Canada’s Trans Community Calls for Change in Travel Regulations

Canada Parliament

Jennifer McCreath has a fear of flying of a different sort: a fear she won’t be allowed on board. McCreath, a 43-year-old transgender woman in St. John’s, N.L., takes issue with a federal regulation that prohibits airlines from transporting anyone who “does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification presented.”

Doing away with the regulation is a cause the federal NDP has been pushing for five years, and one for which Justin Trudeau expressed support before becoming prime minister. It’s also one the federal Liberal government should be all over, given its self-proclaimed reputation as the party of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, McCreath said in an interview Wednesday.

“It all comes back to the notion of equality,” said McCreath, who described having to wait for two hours in a holding area before a flight to the United States in 2011, when she was in the process of changing the gender on her birth certificate. The Canadian regulation, she said, gives officials too much power in cases where someone doesn’t look like the gender indicated on their identification.

By Kristy Kirkup – Full Story at RD News Now

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