Allowing male prisoners into what used to be female-only spaces has fundamentally “changed the landscape of women’s prisons,” says Heather Mason, a former federal inmate turned advocate for women’s sex-based rights.

Mason’s time in correctional institutions has given her first-hand knowledge of a jarring reality: that biological males in Canada are allowed to self-identify as women and then serve their time in women’s prisons – even when these men are convicted sex offenders who have not undergone any surgical changes related to the female identity they claim.

Like so many other social issues, from DEI to paediatric gender medicine, Canada is lagging peer jurisdictions. Correctional entities in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the United States all do a better job at housing inmates according to sex at either the federal, state or provincial level.

I discuss these issues and a pending lawsuit on the federal government’s policies with Heather Mason, co-founder of Canadian Women’s Sex-Based Rights, or CAWSBAR on the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Inside Policy Talks.

Audio versions available here