In the suburban riding of Mississauga–Brampton South, Christin Milloy is making history as the first out trans candidate to run in a Canadian provincial election.

Aside from municipal elections, the only other out trans candidate was nominated in 2007 at the federal level in the riding of Quebec City, says trans activist Susan Gapka, chair of the Trans Health Lobby Group. At that time, activist and lawyer Micheline Anne Montreuil became the first out Canadian trans person ever to be nominated as an electoral candidate by a major political party, the NDP. But Montreuil didn’t make it to the end of the campaign. She claimed she was dropped because the NDP objected to her gender identity. The party said she was too confrontational during interviews.

Milloy, 27, is running for the Libertarian Party. She says one of her platform priorities is modernizing the process to change sex designation on a birth certificate. She says there are currently unnecessary and potentially harmful barriers for trans people if they want to change their birth certificates.

“We have a situation where the government is actually forcing trans people to mutilate their bodies,” she says. “There’s a lot of bureaucracy in changing your sex designation in Ontario. For the birth certificate, which is issued by the province, proof of transsexual surgery is required. That’s the exact phrase they use.”

The problem is, she points out, there is nothing in the package of government-issued forms that states clearly what exactly constitutes “transsexual surgery.”  >> full story xtra.ca