The Ontario legislature is set to pass historic legislation this week to protect transgender people from discrimination.

Bill 33—known as Toby's Act—will add “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the prohibited grounds for discrimination in the Ontario Human Rights Code.

The Toronto Star reported that passage of the bill is expected on Wednesday (June 13).

“This is absolutely historic. This will be the first jurisdiction in North America outside the Northwest Territories to have included trans people as full citizens truly and given them human rights along with everyone else,” NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo, one of the backers of the bill, said today (June 12), according to the Star.

In May 2011, NDP MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert introduced a bill to add “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the B.C. Human Rights Code.

Herbert's Bill M 207 only made it as far as first reading.

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