In February 2025, University of Alberta anthropology professor Kathleen Lowrey took her 14-year-old daughter to swim at Edmonton's Bonnie Doon Leisure Centre. In the women's change room, they encountered a nearly naked man with fake rubber breasts hanging around his neck. Staff said he was entitled to be there under the city's policy granting change-room access on the basis of gender identity, not sex. Feeling unsafe, Lowrey called police. The responding officer advised that no action could be taken because the policy permitted it.
Policy Failure, Not Just Enforcement
Jennifer Arnold, a former RCMP officer with more than 22 years investigating violence against women, wrote in the Calgary Herald that the officer's response reflected the problem exactly: on the facts as presented, no enforceable offence had occurred. This was not simply a failure of enforcement but a failure in policy, Arnold argued.
Lowrey then turned to the Alberta Human Rights Commission, filing a complaint on the basis of her sex-based rights being violated. The commission's form offers no box for “sex,” only “gender.” Its officer said she had merely encountered “someone else exercising their rights.” The complaints director, in the final rejection, wrote: “I accept that your gender is a protected characteristic under the Act,” and weighed the whole matter as a question of gender. Across every page, the one word the commission would not use was the one her complaint was about: sex.
Technical Dismissal Leaves Merits Unheard
Representing herself, Lowrey sought a judicial review in the Court of King's Bench. She named the commission as respondent and served the Bonnie Doon Leisure Centre as an interested party. The City of Edmonton intervened, arguing it should also have been named as a respondent, and the case was dismissed on that technicality — the merits were never heard. Lowrey was ordered to pay the city's costs, and the six-month deadline has passed, so it cannot be refiled. As a result, the question of how sex-based rights apply in these circumstances remains unresolved.
Broader Implications for Women's Rights
This is just one of many recent examples of girls' and women's rights being violated highlighted in mainstream media, and it is an example of why Women and Girls Alberta was launched on June 2. The issue is not about who anyone is, but about language in law. Over the past two decades, Canadian human rights law has increasingly added protections for gender identity and gender expression. Alberta did so in 2015. Federally, Parliament added similar protections through Bill C-16 in 2017.
These changes were presented as humane protections for a small and vulnerable group. But in practice, “gender identity” has not merely sat beside sex; it has begun to stand in for it. Alberta's Human Rights Act explicitly protects gender identity and expression. It does not explicitly list sex as a protected ground. As a result, women often find themselves seeking protection through gender-based provisions, even when their concerns are rooted in biological sex.
