Ontario's Bill 89 does add protections for children in care, but the government says it will not have unfettered power to take kids away from their parents.
Stories claiming that a new Canadian law lets the government remove a child from a family if the parents donāt accept the childās gender identity have gone viral on US conservative websites. But the government says the reports are false.
Ontario's Bill 89 became law on June 1. The Supporting Children, Youth and Families Act is an update to the province's child welfare laws, including child protective services, foster care, and adoption.
One of the most noteworthy changes is around gender. Accommodating a child's gender identity or gender expression is now given the same protection as race, ethnicity, disability, or sexual orientation, bringing it in line with the province's human rights code.
While the passage of Bill 89 received little attention from mainstream Canadian news outlets, it was big news on many conservative websites.
Some of the stories have described Bill 89 as a "totalitarian" law, suggesting that government agents will have the power to remove children from their homes for opposing "gender ideology," or that the bill was targeting Christian families in particular.
A story on the conservative news site Heat Street received more than 167,000 Facebook shares, comments, and reactions with the headline "Canadaās New Law Lets Government Take Children Away If Parents Donāt Accept Their Gender Identity."
The government of Ontario, however, says those stories are misleading.
"Bill 89 does not give the government power to seize children from families based on a parent that disagrees with a childās gender identification. Any suggestion of the sort is false," Alicia Ali, a spokesperson for Michael Coteau, Ontario's Minister of Children and Youth Services, told BuzzFeed News in an email.
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