Queer Concordia

Queer Concordia seeks to launch gender-affirming care pilot project

Banner from the Trans March for Our Liberation on Aug. 6, 2022. Photo Sophie Dufresne

Geneviève Sylvestre,
Local Journalism Initiative

The project would provide students with interest-free loans to access gender-affirming care

Queer Concordia is looking to create a short-term, interest-free loan pilot project to help students relieve the financial burden associated with paying for gender-affirming care (GAC) procedures.

The group will present the plan to the Concordia Student Union’s (CSU) Council of Representatives on Sept. 18. Queer Concordia will ask the union to allocate $100,000 annually to the project, which students under the CSU’s insurance can access as an interest-free loan.

The CSU’s insurance provider, Studentcare, currently only covers $5,000 per procedure and a $10,000 lifetime maximum for GAC surgeries and treatments not otherwise covered by the student’s provincial government coverage.

GAC procedures can often exceed $5,000—even $10,000—per treatment. The pilot project proposal outlines the cost of one student’s surgeries that added up to a total of $33,000. Queer Concordia senior coordinator Jessica Winton said that the project’s loans would allow students to access the care they are paying for.

“When a surgery is $10,000 or more, […] sitting around for up to a month waiting to be reimbursed by insurance for $10,000 can leave a very large hole in your pocket and very easily put you into debt,” Winton said.

If the CSU approves Queer Concordia’s proposal, the $100,000 would cover about 10 students at maximum per year.

Studentcare also requires that students receive a letter from a legally qualified physician or nurse practitioner confirming a gender dysphoria diagnosis to be eligible for GAC coverage.

This goes against the recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) which state that “the use of rigid assessment tools for ‘transition readiness’ may reduce access to care,” and that a gender incongruence diagnosis “may better capture the fullness of gender diversity experiences and related clinical gender need.”

Adam Philomena is the Centre for Gender Advocacy’s community engagement coordinator. He believes that the insurance providers should follow WPATH recommendations and that healthcare providers should trust that patients seeking GAC have the most knowledge of their own bodies and identities.

“The requirement of a gender dysphoria diagnosis is a huge barrier for a lot of people because […] people express their transness in different ways and may not be necessarily looking for that to be medicalized in a specific way,” they said.

According to the CSU website, there is currently no pay-direct coverage available for the GAC plan, meaning that students seeking care must pay for the procedure out-of-pocket before making a claim for reimbursement.

Winton believes the pilot project if implemented could help relieve financial pressure for trans and gender-diverse students.

“This will actually help people use the insurance,” Winton said. “Many people are put off from trying to use it because of the current restrictions of the $5,000 limit and the fact that you usually have to pay out-of-pocket.”

The CSU’s Health and Dental Plan expanded to include gender affirming care in 2023. Undergraduate students that are paying provincial or out-of-province tuition rates and are enrolled in three or more credits are automatically signed-up for the plan that costs $225 for full-year coverage.

CSU finance coordinator Souad El Ferjani, said that she would be open to the project, but that Queer Concordia is asking for a substantial amount of money.

“Me and my team would be sitting down trying to see how we can solve this, how we can accommodate everybody without putting our budget in a bad position,” El Ferjani said.

Philomena claimed that, despite fee-levy employees having the same CSU Health and Dental plan as undergraduate students, they do not receive the Studentcare GAC coverage as they do not have student identification numbers. The CSU failed to verify the claim despite The Link’s attempt for clarification.

Quebec residents insured with the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec (RAMQ) can qualify for certain GAC surgeries and treatments, such as phalloplasties, vaginoplasties and mastectomies, if a doctor determines they are necessary. Other treatments, such as breast augmentations and facial feminization surgeries, are not covered by RAMQ as the government deems them purely esthetic.

Many universities across Canada, including McGill University, have the same GAC coverage as Concordia. Rachel Bainbridge-Sedivy, a member of the McGill Trans Patient Union, said that the coverage is currently inaccessible.

“It’s healthcare. It’s a human right. It’s important for people to be able to access that,” Bainbridge-Sedivy said. “Gender affirming care is /not cosmetic, it is medically necessary.”

Winton will present the project to the CSU on Sept. 18. She encourages students to voice their support for the pilot project.

“We’re really hoping that we can mobilize together and get this through,” Winton said, “because it really will help so many people.”

This article originally appeared in Volume 45, Issue 2, published September 17, 2024.

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Queer Concordia officially launches gender-affirming care loan program

Local Journalism Initiative / The Link / April 1, 2025 / gender affirming care, Geneviève Sylvestre, Queer Concordia

Queer Concordia has officially launched its interest-free gender affirming care loan program. Courtesy Queer Concordia

Geneviève Sylvestre,
Local Journalism Initiative

Students will be able to access interest-free loans of up to $2,000 to cover procedure costs

Queer Concordia officially launched its gender-affirming care (GAC) community fund program on March 6, after being refused funding from the Concordia Student Union (CSU) due to lack of funds.

The program has a $20,000 pool and will allow students to access interest-free loans of up to $2,000 to pay for GAC procedures up front.

Queer Concordia senior coordinator Jessica Winton said that, in part due to Queer Concordia receiving the smallest fee levy of any group ($0.02 per undergraduate student, per credit), it’s been challenging to set-up the program with no outside funding.

“Just the lawyer costs alone are anticipated to be upwards of $3,000, so that’s already a significant amount of money,” Winton said.

Winton has been trying to implement a loan program at Concordia University since the start of the Fall 2024 semester. She said she feels privileged her parents were able to help her pay for the upfront cost of the GAC procedure that saved her life and wants to help others access care.

“I know a lot of people who go through putting themselves in lifelong debt simply to go through surgery without insurance, and the fact that we have insurance but so few people are actually able to use it is incredibly disappointing,” Winton said.

The CSU Health and Dental Plan offers a lifetime maximum coverage of $10,000 with $5,000 maximum per procedure for GAC. This can create a large financial burden for students, especially since procedure costs often exceed $10,000.

Additionally, according to the CSU website, there is currently no pay-direct coverage available for GAC, meaning students must pay out-of-pocket for their procedure and wait to be refunded.

Only students registered for the GreenShield GAC insurance through the CSU Health and Dental Plan are eligible for the loan program. Additionally, students must provide Queer Concordia with several documents including government identification, a student ID and a pre-authorization form from GreenShield or their claims history.

“That way, we can just make sure that you’re eligible, that you’re not going to use this money for something that’s outside of the scope of the fund, as well as just identification to make sure that we have the right person that we’re issuing the loan to so there [aren’t] any legal problems,” Winton said.

Winton added that the copies of the student’s identification will be shredded after the loan is reimbursed.

The loans will remain interest-free for two months. However, students suffering with involuntary delays can make their case to the Queer Concordia board of directors to pause interest.

“Typically, most claims get processed within about three weeks at most, in my experience,” Winton said. “The two-month period is to allow for kind of a grace period where, if GreenShield misprocesses something [..] for, let’s say, a month, there’s still time.”

According to the Queer Concordia website, international students are eligible to access the loan program so long as they have opted into the CSU Health and Dental Plan. The website also encourages students to write to the CSU if they are not satisfied with the current coverage provided by the union.

Students interested in the program can stop by the Queer Concordia office during Winton’s office hours from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Wednesday.

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Queer Concordia pilot project struck down at CSU finance committee

Local Journalism Initiative / The Link / March 26, 2025 / CSU, Geneviève Sylvestre, Maria Cholakova, Queer Concordia, Student Governance

Queer Concordia’s pilot project was struck down by CSU finance committee. Photo Maria Cholakova

Geneviève Sylvestre,
Local Journalism Initiative

The committee points to lack of funds as the reason why the motion was denied

On Sept. 30, Queer Concordia senior coordinator Jessica Winton presented her gender-affirming care loan pilot project in front of the Concordia Student Union (CSU) finance committee, where councillors voted against moving forward with the project.

The project aimed to connect students seeking gender-affirming care with short-term and interest-free loans to help them relieve some of the financial burden associated with paying for gender-affirming care.

The CSU’s Health and Dental Plan currently covers $5,000 per procedure and has a $10,000 lifetime maximum for gender-affirming care surgeries and treatments. This can make it hard for students to access care, as procedure costs can often exceed $10,000.

Additionally, according to the CSU website, there is currently no pay-direct coverage available, meaning that students seeking care must first pay for their procedures out-of-pocket.

Winton asked the committee for a maximum of $100,000. According to the finance committee minutes, councillors voted against the project as the CSU is currently faced with high expenses and dropping income due to low enrollment, making the project not “sustainable to the CSU.”

According to CSU finance coordinator Souad El Ferjani, the finance committee only has a total funding of $20,000. She added that, as finance coordinator, she does not chair all other committees and does not have the power to pull funds from other committees.

“We [had] plans for bursaries for businesses, we had plans for having financial literacy workshops for international students and for students in general, we had plans for a business fair,” El Ferjani said. “We had a lot of big plans for the whole year, so giving away the [whole] $20,000 did not make sense to the councillors.”

El Ferjani also added that it did not make sense for the councillors to allocate the few remaining funds to the Queer Concordia project.

“It’s very insulting if somebody comes and asks for $100,000 and I give them $2,000,” she said.

Additionally, El Ferjani told The Link that the finance committee did consider using funds from the operations budget to pay for the project. Ultimately, as the CSU is already in a deficit this year due in part to the tuition hikes, councillors decided that it would not be a financially sound decision.

Winton added that she had also asked the financial committee to consider using the insurance surplus currently allocated to the Studentcare Legal Care Program to fund the pilot project.

“They said they would get back to me on that, but they did not,” Winton said, “and when I look at the minutes from the meeting that suggestion is not within the minutes at all either.”

Winton requested to present an amended version of the motion to council at the second CSU regular council meeting (RCM) on Oct. 9. The then-CSU chairperson Michelle Lam denied her request.

According to El Ferjani, Lam did not allow Winton to present her motion because the council had already decided to defer the project to the finance committee during the first RCM, and the finance committee had come to a decision.

“This does not close the door for Queer Concordia to go to other committees, but to go back to council again does not make any sense because council has already taken the decision to send it to the finance committee,” El Ferjani said.

Winton said she believes that CSU members did not properly read her motion or take it seriously, citing that the motion only asked for a maximum of $100,000 and that councillors did not ask her questions during the finance committee meeting.

“We’re just looking to essentially use money that the CSU has sitting around in their Student Space, Accessible Education, and Legal Contingency fund or other committees to always circulate it with the loan program for people to be able to access the gender-affirming care,” she said, “because you have to pay upfront for your procedures most of the time and that’s a very large financial barrier that most people face.”

El Ferjani said she believes councillors did not ask questions during the finance committee meeting because they had already read the motion and listened to Winton’s presentation during the first RCM.

“They were aware of the motion, they had the time to read the motion prior to the RCM, they listened to Jessica during the RCM, they [had] heard the questions during the RCM,” El Ferjani said, “so my thought process is that they already knew a lot of [this] information.”

Three of the committee’s four councillors were present for Winton’s presentation, with the fourth arriving later according to El Ferjani, and the student at large seat was and remains vacant. Winton requested to be appointed to fill the seat, but Lam denied the request.

Lam wrote in an email, which was sent to The Link, that procedure requires a student to first apply to the appointments committee and then have their appointment ratified by council before being able to sit on the committee. The former chairperson added that, even if Winton was appointed to fill the seat, she would not be able to vote on a Queer Concordia project as it would be deemed a conflict of interest.

Winton expressed frustration over the lack of transparency, saying that the CSU website can be difficult to navigate and is not up to date, with the minutes from the first RCM where she had originally presented her motion having not yet been added to the website.

According to Winston, more students should be aware of the CSU’s inner workings and how much money they possess.

“Student groups such as ours, […] it shouldn’t be our duty and our mandate to have to charge students more money by raising our fee levy to alleviate services the CSU is supposed to provide and to advocate for themselves,” she said.

Looking forward, Winton said that Queer Concordia is able to dedicate around $20,000 of surplus to fund the project. She also said she is considering other avenues to fund her pilot project, such as applying to the Sustainability Action Fund and the Concordia Council on Student Life’s special project funding.

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