Canada's Justin Trudeau Says Transgender Inmates Will Be Housed Based On Gender Identity
Justin Trudeau continued to serve as an inclusive voice for the LGBT community last week after vowing to make sure transgender inmates are able to serve their sentences in prisons that match their gender identity.
The Canadian prime minister vowed to address the problem at a town hall meeting on Thursday after a trans woman declared that the current prison placement policy is "torture."
"I will make sure we look at it and we address it and we do right in recognizing that trans rights are human rights, and we need to make sure we are defending everyone's dignity and rights in every way we can," he said.
A new Correctional Service Canada policy was just released days before Trudeau's speech, however, that places inmates in facilities based on birth sex instead of gender identity.
A spokesman for the minister of public safety said that all Canadians should be free to be themselves and safe from discrimination, and declared that the CSC has already begun to update its rules regarding trans inmates.
He added that a bill that would add gender identity to the list of protections against discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act is currently moving through Parliament.
