Sport Canada Buries Report - 92% of Female Professional Athletes Don't Want to Compete Against Men
The only reason we even know about the report is thanks to an access to information request by MacDonald-Laurier Institute.
As much as we've heard how “Trans rights matter” in the sports arena, we've heard very little about women's rights in that same space.
Sport Canada, a branch of the Department of Canadian Heritage is responsible for providing “leadership and funding to help ensure a strong Canadian sport system”. They also set the rules by which all of our sports programs are governed, from highschool to professional, high-level sports.
In 2022, Sport Canada commissioned a report to find out what professional, high-level female athletes thought about competing against biological males in their chosen sport. Seems like it was about 20 years late, but whatever. E for effort, I suppose…
The report came out in August and one can only imagine what they expected to find. Whatever it was, it was evidently deemed to be so uninteresting that they never bothered to make it public. I mean, after twenty years of transwomen competing in women's sports, surely no one is really that terribly interested in what real women think about stuff like this anyway, right?
Thankfully the Macdonald-Laurier Institute was interested in it, but the only way they were able to see the report was to file an access to information request - which they did.
Lo and behold, The report found that 92% of professional female athletes believe that they shouldn't have to compete against men who call themselves women. Can you believe that? Who knew women's sports was so full of troglodytes…
The report also found that the institution most to blame for the current rules is the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES). In fact, it went so far as to say this:
The CCES transgender guidelines… echoed throughout the Canadian sport infrastructure, might therefore be considered to constitute institutional discrimination against the female athletes on the basis of sex.
According to their website, the CCES is “independent from sport organizations and government”, although it also says it's funded by Sport Canada, which as I mentioned is a branch of government.
Here's the conclusion of the CCES 2016 Trans Inclusion in Sport Expert Working Group (emphasis mine):
The Expert Working Group acknowledges the concern that transwomen athletes who grew up biologically male and who do not undergo hormonal [or surgical] intervention may be at a competitive advantage when competing in high-performance women’s sport. Nonetheless, it is recognized that [trans-identifying males] are not males who became females. Rather these are people who have always been psychologically female, but whose anatomy and physiology, for reasons yet unexplained, have manifested as male. (CCES 2016, 20)
That's right, the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport apparently believes that transwomen didn't “become female” but have always been so “psychologically” and the reasons are “as yet unexplained”. Huh. Is it just a coincidence that the date on this coincides with the first year of Justin Trudeau's Liberal government?
Interestingly, the CCES had commissioned it's own study which was released several months after this report came out, maybe because they didn't like the Sport Canada report. Their report came out in November, but they had used a different research organization called E-Alliance.
This is how E-Alliance describes itself on their About page:
E-Alliance is a knowledge sharing hub made up of scholars and partner organizations from across Canada who are dedicated to gender+ equity in sport.
Can you imagine what E-Alliance concluded? Of course you can, but here are a couple of choice tidbits to get your imagination flowing:
Biomedical studies are overvalued in sports policies in comparison to social sciences studies.
Policies that impact trans women’s participation in elite sport are the continuation of a long history of exclusion of women from competitive sport – an exclusion that resulted in the introduction of a ‘women’s’ category of sport in the first place.
So, the social aspect is more valuable than the medical aspect, and excluding transwomen is simply more discrimination against ‘women’.
Riiiight…
So, not only did Sport Canada not make their report available without an access to information request, but it appears that they also cut that study a bit short after receiving a letter signed by over “200 members of academic and sport communities” who apparently felt it was discriminatory toward transgender athletes to even ask these kinds of questions.
Not surpringly, one of the conclusions drawn by the authors of the report in regards to this development is that:
It served to support one of the over-arching themes raised by respondents, that is, the on-going attempts to silence female athletes.
It seems the main concern was the use of the phrase “biological male”. Seems like a trivial issue, but it was evidently enough to discontinue the study in order to “ensure that all voices are heard on questions of inclusion in sport.”
All voices except those of actual women, apparently.
While Sport Canada may have been fine with ending the study early, what actually transpired was that the study was compromised by two of the participants who leaked it to a trans activist group called Athlete Ally, who then prepared the letter. These two participants also signed on to the letter.
The Study
Anyway, back to that study. What the study ended up concluding (as I mentioned earlier) is that the number of professional female athletes who feel they should have a right to compete in dedicated female sport categories is 92%.
Also, 72% disagreed with the following statement:
I feel I can ask questions and speak freely about the inclusion of transwomen (biological males) in female sport categories without undue fear of being accused of transphobia.
Shocker.
Here's a few more:
Thankfully, in this country we also have an organization called Canadian Women & Sport who's apparent mandate is this:
We are dedicated to creating an equitable and inclusive Canadian sport and physical activity system that empowers girls and women – as active participants and leaders – within and through sport.
Unfortunately for those same girls and women, according to Canadian Women and Sport’s Position Statement:
We do not share the view that inclusion of transgender women poses a fundamental threat to the advancement of cisgender women in sport.
If you think this is a strange position for an organization that is specifically dedicated to “empowering women and girls”, then perhaps their Funding page will help clear up your confusion. Right at the top is Sport Canada (you know the guys that did the study and then tried to bury it), and right under Sport Canada is Women and Gender Equality Canada.
A funny thing about that Sport Canada link is that it simply says “Canada”, but the link takes you to the Sport Canada Web page. And in case there's any doubt about what Women and Gender Equality Canada is all about:
Women and Gender Equality Canada works to advance equality with respect to sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression through the inclusion of people of all genders, including women, in Canada’s economic, social, and political life.
It's nice they decided to include “women” in their list of genders, even if it does come across as an afterthought.
Conclusion
So in summary, Sport Canada commissioned a study (and then tried to bury it when the results were unacceptable) that found that the vast majority of female athletes believe it's unfair to be forced to compete against men. The report found that the biggest problem is the rules that are set out by CCES (which is funded by Sport Canada).
CCES then released it's own study conducted by obviously biased E-Alliance, a research organization “dedicated to gender+ equity in sport.”
Canadian Women & Sport, whom you'd think would be there to advocate for women and girls is no help at all, and is obviously compromised in that mandate seeing as part of their funding comes from the very institution they're tasked with policing, as well as from another ideologically motivated government organization.
Incidentally, there was a thorough rebuttal of the CCES report that came out less than a month after it was released. It was written by a group of scientists and humanities scholars, and in their conclusion, they state that the report:
lacks academic integrity because it distorts or ignores key findings from the literature to such an extent that it appears to be guided by ideology rather than scientific knowledge
Even though this rebuttal is out there, it's still way easier to find the CCES report that is debunked. This is an all too familiar story, but at the end of the day, what this all boils down to is a crisis in leadership. What we currently have in this country are cowardly “leaders” who have advocated their responsibilities to the mob. In that sense they're not leaders at all, but simply useful idiots in the hands of activists and special interest groups. What we need are real leaders who are not afraid to do what's right and who will stand firm in their convictions and be willing to take responsibility for them, even in the face of the angry mob.
I know for a fact they're out there, and they need all the encouragement we can give them.
If you're interested, you can check out these other posts on BlogOfKen regarding the Trans phenomenon:
Identity Lost - The demand for recognition without qualification.
Oh, Canada. What is going on up there?!