The saga of a former B.C. school trustee who made national headlines over the past decade for his anti-LGBTQ2S+ statements has reached a conclusion, with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ruling that Barry Neufeld must pay more than $750,000 dollars to a group of queer and trans teachers in Chilliwack for violating the Human Rights Code by publishing hate speech and discriminatory content against LGBTQ2S+ people.
Neufeld served as a school trustee in Chilliwack, B.C. for two chunks of time between 1993 and 2008 and 2011 and 2022, and he’s long been a controversial public figure for publicly speaking out against LGBTQ2S+ rights and trans people in particular.
In 2017, Neufeld compared gender transition to child abuse in a series of Facebook posts, which resulted in a court filing against him by the Canadian Union of Public Employees and Chillwack school district superintendent Evelyn Novak having to come out and say that Neufeld did not speak for the board. The Chilliwack Teachers’ Association passed a vote of no confidence against Neufeld that same year, the Board of Education asked him to resign and even B.C.’s minister of education got involved—but Neufeld remained in office as a school trustee in Chilliwack for another five years until 2022.
Last week’s landmark Human Rights Tribunal ruling relates to a complaint submitted by the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association that specifically concerns the rights of queer and trans teachers impacted by Neufeld’s statements during a five-year period between 2017 and 2022.
In a sweeping 143‑page decision, the tribunal concluded that Neufeld “publicly denigrated LGBTQ people and teachers” and “inundated public discourse in Chilliwack with speech that degraded and denied trans people” during that time.
In a statement following the ruling, B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Carole Gordon called the ruling against Neufeld a “huge win” for queer and trans rights in Canada.
“It affirms that discriminatory and hateful rhetoric has no place in our public education system—especially when it comes from someone entrusted with a leadership position.”
The tribunal ruled that Neufeld created a discriminatory work environment, and not only has to pay the Chilliwack Teachers’ Association $750,000 to be distributed to queer and trans teachers for “injury to their dignity, feelings and self-respect,” but he also must refrain from making these kinds of public statements again.
B.C. human rights commissioner Kasari Govender told CTV News that the ruling sets an important precedent around the public discourse about queer and trans people.
“It clarifies the important guardrails around public and political debate, which can be challenging, controversial, offensive and even harmful but cannot cross the threshold into hate.”
We’ve seen phrases like “transgender ideology” bandied about as part of public discourse, most recently in the wake of the tragic mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, when B.C. MLA Tara Armstrong posted an anti-trans screed to X just hours after the shooting, blaming it on gender-affirming care and public support for trans people.
But the tribunal ruling argues that speaking as fervently against “gender ideology” as Neufeld did is really about speaking out against trans people themselves.
“Calling transness ‘gender ideology’ allows anti-trans activists to hide behind a veneer of reasonableness. It allows them to say, as Mr. Neufeld did in his statements as well as at the hearing of this complaint, that they are not attacking human beings. They are simply opposing a set of ideas,” the ruling reads.
“But behind this insidious veneer is the proposition that transness is not real. Such phrasing can make it easier to ignore that trans people are human beings. Referring to ‘gender ideology’ or ‘transgenderism’—‘-ism’ denoting a belief or ideology such as capitalism or communism—pushes the idea that trans people have an agenda rather than being just another demographic group. As this decision illustrates, such terms can create the conditions for discrimination and hatred to flourish.”
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