Equitable Funding for Transgender Health Care

Proper transgender health care is widely acknowledged to require gender affirming surgical procedures. When this project came to the Clinic’s attention in 2017, these surgeries were funded in Alberta through a program established under Ministerial Order and were not included in the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan. This led to long delays and careless financial administration that unduly restricted access to these surgeries compared to those funded through the Alberta Health Care Insurance Plan.

The Clinic was retained by a client to assist in the filing of a complaint under the Alberta Human Rights Act alleging discrimination in Alberta Health’s funding model. In preliminary work to prepare for this complaint, the Clinic conducted research into the history and execution of the funding for gender affirming surgeries and we found that much of this information was not on the public record. Accordingly, the Clinic filed an access to information request to Alberta Health in 2018 to build an evidentiary record of the discriminatory treatment against transgender individuals. While some information was released, Alberta Health did not respond to the requests in a timely manner, and the Clinic requested a review by the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for an inquiry into why the requests were not addressed within the timelines required by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Alberta).

These steps ultimately led to the disclosure of documents which showed that Alberta Health’s submissions about their funding structure for gender affirming surgery were misleading. Alberta Health, prompted by our client’s complaint, reformed their funding system over the next two years for gender affirming surgical procedures and the human rights complaint was never proceeded with.