The Ben Mulroney Show - Um, Er: Sport Canada's Official Policy on Transgender Inclusion

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

On today's episode of "The Ben Mulroney Show," Ben welcomes April Hutchinson, Former 3x Team Canada Record-Holding Powerlifter. April discusses Sport Canada not having an official policy on transgender inclusion. aprilhutchinson.com Twitter/X Instagram   If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube --⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at ⁠https://x.com/BenMulroney⁠ Insta:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Feel the action with Betway Casino. Enjoy live games, fast payouts, and all your favorite casino games in one place.

Get way more with Betway Casino. Please play responsibly. Alberta 18 plus and Ontario 19 plus only. If gambling is affecting your mental health or well-being, help is available. In Alberta, call or text 211 or visit ab.211.com. In Ontario, visit connects ontario.ca. Or call 1866-531-260 or text connects to 247-247.

Standard messaging and data rates may apply. I know most people don't pay attention to politics at the granular level that people like me do. I love committee meetings. I love watching parliamentary committee meetings. I think that's where good work gets done, or at least it used to. In a few days, we're going to talk about the shutdown of debate about prescription AIT, where the liberal shutdown debate over a $300 million boondoggle of their own making. Why?

Because they have control over the committees. But back in the day, really good stuff happened that allowed the government to be held to account by the opposition asking really good questions. It happens. still happens these days, just not as often as it used to. And there is a clip going around that you need to see. It comes from last Thursday, October 8th at the House of Commons Heritage Committee. Four Olympics, a gold medal.

Oh, the witness should have said that. It was Adam Vancouverden with a gold medal in kayaking, carried our flag twice, and today he is Canada's Secretary of State for Sport. Conservative MP Rachel Thomas put a very simple question to him. What is the official position of the government of Canada on biological males competing in women's sport? That's the question. Here's his answer, quote, it's a nuanced issue. It's not cut and dry.

So she asked again. He said, yes, the government has a position. So she asked him to state it or at least to send it to committee in writing. He pointed her to the Sport Canada website. Then he brought up the alt-right, said he worried the argument. ends with trans people being told they have no place in society at all? Nobody in that room argued that anyone has no place in society. If they had, I would be spending this time burning that person to the ground.

An elected member asked the man in charge of sport in this country what the rules are. So I went looking for the answer he wouldn't give. In August 2022, his own department prepared a briefing note for the sport minister of the day, Pascal Saint-Age. It is posted on the federal open government site and anyone can read it and one sentence in it settles the matter. Quote, Sport Canada does not have an official policy on transgender inclusion. Each national sport body writes its own rules. The note adds that the 2016 guidance from the Canadian Center for Ethics in Sport

was told organizations to let athletes compete by self-identification with no hormone requirement was never endorsed by Sport Canada and was never a condition of fun. Then came March of this year. The International Olympic Committee reserved the women's category for biological females confirmed by a one-time genetic test starting at the Los Angeles Games in 2028. Mr. Vancouverden's written statement said sport organizations operate independently from government. It promised to preserve fairness in sport categories and respect human rights at the same time. Read that twice and you still don't know what Ottawa thinks should happen on a start line. So the truthful reply to Rachel Thomas was short.

We don't have a policy. We leave it to eat sport. He could have said that and defended it. Instead, he reached for the alt-right. There was a second question that day. This one posed by Andrew Lawton, who read him a line from that same federal note. It says peer-reviewed science shows a significant male advantage in sport

amplified through and after puberty. Agree or disagree? Well, Mr. Vancouverden said he would want to read the report before endorsing it, which is smart. But that sentence has been in the department's files for four years. The note goes on to say that suppressing testosterone does not erase what male puberty leaves behind. And he of all people knows the numbers.

In Athens 2004, he won the 500 meter kayak final in one minute 37.9 seconds. The women's champion that day of Hungary won hers in one minute, 47. 7.1 seconds. Two of the best paddlers alive, nine seconds apart. That nine second gap is why women's race exists. Now, step back because Canada is hardly the only place that has tied itself into knots. In 2003, the IOC said transgender women could compete after surgery. In 2015, it dropped surgery instead of testosterone ceiling of 10 nanomiles, which is apparently a thing per leader held for 12 months. In November 2021, it scrapped that as well and told federations there should be no presumption

of advantage. And in March 2026, it arrived at genetic screening. Four rulebook changes in 23 years. Male puberty, not for nothing, has been doing the same thing since 2003. The federations stopped waiting. World rugby moved in 2020, swimming back in 2022, track and field, 23. In Britain, the Supreme Court ruled in April 2025 that women in the Equality Act means biological sex. Two weeks later, the Football Association closed the women's game to transgender players.

Until then, it had let them in with lowered testosterone. In the U.S., it took an executive order from President Trump in February 2025, and the American Olympic Committee changed its rules that summer. Here at home, Alberta passed a law in force since September of last year that covers competitive female divisions from age 12 and up and leaves recreational leagues intramural and gym class alone. Now, look at what moved the rules each time. A court ruling, an executive order, a provincial statute,

and critics of the IOC note that its new policy lines up with the politics of the country hosting the next games. They have a point and it cuts both ways. In 2021, the wind blew one direction and female athletes were told there was nothing to presume, and in 26 it blows the other, and transgender athletes are told the matter is closed. For two decades, people who train their whole lives

have had their eligibility set by whichever way the politics leaned that year. Which brings me to the Canadian women who raised this early and paid dearly for it. April Hutchinson, who is joining me in the next segment, is a power lifter from London, Ontario. In 2023, a transgender lifter set a national women's record, and Hutchinson objected in public. Her punishment, the Canadian Powerlifting Union cited its code of conduct,

suspended her for two years, cut down to one on appeal. Linda Blade is a former Canadian heptathlon champion with a doctorate in kinesiology. She led Athletics, Alberta, and has made the case for a female category since 2018. Alex Sador won Olympic Silver for Canada in mountain biking. Last spring, Mr. Vancouverden went on Facebook and dismissed these sorts of concerns as, quote, a stupid conservative pseudo fantasy. A stupid conservative pseudo fantasy. Sador answered him publicly and told him to read the research his own department had paid for.

Now about that research, in 2022, Sport Canada commissioned a survey of elite female athletes on this exact subject. Then they shut the survey down after more than 200 academics and athletes signed a letter of complaint. Interviews with 25 elite women did get written up. According to the McDonald-Lauri Institute's review of that report, 91.7% said female athletes should have the right to their own category in sport where sex affects performance. Now, I can't tell you how these women vote. And neither can Adam Vancouver.

So is there a way for transgender athletes to compete fairly? Well, there should be. Finding it is hard work that nobody has finished. British triathlon announced an open category in 2022. World Aquatics opened open races at a World Cup in Berlin in 2023 and not one swimmer entered. Alberta's government says it will expand mixed divisions. None of it is settled, which is the reason to talk. Mr. Van Guverden has real arguments available to him.

He said in Calgary in July that a return to sex verification testing worries him that it takes sport back 30 years and could drive women away. The Olympics dropped blanket sex testing in 99 and there were reasons. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association warns that the new screen will swing. Weep women with differences in sex development who are not transgender at all. And those are serious points. Bring them to committee. Put them beside his department's own science and let Canadians weigh both. The federal note from 2022 has one more line worth reading.

It says public opinion research shows a majority of Canadians want sport organizations to find new ways to include transgender athletes while preserving fairness and physical safety for everyone. That is what the country wants. It's where the country sits. Most people want both things, and they are waiting for someone in charge to do the work. Few Canadians are better placed to lead that conversation than a four-time Olympian who now runs the file. But it starts with answering the question.

Rachel Thomas asked for the government's position in writing. I'd like to read it too. Coming up, this story I'm sure hits close to home for our next guest. She is a three-time team Canada record-holding powerlifter and an advocate for fairness in sports. Don't go anywhere. This is The Ben Mulroney Show. At a recent parliamentary committee meeting,

the Secretary of State for Sport, Adam Vancouverden, was unable to tell us what the official Canadian government's policy is on biological men in women's sport. If you don't know the rules, you know what's fair. And somebody who has been on the receiving end of what I think has been an unfair treatment is April Hutchinson, former three-time team Canada record holding power lifter and a band for two years down to one for biological facts. Welcome to the show, April. Thank you for

being here. Hi, Ben. Thank you so much for having me. What an honor. Well, it's, listen, I just, I think we have to have these conversations. So long as they start from a position of respect, People should be able to ask the questions they want to ask and have the debate that is so important for women's sport. And, you know, I said in my previous segment that I very much want to find a path forward that allows for everyone to compete at the highest levels. But we're not there yet. And until then, we still need to keep our eyes on protecting women's sport and protecting the fairness and the safety of women's sports. sport. So bring me back to the, uh, the statements that you made that got you banned. Yeah, exactly. I agree with everything that you just said. And so I started power lifting

in the year of actually 2019. I, I'm a recovering alcoholic. I'll just be fully transparent. And I started powerlifting as soon as I walked out of rehab to help me with my mental health and to help me stay sober. Uh, it was actually right before COVID happened. So I started to start powerlifting for a matter of two years because there was no no gyms or no gyms were open so I trained in my backyard gym and during that time I actually befriended someone by the name of Anne online now Anne was actually competing in the women's category taking gold medals and Anne had confided to me that Anne was a biological male born male and so at that time I wasn't doing any competitions and I started going into competitions in

2021 and at that time I actually asked Anne do you are you going to keep competing are you going to go far like how far do you plan on going and Anne asked or Anne answered well I want to go to worlds I want to go to nationals and I said to Ann that's completely unfair to women you should not be competing in the women's category you should be in your basically your sex category with with men and so anne got angry and blocked and deleted me on facebook so i went to the federation and i reported anne and they ignored me so i was quite shocked by that actually and so i actually went online and i started saying stuff like you know save women sports keep you know uh female sports for female only just little phrases like that and my federation actually sent me a

warning letter saying, April, you can't say stuff like that. That's hate speech. And I was like, I'm kidding me. I can't even express that. And I didn't even use Anne's name. I didn't target Ann or anything like that. And so I actually went to a human rights lawyer by the name of actually Lisa Biltie. She's a really great human rights lawyer, but the help of a couple Olympic athletes from the United States. And I said, like, what should I do? And we actually wrote a very detailed professional letter to my federation. Again, I went to social media. I did some interviews with Pierce Morgan, Tucker Carlson, some big, big names.

And before Ann went to regionals and took records like major records that still stand today, actually in the province of Alberta. I went on television and I correctly sexted. And as a biological 240 pound male, that's the sentence that got me suspended for two years and kicked me off of Team Canada. So the problem here is, you know, when the Minister of Sport, Secretary of State for Sport says,

in his defense for not answering a question, it's nuanced. Yes, it is. Unfortunately, for far too long, the histrionics have been turned up so loud that there was no room for nuance, that the science is settled

and you're hateful, and a woman is a woman. I mean, these are absolutes. In a world of absolutes, there is no nuance. So you can't have it both ways. It seems like we are sort of feels like we are settling into a little more of a space where there's room for rational conversation. And I don't know if you feel that way, but it does feel like you and I are having a conversation today that we probably couldn't have had five or six years ago. And I say that because I want this conversation to lead to an outcome, as I said before,

where everyone can compete in one way, shape, or form. Exactly. And during that time, I actually, we were always advocating for a league for trans-identifying individuals. Like I had mentioned, Ben, like sports helped me through my whole life for mental health effort to get over trauma, what have you. I believe and have always advocated for a separate category, just like, say, Alberta has a female-only category, a male-only category, and a co-ed category. Everyone deserves the right to compete.

I firmly have always advocated for that. And what I don't understand, and it's so exhausting, is there, the evidence exists. I mean, there was a few months ago during the summer, there was a biological man, so a transgender woman who had been winning. I believe won a women's golf tournament. And that person had previously under a different name, breaking records and beating all sorts of biological women in cycling. So two sports that they just picked up and started beating everybody yet. This happens. And if one woman like yourself found solace and people.

and self-worth by way of sport, if that person all of a sudden loses that passion because they see it, they see no pathway for them because they've been crowded out by, by someone who has a biological advantage. That's one, that's one biological women too many, because that's what sports supposed to do.

Well, and that's the thing. I was just looking over the stats today. So as of 2021, there were 71 men in the women's, sporting categories. That's hundreds of women that have been displaced by men on the podium taking gold medals. But that was in 2021. So even since I spoke up, there's a couple more males in the power lifting. There's still records held by men in Alberta in the women's category. But the thing is, the problem is that it's self-ID harms. Because men just simply, like I play pickleball right now, The policy states that then you could just walk in and go, I feel like a female today.

And they welcome you with open arms. So all the policies are stating this and allowing it. So there's many more. They don't have to declare. So it's just a horrible, horrible way that they're doing things. And so the thing, the bottom line is it only takes one. And I could have gone back power lifting. But the point is that I want little girls to have the love of sport when they're five years old or 10 years old.

because if they keep getting beat by little boys, they're never going to find that passion and that drive to keep competing. And again, no one is suggesting that there is a nefarious intent necessarily behind these transgender women who want to compete. They want to compete. I take them at their word that they have an athlete's drive, but the system isn't set up for this nuance. And if we want to solve for it,

and if we want everyone to feel included, then we have to have an adult conversation where, yes, in fact, it is nuanced, but to treat someone like you the way you were treated and to say you can't say those things. By the way, in Canada, you should be able to say anything you damn well, please. About anything you damn well, please.

And to live in a place where opinion is stifled is not a place where nuance is... is welcome. And we have to get to that place. And I thank you for your commitment to your sport and for being here. And I wish you the very best. Thank you so much. It's quite an honor. Hi, it's Alan Cross. Here to announce two more legs of my national speaking tour. November will be busy with stops in Halifax, Sydney and Truro Nova Scotia. Then it's Waterloo, Hamilton, St. Catharines, London, Oshawa, Montreal, Ottawa, and Kingston. In addition to the regular

freewheeling audience Q&A, I'm going to conduct a live performance of my podcast, Uncharted Crime and mayhem in the music industry. Music and the mob. It's something that we created just for this tour. Tickets at my website, a journal of musicalthings.com, under the heading speaking gigs at the top. But hurry, because some dates are already sold out. Crime and Mayhem and the music industry on the road this fall.

Hope to see you soon.