Question Period Note: Transgender Inclusion in Sport

Sport Canada is striving for a compassionate approach to trans-identifying athletes that does not compromise its critical mandates to protect the pillars of ethical sport (fairness and safety) and the sex based rights of women and girls. The issue has gained increased media attention with the release of World Rugby Union guidelines on transgender participation and supporting evidence.

• Sport has key mandates in Gender Equity and Safe sport.
• Historically, women have been marginalized in sport but have worked hard over past decades to protect spaces where they have equal opportunities.
• Sport Canada is committed to compassion and support for trans-identifying athletes while preserving sport integrity and protecting women’s rights to fairness and safety.
• Sport Canada is conducting a comprehensive review of emerging evidence and will work toward a reasoned, ethical position.

• In April 2016, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) released a new policy guidance document entitled “Creating Inclusive Environments for Trans Participants in Canadian Sport.” It was crafted by an expert working group weighted primarily towards social and gender theorists. The CCES policy guidance acknowledges that “participants in men’s sport, on average, out-perform participants in women’s sport” but contends that there is no scientific evidence supporting the discrepancy and therefore advocates for the full inclusion of transgender women in women’s sport. The CCES document has since been provided to all sport organizations in Canada, as well as being made available to the public.
• In the time since publication of the CCES policy, new evidence and policy work has emerged. The World Rugby Union’s transgender participation guidelines, released in October 2020, and developed through extensive consultation with stakeholders and experts, highlighted the collision of unconditional trans inclusion approaches with the pillars of sport integrity (safety and fairness) and women’s sex-based rights. The World Rugby Union policy development process has been widely praised for its rigour, objectivity and science-based methods. The expert panel was chaired by Canadian Dr. Chintoh from the University of Toronto.
• While the CCES policy is grounded in an ideological imperative that privileges a narrative of inclusion, Sport Canada’s mandate is to ensure sport is safe and fair, then to promote maximal inclusion within its regulated boundaries. While LGBTQ2 inclusion is a Government of Canada priority, the specific inclusion of transgender women poses a distinct ethical challenge due to the nature of sport’s categories that are based on biological sex. Inclusion of women is achieved by mitigating the female disadvantage (12 to 31 percent) relative to biological male bodies. Importantly, age, weight and disability categories are argued based on the same ethical imperative, namely, inclusion achieved by protecting spaces for disadvantaged populations to participate in sport fairly and safely.
• Trans men do not have the same opportunities for athletic dominance in the men’s category. For safety and competitive opportunity, trans men generally compete in the female category; however, gender affirming testosterone treatment is considered doping. An example of this is that of Rebecca Quinn, who changed his name to just “Quinn” is a member of the Canadian national soccer team. He formerly identified as a lesbian woman but recently announced he identifies as a man and will continue playing for the women’s team. Similarly, Harrison Browne played for Team Canada (women U-18) and then for the National Women’s Hockey League. After first identifying as a lesbian woman, he later identified as a man but continued to play in the women’s league.
• The CCES and Canadian Women in Sport have partnered in disseminating statements on social media deeming any exclusion of transgender women from female sport as transphobic. The organizations have publicly challenged the existence of meaningful biological distinctions between male and female bodies and strongly rejected the World Rugby Union guidelines in an open letter.
• Internationally, the World Rugby Union guidelines have been generally applauded by women’s rights groups and sport experts in fields of applied sport science and evolutionary biology, and rejected by trans activists and academics in fields influenced by queer and gender theory. Many sport organizations who have already implemented the CCES guidelines (for example, Rugby Canada) also rejected the World Rugby Union guidelines as transphobic.

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