USask alumnus Dr. Craig Coburn sat down with The Sheaf to discuss his recent resignation from the University of Lethbridge’s Board of Governors and how Alberta government policies are threatening post-secondary institutions.

Dr. Craig Coburn, a professor of geography and environment at the University of Lethbridge (U of L), recently made headlines when he resigned from the U of L’s Board of Governors after it was forced to accept new provincial legislation barring trans athletes from participating in women’s sports.

Coburn felt that he couldn’t remain a member of the board in good conscience if they complied with such a policy.

“You can have your own opinion at the board table. You’re free to discuss—that is your responsibility as a member of the board, but once the vote has been taken, you are required to support it. There’s no way I could face my students knowing that I had supported something that I find disgusting.”

This Fairness and Safety in Sport Act, adopted by Alberta’s United Conservative Party (UCP), mandates that female athletes above the age of twelve submit a declaration that they are assigned female at birth to participate in competitive sports. 

The legislation also allows the player’s gender to be challenged, at which point they would have to provide a copy of their birth registration documents. If someone believes that an athlete might be trans, an anonymous challenge can be submitted to the governing sport organization, which in turn will notify the Minister of Tourism and Sport. 

While the impacts of the newly imposed legislation are still to be seen, it might have a large impact on varsity athletics, as well as competitive clubs around Alberta post-secondary campuses.

U Sports, the governing body for Canadian University Athletics, boasts trans-inclusive policies which allow athletes to compete as their preferred gender, not their assigned gender at birth. 

The Fairness and Safety in Sport Act leaves the future of Alberta schools’ ability to host women’s sports national championships murky. The organization has previously expressed that hosting would be difficult in a “ jurisdiction where we cannot apply our own regulations”.

U Sports does not track its population of trans athletes; however, based on available data from comparable organizations, the population is likely small. For example, estimates put the number of trans competitors in the National Collegiate Athletic Association at 30-40 out of 55,000 athletes.

In accordance with Alberta’s Post-secondary Learning Act, universities are required to apply all relevant legislation, or else face action from the provincial government, such as dismissal of the board and senior administration members—a risk Coburn says is preferable to the possibility of harming students.

“I would say it’s my responsibility to do these things. No other faculty members sitting on a board in this province have resigned. So I feel a little bit [like I’m] on an island here. But these are things I learned as an undergrad right here at the University of Saskatchewan. Standing up for what was right was something that we were taught.”

While Coburn is alone in his resignation from the Board of Governors, he is not alone in his feelings about this new piece of legislation.

“It does make campus a very tense place. There are many faculty [members] who are extremely upset about this. They are angry beyond [a] point I’ve seen them angered before, and our university has been on strike, so I have seen things [be] a little dramatic,” remarked Coburn. 

“This is very upsetting for faculty here to know that a government would basically not respect the rights of another person. The Alberta Human Rights Act and the Canadian Human Rights Act do not parse people into groups [and] say you have these rights and you don’t have these rights.”

To date, there is little scientific backing to support the idea that trans women possess an advantage over athletes who were assigned female at birth. A 2021 literature review commissioned by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport found that there is no evidence to show trans women have consistently better performances than their counterparts one year after starting testosterone suppression.

Despite the lack of evidence supporting this bill, it became the latest addition to Alberta’s growing list of anti-trans legislation this September. 

Another two bills that have been the focus of national scrutiny are the Health Statutes Amendment Act and the Education Amendment Act. The former restricts children under 16 from seeking gender-affirming medical care, while the latter prevents children under 16 from changing their pronouns in school without parental consent (16 and 17-year-old children are permitted to change their pronouns on their own, but their parents must be notified).

The UCP government made headlines recently when leaked internal documents revealed that the administration intended to amend these three laws to invoke the notwithstanding clause of the charter. The notwithstanding clause allows federal and provincial governments to pass laws that limit certain Charter rights for a period of up to five years, overriding the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 

It appears that the UCP is concerned that their legislation will be found to violate Charter freedoms, so they are amending it to be notwithstanding the Charter.

“There’s just no basis in fact that it is unfair or unsafe for a trans woman to play in sport. This is an attack on women’s rights,” remarked Coburn. “[This means] that we are standing outside of the Canadian Charter.”

The forced adoption of this legislation is just another example of the wide range of challenges Alberta post-secondary institutions have faced from the UCP government in recent years.

“In Alberta, the attack on post-secondary education [is] best described as vicious. We’ve had massive cuts in terms of funding,” said Coburn. 

“They’ve stood in the way of federal funding, and they’ve infringed on research [by] my colleagues. Just prior to the pandemic, we received what is now a net 30 per cent decrease in our funding. I lost a quarter of my department. We lost almost 100 employees and 100 professors. [We’re a] smaller institution, so these were cuts that were felt very deeply.”

In addition to research funding cuts, Alberta institutions have also had their Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) offices threatened with closure, forcing universities to change their structure to appeal to the UCP administration. 

Late last year, U of L transitioned from an EDI strategy to “Access, Belonging, and Community”, a change which Coburn said was not a reversal in the university’s commitment to EDI principles, but rather, an act of “malicious compliance”.

“Their party [says that] they will fire all EDI offices on university campuses because they see those as being sites of indoctrination or something. We renamed the office [to protect] some really valuable people on our campus, who do really great work, with students, faculty and staff to make sure that we’re the inclusive kind of environment that our society needs and demands. These people shouldn’t have their jobs threatened by a party that’s uncomfortable with diversity.”

Coburn reaffirmed his commitment to support trans students, especially as a tenured professor who can speak freely against university policy, and he calls for others in his position to do the same. 

“I have had trans students. I’ve learned from them. I appreciate their presence on our campus. This isn’t a problem in any sense of the word. This is about hate. We can’t stand for that as universities, as places of higher learning; we do know better. So for me, the Nuremberg principles apply. You can’t say you don’t know, and you can’t say you were just following orders.”