According to recently released documents, the Trudeau government’s justice minister, David Lametti, asked his department staff in 2021 to draft a directive that would force federal lawyers to offer their “pronouns” at the start of any proceeding.
According to a memo titled “Proactive Identification of Gender Pronouns,” the Minister’s Office was “made aware of a practice of communicating gender pronouns in British Columbia courts” during a “positive Space training held by the Advisory Committee for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (ACSOGIE) previously known as the ‘LGBTQ2+ Advisory Committee.”
This revelation “inspired” the Minister’s Office, which asked the National Litigation Sector “to develop a directive requiring Justice counsel to provide their pronouns and titles…in all court and administrative proceedings.” This is apparently standard practice in BC, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia.
The memo concluded that because the Department of Justice is “also committed to bringing about a more inclusive society, including through the legal system,” for the time being a “non-mandatory approach strongly encouraging or inviting the identification of pronouns is preferable, with a focus on education and leading by example.”
The memo concludes by laying out the various ways in which Canada’s Department of Justice will lean into the promotion of gender ideology, including sending messages “to all staff from the Deputy Minister encouraging or inviting them to proactively implement the practice”; hosting “training/information sessions” so that “employees understand why they are being invited to proactively identify pronouns” and “the harms they are helping to address by doing it”: putting pronouns in all email signatures; including pronouns in the biographies and signatures of staff members; and “inclusion of pronouns at events and in speeches for Minister and Deputy Minister speeches” with the goal of this practice becoming “a standard feature of all speeches.”
