Transgender health advocates call for gender-affirming care clinic in province

New Brunswick is the only Atlantic Canadian province without a gender-affirming care clinic. And the New Brunswick Transgender Health Network wants that to change.

The advocacy group is urging the provincial government to include funding for a gender-affirming care clinic in its 2026-27 provincial budget, which is set to be tabled in the legislature on March 17.

“One of the issues that we have here in New Brunswick right now, nothing is centralized and we don't even have the ability to pool referrals to ensure that everybody gets access to a practitioner within a similar time frame,” said Dr. Kathleen Taylor, a family physician based in Fredericton who provides gender-affirming health-care services.Taylor, who is a member of the network, said the cost of opening the clinic would be a fraction of a percentage of the province’s approximately $4 billion in health-care spending.

“The estimation is that the clinic would probably cost about two million dollars, which would be less than one per cent of health-care spending,” she said.

The objective would be to create a centralized place for transgender, non-binary and gender-diverse New Brunswickers to seek out hormone therapy, letters of referral for surgery, and mental health support.

“The goal is to create a centralized clinic where all of these services that patients require are available within a single team, where people work collaboratively in order to reduce barriers for patients,” said Taylor.

“It will give referring providers a single point of entry so everybody knows where they have to refer their patient to, in order to get them the care that they are entitled to and that they require.”

In the 2021 census, 2,185 people in New Brunswick over the age of 15 identified as either transgender or non-binary.

The Horizon and Vitalité health networks' navigation page for 2SLGBTQ+ patients lists just three primary-care physicians and two nurse practitioners in the province that provide gender-affirming services covered by Medicare.

“In terms of providing the care, it's only fairly recent that it started to become more of a routine part of training,” said Taylor. “So people don't necessarily graduate residency with a feeling of confidence and competency in it.”

Taylor said many of her patients have had to seek her out, because their own family physician won’t provide, or even refer them to, gender-affirming care.

“Sometimes people will end up in front of a provider who will refuse to send the referral for, like, their own personal beliefs,” she said.

The lack of service providers has led to lengthy wait times, said Taylor.

“There can be a huge delay between when someone first presents looking to be referred for hormone therapy to when they actually get seen,” she explained.