Update Sept. 30: The paper issued an apology for the ad and we got an explanation from its advertising manager.

Update October 3: A version of the ad appeared in the Toronto Sun yesterday.

Newspapers do, in fact, pick and choose what political advertisements they run especially during elections. So I'm going to charitably assume for now that this ad from the Institute for Canadian Values (a group that seems to be fronted by Charles McVety, an evangelical preacher with a pretty colorful Wikipedia bio) was a mistake.

I spoke to Enzo Loschiavo, the advertising manager at the National Post, earlier today and he says the Post has heard the criticism of the ad loud and clear, and is investigating how exactly it got in to the paper.

Update September 29 2011: I spoke with Mark Iker, National Account Manager at the Globe and Mail and while he couldn't say whether the ICV had approached the Globe and Mail with the ad, he did say that (a) advocacy ads are very expensive, with a full-page ad costing around $85,000 in black and white, and (b) for an ad like the one in question, it would go to their lawyers even if it somehow made it through the normal staff. "We wouldn't run anything that would be harmful or could hurt the newspaper," says Iker.

According to Bethany Horne at OpenFile Halifax, it appears that this ad has been shopped around by the ICV to papers far and wide, including the Dalhousie Gazette. An editor at The Dalhousie Gazette now says the paper was contacted to provide coverage of the ICV, rather than to run an ad. We've added a correction and update to the OpenFile Halifax post.

The reaction on Twitter to the ad has been immediate and negative. (Thanks to Bethany Horne for putting this storify together.)

[View the story "National Post trans-intolerant ad" on Storify]

Twitter, inevitably, is able to find the bright side: