Pierre Poilievre

• “I think that we should protect children and their ability to make adult decisions when they’re adults,” Poilievre said.
• Poilievre is one among many politicians to wade into debates surrounding gender-affirming health care in recent years.
• Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has proposed controversial policies that would affect gender-diverse youth, including prohibiting puberty blockers for children aged 15 and under.

Fertility and gender-affirming medicine

• Two opinion columnists recently wrote about gender-affirming care for minors, making drastically different remarks about the fertility implications of this care.
• Research on fertility outcomes is lackluster to begin with, but outcomes are highly sensitive to whether puberty blockers were taken prior to starting cross-sex hormones and the stage of puberty.
• However, for transgender people who begin cross-sex hormones after undergoing at least some natal puberty, fertility does not seem to be permanently affected.

Puberty blockers

• When puberty blockers were first tested for use with gender dysphoric youth, transgender adults were being coercively sterilized.
• In fact, fertility is not the only issue at stake with puberty blockers.

• A team of Dutch clinicians who were among the first to offer transgender children puberty blockers recently acknowledged that these drugs may not be just a “pause button” to explore identity, as originally intended.
• But there are also major consequences involved in delaying or withholding treatment with puberty blockers, which could hurt transgender girls more than boys.
• Poilievre gives the wrong impression by saying that “we should protect the rights of parents to make their own decision with regards to their children,” because, given the age of the child, parents are typically involved in the decision to start puberty blockers.

Detransition debate

• Detransition also tops the list.
• On one side, opponents of gender-affirming care distort studies to argue detransition has reached epidemic proportions and draw from testimonies of regretful detransitioners as a “cautionary tale against medical transitioning.” Proponents retort by dismissing detransition either by alluding to its “rarity,” using outdated and flawed studies, or by decoupling the experience from regret.
• As a result, the public is exposed to two different sets of “facts,” none of which reflect the heterogeneity that we and others have encountered in researching detransition — different psychological, medical and social motives for detransitioning; a range of emotions including regret, resilience, and satisfaction; expansive patterns of identity discovery and fluidity.

Guidelines, dilemmas and the need for high-quality research

• But that does not mean the science is settled or that the medicine has no room for improvement.
• Gender-affirming care is riddled with ethical dilemmas that have spilled over into an explosive political situation.
• The changing landscape of transgender health care, debates about puberty blockers and detransition are all low-hanging fruit for opportunistic politicians like Poilievre.

• He is a member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).
• Pablo Expósito-Campos receives funding from the Predoctoral Research Fellowship Program of the Government of the Basque Country, Spain.

• “Before the break, the Conservative’s stance on the Sustainable Jobs act was nothing but shenanigans — wasting time and public dollars.
• “I encourage Mr. Poilievre to let his actions prove his promises: does he support workers or not?”
  Another pressing issue for workers is housing.
• To address this issue, the government should invest in housing similar to the scale seen after the Second World War.
• It’s not enough to ‘incentivize’ private developers, workers need their government to have greater ambition,” said Bruske.

• Political commentators credit this polling success to the popular appeal of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.
• The same political background that makes Poilievre an effective parliamentarian may make him vulnerable to being characterized as out of touch by opposition parties and voters.

Career politicians

• According to King, career politicians are parliamentarians who devote their professional life to politics, entering politics in their 30s and leaving at retirement age.
• Poilievre closely matches King’s definition of a career politician.
• It’s safe to say he’s the textbook definition of a career politician.

The benefits of career politicians

• Poilievre’s background has obvious advantages to his own career and the success of the Conservative Party.
• For one, his long career in politics, including as a political staffer, has given him a keen understanding of the legislative process.

The problem with career politicians

• The most common criticism of career politicians is that they are insulated from life outside of formal politics.
• Poilievre has likely heard concerns and demands from Canadians inside and outside of his constituency as Conservative leader and MP for Ottawa’s Carleton riding.
• Prof. Donald Savoie of the University of Moncton has suggested that:
  “Career politicians … bring a narrow skill set to their governance.
• But they lack the ability to test policy prescriptions against
  experiences gained outside politics.”
  “Career politicians … bring a narrow skill set to their governance.

Out of touch

• His recent popularity appears to stem from talking about the issues Canadians care about.
• If Poilievre becomes prime minister, he’ll have a hard time maintaining popularity if he focuses primarily on partisanship.
• The fact that both Trudeau and Poilievre can be described as out of touch raises broader questions about representation in Canada.

• In response, CBC paused its activity on Twitter, objecting to any suggestion the government has any control over its journalism.
• Poilievre is suggesting Twitter’s designation is proof the CBC lacks editorial independence and is a Liberal government propaganda tool.

Public plea

• In early April, Poilievre made a public request to Musk to label the CBC “government-funded media,” saying Canadians should be protected against disinformation and manipulation by state media.
• From the outset, Poilievre was conflating news organizations that receive government funding as public broadcasters to state media outlets, which are controlled editorially by ruling governments.
• After the request was granted, he again took to Twitter to signal that the public broadcaster has officially been exposed as “government-funded media,” thereby suggesting that it can no longer be considered trustworthy.

Not a warning

• The “government-funded” label doesn’t appear to suggest any sort of warning or raise cause for concern about the outlet’s objectivity and independence.
• Instead, it reads simply as describing a media entity that receives funding from the government.

Grasping the nuances

• Not everyone understands the nuances of how Canadian government works and fewer recognize the complexity of the institutions that make up the administrative state, which the CBC is part of as a Crown corporation.
• Crown corporations operate similarly to large for-profit companies, but they’re public organizations that fulfil both commercial and public policy objectives.

Taxpayer funds

• The public broadcaster maintains editorial independence, regardless of what party’s in power, and receives its funding through a vote in Parliament.
• But misleading Canadians by conflating Twitter’s media account verification labels, as Poilievre has done, is not the way forward.