Conservative MP Vincent Ho questioned Public Health Agency of Canada President Nancy Hamzawi on how to define the term “pregnant people,” which appears in the agency’s guidance on pregnancy and immunization.
During a Nov. 3 meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research, Ho asked Hamzawi about an April 2026 document outlining the National Advisory Committee on Immunization’s approach to “inclusive language” in vaccine guidance.
The document, titled “Summary of approach to inclusive language in vaccine guidance from NACI,” recommends using gender-neutral language, including terms such as “pregnant people” or “pregnant individuals” in order to “achieve both inclusivity and representation.”
It says gender-neutral language avoids referencing a specific sex or gender, while “anatomy-based language” was not assessed because identifying people by their body parts can be “dehumanizing.”
“I just want to understand, what is a pregnant person?” Ho asked Hamzawi. “Can you give Canadians a plain-language definition?”
Hamzawi responded, “a pregnant person is a person who is pregnant.”
When Ho asked how a pregnant person differed medically from a pregnant woman, Hamzawi repeated, “a pregnant person is a pregnant person.” Under further questioning, the president said some pregnant people “do not identify themselves as women.”
“A person who chooses to identify themselves as a man, and has the biological ability to be pregnant, is pregnant,” she said.
Ho also asked about the document using the term “birth parent,” and whether it meant “a mother.” Hamzawi said that the “individual who gives birth to the child is the birth parent of the child.”
In June, Ho had also asked Chief Science Advisor Mona Nemer about the definition of a woman during her appearance before the parliamentary science and research committee. Ho noted that the recent Canadian census asked questions about gender and biological sex, and he wanted to understand Nemer’s view on the issue as it applied to some federal funding decisions.
Nemer responded that, “genetically speaking” a female is defined “in the animal kingdom as someone with two X chromosomes.”
Earlier that month, Ho also asked National Research Council President Mitch Davies about the definition of a woman, and Davies responded that people self-identify when they apply for jobs.
“This all relates to their lived experience and how they’re deciding to fill out a questionnaire, and we accept that,” Davies said.
