Transgender

Forum












Ontario Gov't Decides To End SRS Payments

By Jeff Harder
Ottawa Sun

Contributed by Anne Marie Pemberton
Toronto
October 3, 1998

No more sex changes please, we're Ontarian.

The province's Conservative government will no longer fund high-cost sex change operations, sources told the Saturday Sun.

"We feel it is not a medically necessary operation and public tax dollars could be better spent elsewhere," a senior government official said. "The money will now be applied to cardiac surgery. The changed has been instituted (yesterday)."

In the 1997-98 budget year, taxpayers were billed $122,000 for eight sex changes. The public purse has funded 48 of the procedures in the last six years.

Conservative MPPs Marcel Beaubien and Frank Sheehan had been lobbying for an end to public funding for "lifestyle" operations.

"I think we have a lot more pressing priorities," Beaubien said at a 1997 committee meeting that reviewed health spending.

"If I had a choice between sex changes and heart surgery, I think the money should go to heart surgery," Sheehan added.

Ontario's former NDP government defended subsidized sex change operations and refused to delist the service.

Health Minister Elizabeth Witmer recently delisted testicular implants, wart removals and flu vaccines. The cost-cutting moves will save $50 million a year.

Canada's Armed Forces came under heavy public fire in September after military doctors agreed to cover the $30,000 cost of a sex change for a male soldier. Defence Minister Art Eggleton defended the man's right to apply for the operation.

"If a person has a right to consideration under a provincial plan, they have a right to consideration under our plan," Eggleton said.

In Ontario, sex changes were granted only after Toronto's Clark Institute completed a psychological review. Then, the patients were sent to American or English hospitals for the necessary alterations.

TGF's Home Page