Transgender community faces ‘astronomical gap’ in health-care system, advocates say

With a health system based on a “gender cis-normative binary,” education is important for making things more accessible to the transgender community, according to one advocate.

Each year as November rolls around, men across Canada begin to grow out a moustache to help raise funds for men’s health.

But for the transgender community, accessing the health-care system can be difficult.

“It has been quite the struggle just trying to live and exist,” Jack Saddleback, a 32-year-old Cree two-spirit transgender gay man told Global News from Saskatchewan.

“We have an astronomical gap when it comes to trans health care,” he said.

As an activist, speaker and program director of JusticeTrans – supporting members of the community with access to legal information – Saddleback would like to see a more intersectional and equitable health-care system for transgender individuals in Canada.

“We need trans-competent health-care systems,” he said. “Creating a standard health care across the country will be able to elevate our general health-care systems to be that much better, that much more intersectional and that much more accessible.”

In Canada, there are at least 100,815 transgender and non-binary individuals, according to 2021 Statistics Canada census data released in April.

With a health system based on a “gender cis-normative binary,” education is important for making things more accessible to the transgender community, according to Saddleback.