Activists Smash Windows of Montreal Radio-Canada Building After Report on Trans Youth

The CBC-Radio Canada building in Montreal on Jan. 28, 2021. The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz

Activists smashed CBC Radio-Canada’s Montreal headquarters, claiming its recent coverage of pediatric gender clinics was a “dishonest attack” on transgender Canadians.

“It represents an ideological shift that legitimizes the far right’s transphobic demands, and it will fan the flames of violence against trans communities, currently increasingly targeted,” reads an anonymous statement published on the website Montreal Counter-Information.

Radio-Canada’s “Trans Express” covered how gender clinics in Quebec were quickly moving young teenagers into gender transitioning using puberty blockers. The report, which featured interviews of health care providers and both current and former trans youth, revealed that girls were being given prescriptions for cross-sex hormones without their parents’ consent or medical referrals.

The activists accused the journalist behind the article of doing inadequate research into the topic, using disrespectful language, and misgendering trans people.

“Radio-Canada and its journalists have chosen to feed into a moral panic that puts the trans community, and especially trans youth, in danger.”

The activists took responsibility for smashing several windows at the Radio-Canada building on the night of March 12 and 13, claiming it was done in response to “transphobic rhetoric akin to that of the far right” that the network was amplifying.

“Such rhetoric has real consequences on decisions about access to healthcare for trans people, but also on the hostility and violence that trans communities, especially trans youth, experience on a daily basis,” they said.

In a statement to The Epoch Times, Radio-Canada’s Director of Public Relations and Television Promotion Marc Pichette said they did not “wish to comment on this case of vandalism and the demands that might be associated with it.”

“A police investigation is currently underway. We consider the insinuations published on [Montreal Counter-Information] baseless and misguided,” he said.

Report on Transgender Health Care for Children

Radio-Canada journalist Pasquale Turbide, who was behind the report, told Tout le Monde en Parle that the report was initiated by concerned parents writing to the organization about the issue. “We started to look into it, and we easily found 15 to 20 people who were all telling us more or less the same story,” said Ms. Turbide, who added that the parents were open-minded but alarmed by the speed of the transgender health care system.

Ms. Turbide also said in the interview that the side effects of puberty blockers were still unknown and that their impacts could be irreversible. She pointed out that some Scandinavian countries were seeking to ban the treatments for children.

The UK recently banned puberty blockers for children, while Alberta has banned them for those under 16.

The Montreal Police Service did not immediately respond to questions from The Epoch Times.