Alberta's Law on Transwomen Competition in Women's Sports

"Our government believes in a sport system that provides opportunities for all Canadians to participate and excel in sport, including the transgender community."

"This means a sports system that is welcoming, inclusive, safe, fair, rooted in good governance and operations."

"Using sport to discriminate against the trans community is wrong, and to the detriment of an already vulnerable, excluded, and marginalized community."

"...There must be a path forward for sport in Canada where the integrity and fairness of sport categories are preserved, while at the same time, human rights are respected."

Alyson Fair, spokesperson, Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden 

 

"I think there has to be some kind of challenge mechanism in place to give the policy teeth, but it's something that needs to be handled with the utmost discretion."

"Information supporting the grounds of a challenge can't be something like 'she's too tall' or she has short hair'."

Blaine Badiuk, Lethbridge, Alberta

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith speaks about introducing three new bills to do with transgender issues in Edmonton on Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. Among the bills is Alberta's new ban on transgender athletes in female sports. (Jason Franson/The Canadian Press)

The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act (formerly Bill 29) establishes a balanced approach to protect the integrity of female athletic competitions by ensuring women and girls have the opportunity to compete in biological female-only divisions, while also ensuring transgender athletes are able to meaningfully participate in the sports of their choice.

The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act requires in-scope organizations to create and implement policies for athlete eligibility that align with requirements set out in the regulation, including limiting eligibility for female-only divisions to biologically female athletes. The Act also supports the expansion and creation of mixed-sex leagues, classes or divisions, where numbers warrant.

Alberta’s government consulted with provincial sport organizations, post-secondary institutions, school authorities, coaches, parents, athletes, members of the transgender community and other subject matter experts to help inform Alberta’s approach to creating a more fair and safe sport system in the province.

Alberta Government Website 

 

 

"Alberta’s government will work with sporting organizations in the province to ensure biologically born female athletes are able to compete in a biological female-only division without having to compete against transgender female athletes while also expanding co-ed or other gender-neutral divisions for athletic competitions to ensure that transgender athletes are able to meaningfully participate in the sport of their choice."

"This will just apply to trans women and girls as there are biological realities that give transgender female athletes a competitive advantage over women and girls."

Kevin Lee, press secretary, Alberta Tourism and Sport Ministry

A new Alberta law prohibits transgender athletes from competing in female-only athletic divisions, giving women and girls in the province the assurance that any athletic competition they will be involved in as competitors will be truly fair and respecting of their basic human rights. The law is not complicit with the transgender-supporting sentiments of the federal government in Ottawa, however. The sniffing condescension of the Liberal government's position of 'fairness' to the transgender community, overlooks fairness to a much larger contingent; half of the nation's population that are not a fringe minority. 

 

According to a statement by a spokesperson for the Canadian Ministry of Sport that her office and that of Women and Gender Equality are actively "monitoring the implementation and implications" of the Alberta policy. Evidently no one in those ministries is perturbed over the unfairness and intrusion of girls and women sharing intimate public places with individuals born as males while attesting to having transited to females. Nor the competitive advantage of male hormones and musculature that give male bodies greater strength and endurance than do female bodies.

 

The Alberta law also includes other measures including mandatory parental disclosure for school pronoun alterations that accompany gender transition, along with a ban on medical transitions for children younger than 15, considered by the federal Liberal ruling government to represent the "most anti-LGBT policies" in Canada. Not the most careful, cautious, child-friendly, parental- and family-supporting initiative in all of Canada where 'progressive' liberalism has embraced the excesses of transgender entitlements. 

 

All female athletes aged 12 and older are required to submit an attestation form verifying female identification at birth under the new sport law which came into effect at the start of the new school year. A complaint system allowing concerned parties to initiate a review of eligibility of individual athletes enforces the policy, through the submission of a confidential challenge form to a relevant school board or provincial sporting organization. If sufficient grounds are found to support the challenge the subject is notified and required to produce birth registration documentation.

 

Those athletes considered to have misrepresented their birth gender or who refuse to produce the requested documents are to be barred from competition in female sport in the province. Blaine Badiuk, a transwoman living in the province hopes the challenge process will not incentivize the amateur sleuthing of female athletes based on appearance, known as "transvestigation". She was personally involved in taking part in government consultations on the policy, and plans to take a "wait and see" position.  

 

American Lia Thomas was the first female trans athlete to win a collegiate title in 2022. Three months later, the World Swimming Federation excluded participants who had gone through male puberty from the women's category    Image: Chris Szagola/AP/Picture Alliance

 

"[B]oards of in-scope entities may impose reasonable sanctions against any person who, in the opinion of the board, challenges the eligibility of an athlete in bad faith."

"Such sanctions may include, but are not limited to, written warnings, code of conduct violations, or any existing policies and procedures that an in-scope entity may have in place [to ensure robust safeguards against false and malicious challenges]."

Vanessa Gomez, spokesperson, Alberta Ministry of Tourism and Sport