How Gay Men are Unequally Treated by Fertility Insurance Plans in Ontario

Morgan Martel - VP of Research, CUWLN

March 2023

A lawsuit has officially been filed to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal claiming discrimination in the Ontario Teachers Insurance Plan (OTIP) on the basis of sexual orientation (Tunney, 2023). Just this year, Greg Mountenay filed this discrimination claim alongside appeals to the OTIP and Manulife Insurance plans after he learned that his surrogacy process is ineligible for subsidy because he is a gay man. Under Mountenay’s OTIP plan, fertility drug benefits are only eligible to cover the primary applicant (i.e. Mountenay himself) and their spouse or children (Tunney, 2023). Since Mountenay and his husband require a surrogate to have their own biological child, they are ineligible for financing from their insurance plan because the fertility drugs are needed to cover a member that falls outside of their drug plan (i.e. the surrogate). This means that gay-male couples are ineligible to have the same coverage for IVF drugs that lesbian or other couples can have covered simply because they are not taking the IVF drugs themselves. Mountenay notes that this means the couple has been denied access to funding of up to $18,000 simply due to their “lack of a uterus” (Tunney, 2023).

Since 2017, Ontario has taken progressive steps to ensure the legal status of all parents under the All Families Are Equal Act. This act has ensured that all parents are legally recognized no matter their sexual orientation, gender identity, or the way by which the baby’s conception was made (All Families Are Equal Act, 2016). Although this act has made significant progress in legally recognizing parents who fall outside of the hetero-normative paradigm or who choose not to conceive themselves, substantive equality for these parents is yet to be achieved in all areas. The OTIP IVF drug insurance policy is a prime example of the lack of substantive equality for gay couples. Though the OTIP IVF drug insurance plan is formally equal, it causes substantive inequality as it makes primarily gay men ineligible to receive funding for fertility treatments. This can cause a debilitating financial burden on couples given that the average cost of surrogacy in Canada is $85,000 when accounting for surrogate compensation, attorney fees, clinical procedures, egg donation, and related travel and other expenses (IVF Conceptions, 2023). Insurance plans such as Manulife, which OTIP operates through, do offer surrogacy coverage but only in policies above the standard insurance plan (Tunney, 2023). Leaving surrogacy access to only above-standard plans leaves gay men needing to pay more to achieve the same goal as other couples seeking fertility treatment: to be good parents to their children.

References

All Families Are Equal Act (Parentage and Related Registrations Statute Law Amendment), Bill 28 S.O., 2016, s.4-13 https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/s16023.

IVF Conceptions. (2023). Surrogacy in Canada is secure but restriction makes it difficult to

follow for many parents. https://www.ivfconceptions.com/surrogacy-in-canada/.

Tunney, J. (28 March 2023). Gay father-to-be files human rights complaint alleging IVF

discrimination. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/gay-couple-surrogates-1.6789871.