A Canadian human rights tribunal in British Columbia has ordered a former school trustee from Chilliwack to pay $750,000 in damages for insisting there are only two genders.

The tribunal ruled that Barry Neufeld’s public comments about transgender and nonbinary people constituted discrimination under the province’s Human Rights Code.

'I spent all my career working with special, at-risk kids — kids who had horrible backgrounds, who suffered all sorts of trauma and abuse. I have nothing but compassion for them.'

The case stems from a 2017 Facebook post in which Neufeld criticized gender-transition treatments for children. Teachers’ union groups later filed human rights complaints alleging that his statements created an unsafe work environment for some employees. The dispute wound its way through mediation attempts, court challenges, and tribunal hearings for several years before the ruling.

Transgender denialism, it seems, can carry serious consequences.

Stunned by decision

When I recently caught up with Neufeld, I asked whether he even had that kind of money.

He laughed off the idea. In fact, he says he doesn’t even own the land his trailer sits on.

Neufeld served as a school trustee for 26 years and worked as a probation officer for 25. He says he knows the criminal justice system well, but nothing prepared him for a human rights tribunal ruling that he must pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for expressing his views.

The moment he heard the decision, he says, he was stunned.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Neufeld told me. “It was preposterous. I didn’t think that the tribunal would go along with it, but they did. In some ways it’s a blessing in disguise, because if they had only ordered $75,000, nobody would have paid attention. But this woke everybody up."

The case has drawn national attention and criticism from across the political spectrum, including commentary in the Globe and Mail. Supporters have stepped forward to help fund Neufeld’s legal defense — something he says he never needed to rely on before.

'I just think they're deluded'

In Canada, disputes over gender identity are often handled not in criminal courts but in provincial human rights tribunals. While Canada’s Criminal Code does not make misgendering a crime, tribunals have ruled that refusing to use a person’s preferred pronouns can constitute discrimination.

According to Neufeld, the tribunal determined that his comments amounted to hate speech because he rejected the concept of "nonbinary" and other gender identities.

“They explained to me that it was hate speech because I denied the existence of nonbinary and all the other genders,” he said.

“And I said, ‘I don’t deny their existence. It’s not existential denialism. I just think they’re deluded.’ They said, ‘That’s hate speech.’”

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Chilling effect

The ruling has also unsettled another another Chilliwack school trustee. Laurie Throness, a former member of the B.C. Legislative Assembly, stepped down from his position after concluding that he could be the next target.

For Neufeld, this chilling effect is by design. “The purpose of such a high penalty was to scare everybody else [and to say] that if you commit blasphemy against our gender religion, you will lose everything. And it’s starting to work.”

For his part, Neufeld insisted his criticism was always directed at ideas — not people.

“I never threatened any person,” he said.

“I constantly was confronting ideas — especially gender ideology. And they countered by saying because I use the word ‘gender ideology,’ I’m hiding behind that to disguise my hate of transgender people. I don’t hate transgender people either. I have compassion and sympathy for them.”

Protecting children

What concerns him, he said, is the promotion of gender ideology to children.

“Forcing these ideas on young children is what has kept me motivated to constantly be speaking out against them."

Despite the tribunal ruling, Neufeld said he believes public opinion is shifting.

“They’re losing the battle,” he said. “They know it. B.C. is one of the last jurisdictions in the world to hang on to this. ... They're backing away from it in many countries in Europe and many states in the United States.

“I don’t hate anybody,” he added.

“They’re blowing in the wind if they think they can convince the world that I’m a hateful person, because I'm not. I spent all my career working with special, at-risk kids — kids who had horrible backgrounds, who suffered all sorts of trauma and abuse. I have nothing but compassion for them.”

No 'wrong' bodies

But Neufeld worries about what he sees as the consequences of encouraging young people to believe they were born in the wrong body.

“When you start telling them that all their problems are caused because they’re born in the wrong body, you screw up their minds,” he said.

He also questioned the medical dimension of youth gender transitions.

“What are the side effects of these drugs that you’re giving kids?” he asked.

Neufeld says parents ultimately need to reclaim authority over decisions affecting their children.