Source: The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms
The federal government has filed its Statement of Defence in a Charter challenge to Correctional Service Canada’s policy on gender-diverse offenders. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which is funding lawyers for Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights, says the filing confirms what the government has preferred not to advertise: trans-identifying male inmates housed in women’s institutions have faced sexual-assault charges after complaints by female prisoners.
According to the defence, an inmate identified as S/M was charged in May 2020 with sexual assault and criminal harassment following a complaint from a female inmate. Another inmate, identified as KF/R, was charged with two counts of sexual assault after a complaint in October 2024. The charges have not been proven in court. The same document acknowledges other complaints that did not result in charges, including a 2018 police investigation, a 2021 allegation of sexual and physical assault at Fraser Valley Institution, and a 2019 report at Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge.
Ottawa’s position is that none of this harm flows from Commissioner’s Directive 100, the 2022 policy that places offenders according to gender identity or expression unless officials decide health or safety concerns cannot be resolved. The government “wholly denies” that the policy caused harm to women in federal prisons. CAWSBAR’s lawsuit argues the opposite: that transferring males into women’s institutions exposes incarcerated women to physical and psychological harm and violates their rights to life, liberty, security of the person and equality.
Female inmates are among the least able to refuse a cellmate or walk away from a policy. They are already confined. A 2022 CSC research paper found that more than 90 percent of prisoners identifying as transwomen were incarcerated for violent offences and 44 percent had a history of sexual offences. Self-identification as the starting point for placement, with safety treated as an exception to be managed after the fact, puts the burden of risk on the women who cannot leave.
The government’s defence does not claim the incidents never happened. It claims the policy is not to blame. That is a difficult argument once the same document lists charges and complaints inside the institutions the policy opened. A prison system that cannot keep women safe from male-bodied offenders is not balancing rights. It is choosing one set of claims over the people with the least power to object.
