Parliament ‘catering’ for transgender visitors by installing gender-neutral toilets, says senate opposition leader

The House of Representatives “looks after” transgender visitors by mandating the installation of gender-neutral restrooms, says Senator Don Plett, the leader of the Official Opposition in the Senate. He also called on the government to recognize the real “reasons” for installing the new toilets.

“Why don’t we call a spade a spade every now and then instead of looking around problems?” Plett said at a meeting of the Senate’s Standing Committee on Home Economics on June 15, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

“For the life of me, I don’t know why we have to call a laundry room a ‘self-contained laundry room.’ Why can’t we just not call it what it is, a laundry room?”

Plet wash refer to extensive renovations in Parliament’s Center Block, which has been closed since 2019, and to new plans by the Department of Public Works to install gender-neutral “self-contained toilets” in the renovated building.

“The last suggestion was, well, let’s call it the… non-gender toilet. To which I said, well then I don’t have a washroom to go in because I have a gender. So now we’re coming up with something like a self-contained laundry room,” he said.

Plett said there are “reasons” for the changes beyond what the federal government has officially stated, which have nothing to do with “shorter wait times” and “a greater number of accessible restrooms in more appropriate locations.”

“That is absolutely not true. We are trying to circumvent and circumvent the problem we have here,” he said, adding that the changes are solely due to the “gender issue.”

“That’s the only reason, the only real reason, we’re doing it. At least let’s have the courage to admit that’s what we’re doing – that we’re serving a group of people who say, ‘I want to go to a washroom where I don’t belong.’”

Senator Scott Tannas, the chair of a Senate subcommittee on building renovations, responded by saying the decision about the restrooms was to make them accessible to all visitors to the House.

Tannas said the House of Commons agreed to “use the term ‘self-contained toilet room’ for toilets that can be used by anyone.”

He added that “some experts” advised the Senate on the laundry room issue but did not name them.

“I think we found the right place and sometimes you find the right place when you otherwise wouldn’t have been looking for it,” Tannas said.