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A recent ruling by Quebec’s Human Rights Tribunal siding with a non-binary individual in a dispute with a hair salon has reignited debate about gender identity and discrimination laws in the province.

The case involves a salon that offered separate price categories for men’s and women’s haircuts. According to reports, the business attempted to accommodate the complainant by offering three free haircuts and even modified its website to include non-binary haircut options.

However, the individual — who is bald — still pursued a complaint, and the tribunal ultimately ruled in their favour.

For political scientist Jean-François Caron, a professor at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan and currently a visiting professor at the American University of Armenia, the decision reflects a broader legal trend in Canada that has been developing for decades.

“I think this is representative of what has happened in Canada over the past 20 or 25 years,” Caron explains, pointing to earlier Supreme Court rulings on religious freedom. He argues that decisions such as Amsalem and Multani opened what he describes as “a Pandora’s box,” allowing individuals to challenge institutions based on subjective identity claims.

“Now we are witnessing exactly the same thing with gender identities,” he says. “Objectively, there are only two genders. But if you open that door, it allows anyone to identify as whatever they wish and then claim they are victims of discrimination.”

In the salon case, Caron notes, the tribunal determined that offering only men’s and women’s haircut categories constituted discrimination against someone who identified as neither.

“This is the continuation of an extreme logic that started with religious identity claims,” he says. “Now it has entered the spectrum of gender identities.”

Caron warns that the decision could create uncertainty for business owners. Entrepreneurs, he says, may increasingly feel they are “walking on eggshells,” unsure whether neutral language used today could later become grounds for legal action.

“You could write a price list with absolutely no malicious intent,” he explains, “but six months or five years later someone could claim that the wording discriminates against their subjective identity.”

According to Caron, the broader issue is the erosion of shared norms in society.

“When everything becomes subjective, you cannot have common norms,” he says. “How do you organize a society of 40 million people if there are 40 million different sets of rules?”