Based on our partner engagement survey, for many advocates, including current partners of The Sonor Foundation, it feels like the anti- trans tide is rising. From our media analysis, we see US President Trump administration’s attacks on the rights of trans people and migrants making Canadian headlines and shaping Canadian politics. Our partners recall more opposition messages than supportive messages, and believe opposition messaging to be more prevalent in public discourse. Mainstream Canadian media like CBC and CTV amplify both opposition and supportive messaging in their coverage, as demonstrated by our media analysis.

While trans advocates may feel like anti- trans rhetoric has been a winning political strategy when Alberta and Saskatchewan have introduced anti-trans restrictions and even invoked the notwithstanding clause, some provincial elections show how it can be a significant political liability. In New Brunswick, former Premier Blaine Higgs’ 2023 “parental rights” policy and political strong-arming drove significant backlash, contributing to his ultimate electoral loss in the 2024 election and the reversal of the policy by the new premier later that year. In Manitoba’s 2023 election, the Progressive Conservative campaign’s focus on “parental rights” was decisively rejected in favour of the NDP under Wab Kinew, whose campaign centred on unity and dignity. This shift allowed for the election of the province’s first openly trans and non-binary MLAs, Logan Oxenham and Uzoma Asagwara, who have begun reclaiming the narrative by focusing on safety and belonging for all youth.

Moreover, despite setbacks in Saskatchewan and Alberta, trans advocates and allies in those provinces have been mobilizing through public education campaigns led by local advocates and supported by national groups and through legal efforts by UR Pride, Skipping Stone, Egale Canada, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Research has been done around the world on where and how professionals support trans people and their rights. These studies show that the barrier to trans-affirming environments is frequently not a lack of personal conviction, but a lack of organizational backing. A 2022 study of Ontario K-12 educators found that 94% personally support trans-affirming policies, yet many reported being unable to act on those values due to administrative limitations or a lack of professional guidance. This gap creates an opportunity for narrative work: help individuals close the disconnect between their personal values and their professional reality, when they experience conflict between their personal support for inclusion and institutional “caution” or bureaucracy.

Across Canadian political talking points, media, and actual anti-trans legislation, we see a strategic avoidance of explicit terms like “transgender,” helping restrictive policies evade detection by the public and even research tools. A search of Canadian legislative databases found only 14 results for the word “transgender” compared to 23 for “pronouns,” illustrating how restrictive policies are often sanitized using language like “child welfare” or “women’s spaces.” This “cloaking” is so effective that in our late 2025 research, AI platforms (for example, Perplexity and ChatGPT) failed to identify Saskatchewan’s Bill 137 as anti- trans, because the bill’s text avoided the word “transgender” entirely, obscuring its intent.

Our research also demonstrated many examples of opposition narratives obfuscating or legitimizing real consequences for trans people by avoiding the framing of “trans rights.” For example, legislation prohibiting the participation of trans women in sports or using women’s restrooms cites “fairness” and “women’s safety” to support a false division between the well-being of cis women and the well- being of trans women.

As a similar false division, some French speakers in Canada and elsewhere have argued for restricting inclusive language (for example, restricting the use of gender-neutral French) to preserve language “integrity” around the gendered nature of French and its grammatical rules, which positions inclusive language on gender diversity as being up against grammatical clarity.

This obfuscation strategy undermines trans rights on two fronts. First, it calls into question the worthiness of protecting the rights of trans people. Second, it deliberately frames protecting trans rights as a barrier to protecting others’ rights. It implies there is a limit to inclusion, that not everyone can be protected.

Our media analysis shows that the parental rights narrative is highly visible online, in legislation, and in public discourse in Canada. Media coverage skyrocketed after New Brunswick introduced Policy 713 in 2023, which greatly contributed to the prevalence of parental rights narratives. The policy stated that parents have the “right” to know if young people are questioning their gender identity or have come out at school, despite the risks this could pose for youth at home. “Parental rights” legislation has been trialed by certain conservative parties across Canada - in New Brunswick (until reversed), Saskatchewan, and Alberta - and have been effective at:

1. Building support for anti-trans policies.

2. Polarizing political debate.

3. Creating an expectation in public spaces that trans, Two-Spirit, and gender-diverse peoples’ self-determination and self-identity are “debates.”

The “parental rights” framing currently prominent in Canada is a strategic import from the United States, rooted in 20th-century legal battles over issues like desegregation and critical race theory. This playbook harnesses language of self-determination and family sovereignty to mask efforts to marginalize trans youth and create a foundation for undermining rights in other sectors, including the workplace. Themes of child wellbeing, education, independence, and personal sovereignty evoked in this narrative draw out strong emotions. They also attract a wide variety of sometimes unlikely allies in opposition, with, for example, the now reoccuring 1 Million March 4 Children, being joined or supported by known xenophobic and white supremacist groups. These uneasy alliances show the importance of strategizing across communities and issue areas.

Our media analysis shows that public attention is frequently diverted toward specific, high-conflict topics like women’s sports, to drive polarization. While overall media coverage of trans issues fell by roughly 50% year-over-year since 2023, a massive spike in search traffic occurred in 2024 specifically related to the Olympics and women’s boxing, indicating a surge of interest where media coverage and engagement has been falling

Furthermore, trans women are mentioned in significantly more articles than trans men (2% of all stories mentioning trans issues in 2025 compared to 0%), but this coverage is almost exclusively focused on athletic rules.

At the same time, our media analysis showed that in 2025, trans-related social media posts demonstrated a wider range of supportive messages than those evident in traditional media outlets in the same year. In 2025, there was also more positivity overall, and while the amount of coverage and interactions fell, a rise in inclusive language (ex., ‘2-spirit’ and ‘gender nonconforming’ became more common in the coverage (3% in 2025 versus 2% in 2023 and 6% to 4%, respectively). In online “transgender” searches identified in Canada, i.e., Google and other platforms, the websites of neutral and supportive organizations are top results, which is reassuring. There is also a greater diversity of supporter voices than opposition voices. On key platforms like TikTok, supporter voices are also more popular than opposition voices. And advocates are beginning to use more effective strategies to gain support for trans rights and communities.

Despite these positive trends, there is a stark contrast in the emotional tone of narrative engagement: opposition media often celebrates its “wins,” effectively reinforcing its messaging and the engagement of their base, while supporter strategies and messaging is more fractured.

We uncovered this while conducting a sentiment analysis on the media data. In this analysis, we assessed the overall tone of the articles containing opposition messaging compared to support messaging. Opposition coverage is frequently “positive.” For example, when these articles celebrate anti-trans legislation, or legal decisions, or cultural moments, they are framed as successful battles in a righteous guerrilla war.

In contrast, several prominent narratives from supporters are reactive; meaning that they are in direct response to opposition narratives. One risk of reaction messages is that they can help to accidentally reinforce opposition messaging. For example, a common opposition narrative is “parental rights” and, in response to this narrative, reactionary-but-supportive counter- narratives have included “children/ youth have rights” and “parents have responsibilities, not rights.” This reminds readers of the opposition narrative rather than providing a wholly different, more effective supportive narrative.

Supportive media coverage also contains a significant amount of “fluff” or shallow allyship, such as general Pride Month statements or lighting up a landmark in rainbow colours for Pride, which lacks the emotional urgency of the opposition’s framing. The data suggests that a values-based approach that highlights trans joy and excellence is more effective for building durable public support.

Another challenge to supportive narrative change that the research identified is a rise in apathy among the moveable middle. As indicated by our media analysis, social media interactions with supportive trans stories fell in 2025, while interaction rates for anti-trans talking points remained relatively steady. This apathy is partly driven by a lack of relationship: only 41% of Canadians personally know a trans or 2SLGBTQI+ person, and only 9% have a friend, relative, or work colleague who they know to be trans, and recent data shows a strong relationship between trans rights support and having 2SLGBTQI+ relations.

In this gap, misunderstanding and misinformation can take root. For example, a lack of exposure to trans youth may make some of the movable middle susceptible to anti-SOGI and anti-gender-affirming care narratives. A lack of familiarity with people using different pronouns can leave people feeling confused and even angry about navigating the unfamiliar. This misunderstanding is not out of malice, but because they lack a personal connection to counter the narratives they see online.

The data suggests that moving toward a “relational” strategy is more effective than simply repeating facts. We see that approach emerging in our media analysis. For example, we observed humanization narratives, often nominally addressed to trans people (“trans people are safe here”; “trans people deserve to be protected”), setting cultural norms of inclusion and safety for their communities.

These narratives tell community members that inclusion is expected. They are also aligned with the beliefs and values of the majority of people in Canada, making them effective at building support among the less-active moveable middle. We also observed social media posts showcasing cross- movement and intersectional moments, such as 2SLGBTQI+ and Indigenous solidarity on Red Dress Day.

Our research validated that, predominantly speaking, nonprofits are contributing to positive, accurate and intersectional narratives, although there are also anti-trans nonprofit actors. Globally, there are prominent organizations and nonprofits using intersectional approaches to narrative change and engaging across movements. Examples from the US are the TransLatin@ Coalition and the Black Trans Advocacy Coalition, which lead campaigns and initiatives in support of trans Latine and Black communities.

As we noted in the earlier section on narrative and narrative change work, however, there are fewer organizations in Canada working in 2SLGBTQI+ narrative change work. There are prominent and effective exceptions, however: Queer Momentum, White Ribbon, Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights and Egale Canada.

Despite the challenges, the Canadian vocabulary is evolving to be more inclusive. While mentions of “parental rights” in media articles fell from 4% in 2023 to 1% in 2025, the use of inclusive terms is increasing as a share of media coverage.

As noted previously, media keywords such as “gender nonconforming” (rising from 4% in 2023 to 6% in 2025) and “Two-Spirit” (rising from 2% to 3%) are making up a larger share of the national conversation. This shift suggests that more nuanced and inclusive ways of talking about gender are successfully entering the mainstream, providing a foundation for long-term cultural change.

Successful supportive campaigns leverage the same resources as our opposition: research, values-aligned framing, and emotion. In addition to work by other groups already mentioned in this report, there was a key example in Saskatchewan in 2025, when pushback against a “parental rights” bill included over 600 letters from parents, educators, and others. These letters utilized messages that proved effective in other research: reinforcing mutual values like inclusion and respect, protection of youth, responsibility and accountability of government, and what defines an effective educational policy. Importantly, that project was locally led by community leaders in Saskatchewan, conveying how discriminating against trans communities is ‘not something that we do here in Saskatchewan’. This suggests a consistent set of strongly held beliefs across Canadian society, from prairie provinces and small-town communities to bigger cities, that can be leveraged for more inclusion for all Canadians.

Efforts like this also help neutralize the political advantages of scapegoating trans communities. They increase the political costs of anti-trans policies.