On Hold: Investigating Transgender Health Access in Canada

Transgender health access is a rarely discussed but highly contentious topic in Canada. While nine out of the country’s ten provinces offer transgender patients some access to some surgeries—and only one hospital, in Montreal, provides the full gamut of treatments—New Brunswick stands alone by not offering any funded procedures to transgender individuals.

That’s why we went to Fredericton to let AJ Ripley, a non-binary transgender person who prefers the pronouns “they and them,” take us through their life fighting for access to proper health services in New Brunswick. We then took AJ to Toronto to see how services differ in a big city—but even there, it’s far from perfect.

Watch our documentary “On Hold” to hear from transgender patients desperately battling for fair treatment in Canada’s healthcare system, and doctors and experts who say providing this care is both possible and, in fact, the difference between life and death.