“Governments and kangaroo courts now chill freedom of expression instead of fighting crime, censoring people who dare to speak their minds.”
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is blasting Canada’s human rights regime after a BC tribunal ordered a former school trustee to pay $750,000 for publicly stating that there are only two genders.
“This is insane and Orwellian,” Poilievre wrote on X. “Governments and kangaroo courts now chill freedom of expression instead of fighting crime, censoring people who dare to speak their minds. Just ask the BC school board trustee who got slapped with a $750,000 fine for saying there are two genders. Enough is enough. We must defend the truth and free speech against these mad censors.”
The penalty was handed down by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal against former trustee Barry Neufeld, who had campaigned against the idea that gender is a social construct and criticized policies requiring schools to affirm students’ gender identities.
In a 143-page ruling, the tribunal characterized Neufeld’s comments as “dehumanizing,” “delegitimizing” and “extremely serious and damaging,” concluding that his statements amounted to the denial and erasure of trans identities, reports the National Post.
The decision came the same day the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal ordered a Montreal salon to pay $500 to a non-binary complainant who objected to its men’s and women’s haircut categories. While the tribunal rejected a request for $12,500 in damages, it ruled the salon’s gender-based pricing discriminatory.
The cases are the latest in a series of tribunal decisions enforcing amendments to provincial and federal human rights codes that added “gender identity” and “gender expression” as protected grounds. Critics argue the rulings have expanded into compelled affirmation of self-declared gender — including mandated pronoun usage — backed by financial penalties.
Poilievre framed the issue as a broader fight over free expression, accusing tribunals of punishing Canadians for rejecting gender ideology rather than focusing on crime.
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