Dr. Hilary Cass, author of the Cass Review, YouTube screenshot

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

That a female physician has been advised to stop taking the bus or the train because she might be assaulted by trans activists for attempting to protect children from a horrifying – and ongoing – medical scandal should be shocking to us all.

Dr. Hilary Cass, the 66-year-old physician who led the team behind the 366-page Cass Review, has become a target of trans activists as the repercussions of her findings reverberate through the political and medical establishment. The abuse is not confined merely to online; she has been advised not to use public transport for her own safety. 

In an interview with the Times, Cass stated that critics of her report are putting children “at risk” by spreading “straight disinformation” and that criticisms, thus far, have been “completely wrong.” One Labour MP accused Cass of ignoring “100 transgender studies” in her findings. This, says Cass, is disingenuous in the extreme. 

“I have been really frustrated by the criticisms, because it is straight disinformation,” Cass told the Times. “It started the day before the report came out when an influencer put up a picture of a list of papers that were apparently rejected for not being randomized control trials. That list has absolutely nothing to do with either our report or any of the papers.” 

“If you deliberately try to undermine a report that has looked at the evidence of children’s healthcare, then that’s unforgiveable,” she continued. “You are putting children at risk by doing that.” The 100 papers that were allegedly “left out” of the report, Cass noted, were each individually examined by her team of researchers, who “pulled the results from the ones that were high quality and medium quality, which was 60 out of 103.” 

Cass’s crime, of course, is that her report debunks the transgender narrative. She has been encouraged, she told the Times, by the impact of her report in many quarters – but the response elicited from trans activists has been “pretty aggressive” and she noted that the vitriol spiked each time the Cass Review reported something “people don’t like.”  

“There are some pretty vile emails coming in at the moment,” she said of the profanity-laced digital missives coming her way. “Most of which my team is protecting me from, so I’m not getting to see them. What dismays me is just how childish the debate can become. If I don’t agree with somebody then I’m called transphobic or a TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist].” 

When asked if the vitriol was wearing her down, Cass responded: 

No… it’s personal, but these people don’t know me. I’m much, much more upset and frustrated about all the disinformation than I am about the abuse. The thing that makes me seethe is the misinformation. I’m not going on public transport at the moment, following security advice, which is inconvenient.

Indeed, six clinics, she said, refused to share research into the impact of puberty blockers – Cass called their reaction “coordinated” and “ideologically driven” and noted that “they were not particularly friendly to us when we approached.” 

That medical institutions would refuse to cooperate on a study of the long-term impacts of the care they give to children is, any reasonable observer should agree, a very red flag – and there were more. Tavistock also refused to hand over data on detransitioners, which Cass called “very disappointing.” When asked about ideological capture, she told the Times that “there were certainly one or two individuals… who I would describe as activists among the staff,” although she added that “the majority of staff believed what they were doing was right.” 

Although Cass will not be carrying out the recently-announced review of adult gender clinics, she did condemn GenderGP – which we have reported on in this space several times – for continuing to advertise and prescribe puberty blockers, noting that the “care” provided by Dr. Helen Webberley “certainly doesn’t come anywhere near anything one would recognise as adequate in terms of a proper assessment and exploration.”  

That a female physician has been advised to stop taking the bus or the train because she might be assaulted by trans activists for attempting to protect children from a horrifying – and ongoing – medical scandal should be shocking to us all. The last few years have desensitized us to this sort of behavior. Fortunately, it appears that the Cass Review’s findings are having a seismic impact on the debate trans activists desperately tried to avoid, nonetheless. 

Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016

First responders in Ottawa dealing with a crisis                                           Fridayman 0102 / YouTube

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

‘There is certainly the perception by a lot of Canadians that a lot of downtown cores are basically out of control,’ Liberal MP Dr. Marcus Powlowski said, before pointing specifically to ‘safe supply’ drugs and injection sites.

A Liberal MP has seemingly taken issue with “safe supply” drug policies for increasing public disorder in Canada, policies his own party, under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has endorsed.

During an April 15 health committee meeting in the House of Commons, Liberal MP Dr. Marcus Powlowski, while pressing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), stated that “safe supply” drug policies have caused Canadians to feel unsafe in downtown Ottawa and in other major cities across the country.

“There is certainly the perception by a lot of Canadians that a lot of downtown cores are basically out of control,” Powlowski said.  

“Certainly there is also the perception that around places like safe supply, safe injection sites, that things are worse, that there are people openly stoned in the street,” he continued.   

“People are getting cardio-pulmonary resuscitation performed on them in the street. There are needles around on the street. There is excrement on the street,” Powlowski added.  

“Safe supply“ is the term used to refer to government-prescribed drugs that are given to addicts under the assumption that a more controlled batch of narcotics reduces the risk of overdose – critics of the policy argue that giving addicts drugs only enables their behavior, puts the public at risk, disincentivizes recovery from addiction and has not reduced, and sometimes even increased, overdose deaths where implemented.

Powlowski, who has worked as an emergency room physician, also stated that violence from drug users has become a problem in Ottawa, especially in areas near so-called “safe supply” drug sites which operate within blocks of Parliament Hill.   

“A few months ago I was downtown in a bar here in Ottawa, not that I do that very often, but a couple of colleagues I met up with, one was assaulted as he was going to the bar, another one was threatened,” said Powlowski. 

“Within a month of that I was returning down Wellington Street from downtown, the Rideau Centre, and my son who is 15 was coming after me,” he continued. “It was nighttime and there was someone out in the middle of the street, yelling and screaming, accosting cars.” 

Liberal MP Dr. Brendan Hanley, the Yukon’s former chief medical officer, testified in support of Powlowski, saying, “My colleague Dr. Powlowski described what it’s like to walk around downtown Ottawa here, and certainly when I walk home every day, I encounter similar circumstances.” 

“Do you agree this is a problem?” Powlowski pressed RCMP deputy commissioner Dwayne McDonald. “Do you agree for a lot of Canadians who are not involved with drugs, that they are increasingly unhappy with society in downtown cores which are this way? Do you want to do more about this, and if you do want to do more about this, what do you need?”  

McDonald acknowledged the issue but failed to offer a solution, responding, “One of the success factors required for decriminalization is public support.” 

“I think when you are faced with situations where, as we have experienced in our communities and we hear from our communities, where public consumption in some places may lead to other members of the public feeling at risk or threatened or vulnerable to street level crime, it does present a challenge,” he continued.   

Deaths from drug overdoses in Canada have gone through the roof in recent years, particularly in British Columbia after Trudeau’s federal government effectively decriminalized hard drugs in the province.

Under the policy, which launched in early 2023, the federal government began allowing people within the province to possess up to 2.5 grams of hard drugs without criminal penalty, but selling drugs remained a crime.  

The policy has been widely criticized, especially after it was found that the province broke three different drug-related overdose records in the first month the new law was in effect.  

The effects of decriminalizing hard drugs in various parts of Canada has been exposed in Aaron Gunn’s recent documentary, Canada is Dying, and in U.K. Telegraph journalist Steven Edginton’s mini-documentary, Canada’s Woke Nightmare: A Warning to the West.  

Gunn says he documents the “general societal chaos and explosion of drug use in every major Canadian city.”  

“Overdose deaths are up 1,000 percent in the last 10 years,” he said in his film, adding that “[e]very day in Vancouver four people are randomly attacked.”