'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
The coronavirus pandemic has contributed to some health-care mayhem in Canada, pushing an already overloaded system to the breaking point.
Cancelled surgeries, disruptions in staffing and colossal wait times have been reported across the country, with a Canadian Medical Association report out Tuesday outlining how delayed treatments or missed health-care services due to pandemic restrictions may have been a factor in more than 4,000 excess deaths unrelated to COVID-19 between August and December of 2020 alone.
Access to gender-affirming surgeries for trans and gender diverse people is no exception.
Vice President of Strategy and lead for sexual and gender health programming at the Women’s College Hospital in Ontario Jack Woodman told CTV’s Your Morning that the situation is critical.
“Throughout COVID-19 we have seen so many inequities exposed and exacerbated and transgender healthcare has been one of the big ones,” Woodman, who uses they/them pronouns, said Tuesday. “There’s already really limited access points for gender-affirming and related surgeries… so the pandemic didn’t create just a new burdensome waitlist for these surgeries, it exacerbated a really serious issue that already existed.”
Woodman said that demand for gender-affirming surgeries has been increasing “exponentially” in a trend over several years, while health-care system capacity and resources have not kept up.
The Women’s College Hospital was home to Canada’s first gender-affirming surgery program, and as Woodman pointed out, is the only public hospital in Ontario providing those surgeries.
“If we are ever going to remove the current bottleneck [we will need to work] with our government partners to find solutions and, like all surgical programs that were impacted through COVID-19, there’s a host of factors that influence the wait times,” they said. “I won’t give you an exact number, but I can tell you the waits are too long and that wouldn’t be accepted without immediate action across other certain types of surgical care.”
Woodman said the positive impact of gender-affirming surgeries on the mental health and well being of trans people and gender diverse people is life-changing, and they referred to Canadian actor Elliot Page’s quote to Oprah that their surgery, and living as their true self, was “life-saving.”
Page has been celebrated for sharing images of himself shirtless post-op and thriving after coming out as trans last December.
“The casual posts that Elliot Page did, what made that so significant, is that their celebration of visible trans-ness is having a wide impact. He is actively influencing how people see trans bodies,” Woodman explained. “Of course we don’t all have a six-pack like Elliot and the diversity of trans bodies should all be celebrated but the visibility is so important to a community that has had so little positive representation in the media.”
For LGBTQ2S+ people in Canada, especially trans people, mental health is a major issue as is accessing mental health care.
According to Statistics Canada, almost half of transgender people in the country have seriously considered suicide, with that rate reducing if they are able to have a completed medical transition with gender-affirming surgery, according to the Centre for Suicide Prevention.
Another study by Trans PULSE in 2013 found people who decided to transition medically and surgically, but who are facing wait times, are at their most vulnerable, with close to 30 per cent of those surveyed attempting suicide the previous year.
Woodman said the fact that Page is exuding comfort in their body is a “beautiful thing.”
“Page is showing more than his body, he is demonstrating the profound impact that gender-affirming surgery can have for those individuals who do need it,” they continued, emphasizing that not every trans person needs to get surgery. “For those that do [get surgery], it just really improves their mental health and quality of life and Elliot page is absolutely right – it can be life-saving.”
In Ontario NDP MPP for Toronto Centre Suze Morrison has introduced a private member’s bill to create a Gender Affirming Health Care Advisory Committee, which if passed, would see the creation of an advisory committee to review the state of the province’s transgender health care and create recommendations for improvement.
“Transgender and gender diverse people experience so much invalidation in our society and healthcare has been no exception to that,” Woodman said. “There’s so much to consider beyond surgical access, safe and respectful care is probably the most important.”
Woodman also decried the “gatekeeping” for trans people seeking and accessing healthcare, using Ontario as an example, which requires two qualified professionals to sign off on gender-affirming surgery for genitalia – one of which needs to be a medical doctor.
“Then you have to go through additional governmental approval processes, and this doesn’t exist in any other healthcare realm, so to some degree it puts trans people in a position to almost have to prove their gender,” Woodman said. “We need to shift the needle on this.”
-----
The following is a list of resources and hotlines dedicated to supporting people in crisis:
National Residential School Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419
Hope for Wellness Helpline (English, French, Cree, Ojibway and Inuktitut): 1-855-242-3310
Trans Lifeline: 1-877-330-6366
Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868
ShelterSafe (a national list of women’s shelters and transition houses): sheltersafe.ca
Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime: Call 1-877-208-0747 or Text: 1-613-208-0747
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
There is currently a whooping cough epidemic in Europe, with 10 times as many cases compared to the previous two years. While an outbreak has not been declared nationwide in Canada, whooping cough is regularly detected in the country.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
British Columbia's human rights tribunal has awarded a neurodigergent actor, who was diagnosed with sensory and learning disorders, more than $55,000 after finding that a Kelowna theatre company discriminated against him because of his disabilities.
It's not quite clear who is supposed to be regulating so-called sovereign cannabis stores or even ensure they're benefiting Indigenous communities.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.