* This presentation was originally recorded in English. Closed captioning is available in both English and French.
While there have been major strides in legal protections for sexual and gender diverse communities in Canada, our communities continue to face serious legal challenges, including discrimination and systemic exclusions within health systems, workplaces, housing, immigration systems, family law and adoption systems, and police and criminal justice systems. This is particularly the case for sexual and gender diverse people who face intersecting forms of oppression, including transphobia, systemic racism, and settler colonialism. This panel will synthesize key findings from a series of community-based qualitative projects funded by the Department of Justice on serious legal problems among sexual and gender diverse communities in Canada and conducted by researchers at CBRC, ASTT(e)Q, Egale, and academic institutions across the country. These studies explored the types of legal problems, barriers to justice, and impacts of legal issues experienced by sexual and gender diverse communities, and were conducted with sexually diverse people in Western, Central, and Eastern Canada, and gender diverse people nationally. Overall, approximately 90 semi-structured interviews were conducted with a diverse group of participants across the country. Presentations and discussion will provide insights into the types of legal problems that sexual and gender diverse communities experience within and beyond legal and administrative systems; the connections between and impacts of these problems; and some of the reforms and/or broader transformations needed to improve these communities’ life conditions.
Participants:
William Hébert (Carleton University), Barbara Perry (Ontario Tech University), Alex Wells (University of Victoria), Katrina Stephany (CBRC), and additional panelists. Moderator: Anu Radha Verma (CBRC)
