In the summer of 2024 (yes, 2 years ago) Canadian Gender Report filed a complaint with the CBC Ombudsman about the CBC’s reporting that puberty blockers are “reversible”. Our complaint was accepted for review by the Ombudsman after a senior editor tried to use the Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) position statement to suggest the CBC did not need to conduct any further investigation into the claim that puberty blockers are reversible. We have serious reservations about the CPS position statement and it’s claims.
We continue to wait for the CBC’s Ombudsman’s office to conduct this review. After 2 years of waiting, we decided to publish the complaint publicly.
The original complaint and the process followed is below, in chronological order.
Initial Complaint by CGR:
Nancy Waugh’s initial response on behalf of CBC editorial/programming team:
CGR Response to Nancy Waugh rebuttal of our original complaint:
Jack Nagler, CBC Ombudsman at the time, accepted our complaint on September 12, 2024.
Since then, Jack Nagler has retired and Maxime Bertrand has taken over the position of CBC Ombudsman.
In September of 2025, she told us she would conduct the review, but that there were 43 reviews ahead of ours. In 2026 we again received confirmation that she would conduct the review. The timing is unclear.
We conducted an analysis of the CBC’s recent reporting on this topic and found that they have not declared puberty blockers “reversible” since our complaint was given the go-ahead for review. This is somewhat reassuring, but old content, including materials directed at children and young people, continues to be available under the CBC portfolio.
One of the CBC videos that led to the complaint:
