns and pondering legislation in response.
Diane Lavallée, a former nurses union head, said assessments of minors seeking gender-affirming care should be subject to greater rigour.
"We want to avoid, and I think the community agrees with us, doctors prescribing hormones to children after 15 or 20 minutes. For us, that's unacceptable. It should never happen," Lavallée said, while also admitting such occurrences are very rare.
"But it's enough for us to say: let's put all the necessary precautions in place to ensure our children receive the proper clinical assessment," she said.
The Quebec committee met with some 220 people including experts and produced a 280-page report. Among its findings, the committee said that the scientific knowledge on the subject must be "validated and deepened."
The committee also said two provincial public health advisory agencies should analyze gender-affirming care for all age groups and develop a guide. This would also include collecting data on gender-affirming care and conducting a study of trans or non-binary people over their lifetime.
Currently in Quebec, a child as young as 14 can be prescribed hormones without parental consent.
The committee does not recommend changing the law to make parental consent mandatory, but states that it is preferable for them to be involved.
"The science is quite clear that when parental support is present, it makes a big difference," said law professor Patrick Taillon, who was a member of the committee.
Taillon said there is a "great disparity" in how doctors prescribe hormones to minors.
Another member of the committee, physician Jean-Bernard Trudeau, noted there is an evolution on the issue of gender identity.
"There are international standards that are very well written, well developed, but which are not necessarily always well known or are applied differently," Trudeau said.
The committee also called for deepening scientific knowledge about the subject.
Quebec's Families Minister Suzanne Roy announced the committee in December 2023 after a number of gender-related incidents in schools.
In one case, a school southeast of Montreal received threats after a non-binary teacher asked to use the honorific Mx — pronounced Miks.
The government also intervened to stop another school in Rouyn-Noranda, northwest of Montreal, from providing gender-neutral bathrooms for students.
In May 2024, the government issued a directive requiring all new bathrooms and locker rooms in schools be designated for either boys or girls. School service centres, however, need to ensure any student who wishes to use an individual universal bathroom has access to one.
The formation of the committee nearly 18 months ago was controversial due to its makeup — and the lack of a transgender or non-binary voice among the group.
The tabling of the report drew the ire of a small contingent of transfeminists, who denounced the committee and its findings and chanted slogans after being denied access to a news conference for journalists.
Another organization, the Conseil québécois LGBT, an umbrella group of organizations, said in a statement the government had promised to allow it to view the findings beforehand, a promise it said was not kept.
The organization said it had expressed "its profound disagreement with the legitimacy of the process, which was entrusted to people who were neither involved nor experts." But its membership still wanted it to contribute to the committee's review.
"We hope that no other vulnerable group will have to go through what our communities have been experiencing since December 2023," said Magali Boudon, executive director.
"In a context where LGBTQ+ people are seeing their rights rolled back across the planet, the government has prolonged the anxiety and violence of this process until the last minute."
— with files from Thomas Laberge in Quebec City and Sidhartha Banerjee in Montreal.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 30, 2025.
The Canadian Press
