Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says it’s “surreal” that male offenders expect they can self-identify their way into female prisons, vowing to keep men out.
Poilievre was prompted by a triple murderer’s request to be incarcerated among woman.
Mohamad Al Ballouz was sentenced to life in prison Friday after being convicted of the 2022 murders of his wife, Synthia Bussieres, and the couple’s five-year-old and two-year-old sons Eliam and Zac.
Al Ballouz, who now claims to be a woman going by the name Levana, has asked to serve his sentence at the Joliette Institution for Women in Quebec.
“Surreal: A man who killed his wife and two kids now claims he is a woman to go to a female prison,” Poilievre wrote on social media. “I can’t believe I have to say this: but when I’m prime minister, there will be no male prisoners in female jails. Period.”
While this is the first time Poilievre has made such a specific commitment, earlier this year he was clear that “female spaces should be exclusively for females, not for biological males.”
“Female sports, female change rooms, female bathrooms should be for females, not for biological males,” he said at the time.
Correctional Service Canada, which oversees federal prisons, says it strives to “meet the needs of gender diverse offenders”
“We place them in institutions aligned with their gender identity (men, women, non-binary, etcetera) or expression, if they prefer, regardless of their sex (anatomy), the gender or sex marker on their identity documents.”
The correctional service said it applies “fair and impartial decision-making methods” to meet these needs.
The government’s data say that 1% of federal Canadian inmates have “self-disclosed gender accommodation needs.” Current numbers are not available, but the number of incarcerated federal inmates in Canada often falls between 12,000 and 15,000.