Synthia Kavanagh is a transsexual woman serving a sentence in a federal prison. She has been living as a woman since she was 13, and had begun the process of transition before she went to jail by taking hormones in preparation for sex reassignment surgery.
Even though the judge recommended that she serve her sentence in a female institution, she was put in a male institution, and Corrections Canada discontinued her hormones.
Kavanagh filed a human rights complaint arguing that the government had an obligation to provide her with appropriate medical care, including sex reassignment surgery; and that she should be placed in a female prison.
Corrections Canada settled her individual complaint, and as a result was able to have her SRS and finish her sentence in a woman's institution.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission took the issue of Corrections Canada policy to a hearing, and the tribunal concluded that the federal government could not have a blanket policy of refusing sex reassignment surgery.
Though the federal government took judicial review of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal's decision, arguing that the tribunal had no jurisdiction to make orders requiring the correctional service to have transsexual inmates assessed and treated by doctors from outside the institution, or to order that post-operative transsexual women be housed in women's penitentiaries, the Federal Court disagreed. The tribunal decision was upheld.
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