Since the announcement of the formation of Québec’s Comité des sages sur l’identité de genre (unofficial translation: Committee of “Wise Men” on Gender Identity) in 2023—without a single member from the 2S/LGBTQIA+ community in its ranks—the committee has remained controversial. Tasked with addressing issues of gender expression and recognition in the province, the group released a 280-page report (available in French only) in May 2025. Many of its findings and recommendations have been met with dissent from several groups, including the Conseil québécois LGBT (CQ-LGBT) and Quebec’s trans rights organizers, including Aide aux Trans du Québec.
Within its many pages, the report makes numerous recommendations affecting the lives of trans people in Quebec—some of which are positive, while others are misinformed at best, and actively harmful at worst. Among the more positive proposals, the report calls for better access to healthcare for trans individuals, recommends government support for sports associations that wish to create mixed-gender programs (while keeping existing gendered ones), and suggests that both gendered and gender-neutral washrooms should be available in public spaces.
However, some recommendations are biased, harmful, and informed by pseudo-science, risking real harm by pathologizing or marginalizing trans people—especially trans women. For example, the report supports housing trans inmates according to their gender identity, but only after a panel of experts confirms that their transition is "genuine.” Furthermore, the report frequently calls for further research on key topics, and several of its recommendations risk negatively impacting the lives of trans women.
Founder of the pro-bono Juritrans legal clinic, Celeste Trianon has long been an outspoken and visible trans advocate throughout Québec and across Canada. We spoke with her for her expert opinion on the Comité and its report.
First, we would like to get your reflections on the Comité des sages sur l’identité de genre’s composition of members not being from the 2S/LGBTQIA+ community. How rare is actual participation—and in particular trans participation—in these sorts of committees? Are there any such committees in Canada doing a better job at involvement and representation within the ranks of who’s involved in making these sorts of reports and recommendations?
Trans participation has never been the default in Canada. Trans people are often seen as an object of analysis, not subjects. When I look at recent battles for trans rights in Quebec, seldom have trans people been able to enter the room without first fighting for it, demanding it—and that holds true both for such committees and other public instances, such as parliamentary consultative committees. Trans people have never been allowed to be ‘maîtres chez nous,’ to have control over the politics affecting their bodies, except in these limited instances. The creation of the Comité de sages is pretty much the quintessential example of this, one which has been seen elsewhere in the world whenever anti-trans governments wish to research trans people—for instance, the Florida review, the HHS review, and the Cass review.
What is your overall opinion of the 280-page report released by the Comité? Do the negative aspects of it cancel out anything particularly useful or helpful within its pages?
Whilst the report does paint an accurate picture of trans issues in some regards—most notably with regards to legal discrimination and in/access to various facets of day-to-day life—this gets all thrown overboard with arguments that seem to be pulled from the depths of anti-trans organizing. The fact that pseudoscience is presented alongside science as ‘competing theories’ is a perfect example thereof. This report is arguably unsalvageable for this exact reason: it presents anti-trans talking points as legitimate, despite their fundamentally dehumanizing nature.
What would you say is the most negative potential impact of this report and its recommendations? What, if any, are the most potentially positive aspects?
I’d argue, everything related to trans women is negative. The report ‘de-sexes’ trans women, by artificially separating them from cisgender (non-trans) women, and claiming that cis women’s rights are threatened by trans women’s rights. This has shown itself to be patently false on numerous occasions—for instance, legislatures targeting abortion almost always tend to target gender-affirming healthcare, and vice versa, given that both forms of healthcare are rooted in bodily autonomy. The report has already had significant impacts on Québec society, most notably through its new ‘prison policy’ subjecting trans women prisoners in particular to dehumanizing, cruel, and unusual treatment.
Much of the report also suggests further research is needed on several of the topics included. To your knowledge, how much were groups such as Aide aux Trans du Québec and members of the 2S/LGBTQIA+ community included or consulted for the report’s creation? Were you or anyone you work with contacted for this report?
Community groups may have been consulted, but it was apparent that the committee barely gave any voice to them. I (via Juritrans, the organization I founded) was consulted by them, and talked about certain access to justice issues, but these were barely discussed in the report.
In your view, what are the most pressing issues facing the trans community in Québec? How does the report address those, if at all?
Access to healthcare, to housing, and employment. Poverty, and the liminal space it creates, is something I notice way too often. Quebec’s trans community frequently suffers from socioeconomic discrimination in particular ways—being refused a job because one is trans, or being passed back and forth between several healthcare workers to get hormone therapy, is too common. Even if Quebec law recognizes that discrimination based on trans identity has been illegal since 1998, it seems to me that this message is not getting through.
On the subject of trans prisoners, the report suggests the formation of a panel to determine whether or not an inmate’s transition is “genuine” when determining which prison they should be detained in. What are your thoughts on this particular piece of the report? Is there any indication who would sit on or how such a panel would be created?
Every time we ask healthcare professionals to confirm someone’s trans identity, it ultimately comes back to the individual—and this is, unfortunately, an idea that institutions struggle to accept. If it’s done with respect for the dignity of the person involved, in principle, I don’t see any problem with that.
However, I have to say that the ‘seriousness of the transition’ principle was rejected by the Minister of Public Security—Minister Bonnardel—and, ultimately a policy was adopted using genitalia as the rule to determine where a prisoner will be held. This is a decision that completely violates the civil rights of detainees.
This report’s release was met with an in-person protest in Québec City, made up of members of the trans community who were not only barred from entering the meeting but also cleared from the building by police. How does an occurrence like this affect the relationship between the Comité and the population it has been formed to study and arguably protect? And following an event like this, how can those relationships be repaired?
The community has been demanding the dissolution of Comité des sages since it was first announced in September 2023, and then formed in December 2023—so, there have never been any real ties. Also, the Conseil québécois LGBT—the main body representing 2S/LGBTQIA+ communities and organizations for the committee—was betrayed, having received false promises from the beginning. In my opinion, this relationship cannot be repaired—and the CAQ (current political party in Quebec) has irreversibly broken any trust it might have had with queer communities.
What would you suggest as the best path forward following the Comité’s report?
Honestly, what it will take is to throw the report out the window and call upon the experts instead— trans and allied experts who already exist here in Quebec—as well as support the self-determination of our communities. When trans people say they know themselves, it’s the truth. And we need to start to recognize lived expertise as a form of expertise to be prioritized. Quebec has been ahead of the game when it comes to queer people’s rights for a long time (at least when it comes to LGBQ+). I wonder, why can’t we go back to that point? We can do it!
Celeste Trianon is a transfeminine jurist and activist, and the founder of Juritrans, a not-for-profit legal clinic and collective based in Montréal that has helped over a thousand trans people in multiple jurisdictions access legal services.
Watch her Summit 2024 keynote: Trans People, the Law, and Trans Futures.
