‘No Male Prisoners in Female Jails’: Poilievre Says He’d Ban Practice as PM

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre rises during Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Oct. 9, 2024. The Canadian Press/Spencer Colby

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is speaking out against Canadian legislation permitting male offenders who identify as female to be incarcerated in women’s prisons, after a man convicted of murdering his family asked to serve his life sentence in a women’s prison.

Mohamad Al Ballouz, who now identifies as a woman and goes by the first name Levana, was handed a sentence of life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years at his Dec. 20 sentencing hearing in Quebec for the 2022 murders of his wife and two young sons.

Quebec Superior Justice Eric Downs described as a “femicide” the “extreme violence” and brutal manner in which Al Ballouz’s wife, Synthia Bussières, was repeatedly stabbed, and said it was illustrative of “the sadistic character of the accused.”

Downs said it will be up to Correctional Service Canada to decide if Al Ballouz can serve his sentence in a women’s prison.

Poilievre took to social media over the weekend to criticize the country’s laws that enable such a request.

“Surreal: A man who killed his wife and two kids now claims he is a woman to go to a female prison,” Poilievre wrote in a Dec. 22 post.

“I can’t believe I have to say this: but when I’m PM, there will be no male prisoners in female jails. Period.”

The implementation of Bill C-16 in June 2017 amended the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code to recognize gender identity and gender expression as protected categories. As a result “gender diverse” offenders can seek placement in correctional facilities that align with their gender identity. The requests are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

It is not known when Correctional Service Canada will make a decision on where Al Ballouz will serve his sentence.

Ballouz was convicted of second-degree murder for the stabbing death of Bussières and first-degree murder in the deaths of his sons: five-year-old Eliam and two-year-old Zac.

During the trial, the court heard that Bussières, 38, was stabbed 23 times. At least 11 of the stab wounds were categorized as defensive wounds, which the Crown said shows she fought for her life.

The boys were then killed before Al Ballouz set fire to the family condo in the Montreal suburb of Brossard, Que., in a bid to destroy evidence. An autopsy was unable to establish the exact cause of the boys’ deaths.

The judge said the crimes clearly illustrate the dangers posed by Al Ballouz and expressed skepticism regarding the likelihood of his rehabilitation.

“The evidence shows that the accused shows no remorse, no empathy. Mohamad Al Ballouz, alias Levana Ballouz, is a deeply narcissistic person,” the judge said during the sentencing decision at the courthouse in Longueuil, Que. Downs added that Al Ballouz’s manipulative personality makes it “impossible to envisage medium- to long-term rehabilitation and mitigation to the risk of recidivism.”

Biological Male Offenders in Women’s Prisons

Al Ballouz is not the first biological male to request transfer to a women’s prison. There are no published numbers on how many biological men identifying as female have been granted such a transfer. However, author and criminology professor Jo Phoenix in a Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) paper analyzed a 2022 Correctional Service Canada (CSC) study of 99 gender-diverse inmates that helped shed some light on the situation.

The CSC study of 99 inmates between December 2017 and March 2020 categorized 61 as transwomen, 21 as transmen, and 17 as “other.” Among the 61 transwomen—interpreted by Phoenix as referring to biological males identifying as female—a third (41) were incarcerated at women’s prison. And among the 21 transmen, 20 were housed in women’s prisons, while the 17 inmates classified as “other” were evenly split between women’s and men’s prisons.

“The significance of these numbers ought not be underestimated,” Phoenix wrote in her September 2023 paper for the MLI. “They constitute strong empirical evidence that the adoption of self-identification policies by CSC is having a disproportionate impact on the composition of women’s prisons.”

In an earlier paper for the MLI, published in June 2023, Phoenix said that including biological males who identify as women within the female prison population creates a “new layer of vulnerability for an already vulnerable group.”

It’s a practice that has also been protested by former federal inmate and advocate Heather Mason. Mason, who was incarcerated at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont., said the policy has sparked issues in women’s prisons that include sexual and physical assault and harassment.

In June 2021, Mason launched a fundraiser to help protest the practice and also submitted a brief to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security outlining the dangers to incarcerated women.

“No one is willing to discuss this issue or investigate the policies and practices of allowing transfers from men’s prisons to women’s prisons or the impacts on the lived realities of incarcerated females,” she wrote on her fundraising page.

She has raised just shy of $12,000 for her cause thus far.

The West Coast Prison Justice Society in British Columbia, an advocate for transgender prisoners, said transwomen should not require gender-confirming surgery to be at an institution that fits their gender.

“You should not be placed simply on the basis of your genitalia or the gender listed on your documents,” the group said in an information pamphlet. “The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) should place you according to your wish, unless there are serious health or safety issues that they cannot resolve.”