Wednesday October 8, 2025 | VICTORIA, BC
Political analysis & Editorial | by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
It’s one of those issues that really lays bare a stark divide in political beliefs.
Or more accurately, it reveals beliefs about what it means to be human but also exposes an odd fixation over genitals vis-a-vis being who a person really is. Does changing a body’s physicality ultimately serve the apparent intended purpose to make a person feel more like who they are?
Over the past 20 years or so there has been a strong trend in western society to take a medical and societal direction in allowing if not facilitating the belief that changing one’s body and one’s gender orientation is not only okay but it’s somehow progressive or advanced.
Puberty is tough:
Anyone who is an adult knows that puberty is — for most people — a difficult time physically and emotionally. For al of human time that has been the case. And every parent knows that children and teens go through changes in a wide range of things as they grow from being young children toward adulthood.
Brain maturation:
Further, science has clearly shown that the human brain does not fully mature until around age 25, notably in terms of comprehending and processing consequence.
The brain remains in an active state of development during adolescence, according to the National Library of Medicine.
A decision made in childhood, teenage years or even early 20s is not the same decision a full adult would make.
Society has not yet asked itself why there is such a passion to ignoring what is clearly observable… that people make more rational and/or mature decisions once they reach full adulthood.
Sometimes irreversible:
Later in life, people who’ve undergone these treatments may afterall want to have children or orient their sex lives to the biology they were born with. In some cases that is not possible — the surgery or hormonal impacts are irreversible. There have been cases where children have sued their parents for allowing sexual-adjustment surgery and hormone therapy.
And in the BC school system where secrecy frequently prevails as to the shift of gender identity, e.g. teachers not telling parents that their children use a different name or pronoun at school, the impact on families can be traumatic. In many cases it reduces the parents to mere bystanders in the lives of their own children whose very identity and belief systems have been overlaid by a societal trend by way of the state.
Many European countries have softened or reversed their allowance for surgical and medical changes to a child or teen’s sexual anatomy or mindset. As OneBC House Leader Tara Armstrong put it in her statement in the BC Legislative Assembly today: “British Columbia is sleep-walking through the greatest medical scandal in modern history”.
OneBC:
The issue was brought forward by OneBC House Leader Tara Armstrong with introduction of a bill entitled Protecting Minors from Gender Transaction Act, with the request that the bill be introduced and read a first time.
Armstrong’s pitch was that every child is perfect just the way they are. She called thetrend to have children change their gender through surgery and drugs as being part of an “unbelievable era of indoctrination and medical malpractice”.
As this topic is highly contentious, the full text of MLA Armstrong’s statement is presented here:
“Members, I stand before you today – not only as a member at this legislature – but as a mother. British Columbia is sleep-walking through the greatest medical scandal in modern history. And it’s our kids who are at risk. In BC today, doctors are causing irreversible harm to children with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone and surgeries. These interventions rob children of the human right to grow up with their bodies intact and to one day have children of their own. BC’s schools add to this harm by socially transitioning children with new names and pronouns, often kept secret from parents. Gender clinics in BC are even performing double mastectomies on healthy young girls by the age of 14. All because we fell for the lie — a lot of us did — that children can be born in the wrong body. It’s not true though. Every child is beautiful just the way just as they are. No drugs or scalpels are needed. Every jurisdiction in the world that has conducted a systematic review of the scientific literature has found no credible evidence to support this practice. So let’s all make it stop. And this should not be a partisan issue. This bill will bring BC in line with the UK and other progressive European countries that have banned harmful and unscientific social and medical gender procedures for minors. In our schools it will stop them using the wrong pronouns, keep boys out of girls bathrooms, and remove gender ideology from school libraries and curriculum. It will stop doctors from trying to change the sex of minors. In short, it will end this unbelievable era of indoctrination and medical malpractice. Please join me as we restore sanity to this province and provide the loving care that every child deserves. Thank you.”
The vote failed:
A standing vote to accept first reading of the bill failed. There are 93 MLAs, and this is how the vote resulted:
- All BC Conservative MLAs and the two OneBC MLAs voted in favour, for a total of 45 votes.
- The 48 MLAs who voted against were: all BC NDP MLAs (five of them remotely via online voting) plus the two Green MLAs and Independent MLA Elenore Sturko).
Depending on how political the OneBC party and the BC Conservatives get with this issue, this failed vote could have political consequence at the ballot box when the next provincial election rolls around.
===== RELATED:
NEWS SECTIONS: HEALTH | EDUCATION | 43rd PARLIAMENT OF BC | ONEBC