Bill C-6 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things, create the following offences:
(a) causing a person to undergo conversion therapy without the person’s consent;
(b) causing a child to undergo conversion therapy;
(c) doing anything for the purpose of removing a child from Canada with the intention that the child undergo conversion therapy outside Canada;
(d) promoting or advertising an offer to provide conversion therapy; and
(e) receiving a financial or other material benefit from the provision of conversion therapy.
It also amends the Criminal Code to authorize courts to order that advertisements for conversion therapy be disposed of or deleted.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Marc-Olivier Girard]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I just want to inform the committee that it has received nearly 300 submissions on Bill C-6. That's a huge number. About 260 submissions are currently being translated.

I would like to thank the committees directorate's administrative team that is handling the processing of all those submissions, especially committee assistant, Natasha Filoso-Timpson, who worked all of last weekend. I would also like to thank the Translation Bureau's entire team that, despite being very busy these days, has been working very hard to translate all those submissions.

The vast majority of submissions should be ready in time for the clause-by-clause study of the bill, but some 30 briefs will be sent after December 10.

Once again, I thank everyone for their tremendous efforts.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank all the witnesses who are with us. Their participation in this debate is valuable.

As I was saying previously, we feel that, the more people we hear talk about Bill C-6, the more we realize that the situation is confusing. I think that all the parliamentarians who have worked on this bill are acting in good faith and want to ban practices we all consider dishonourable.

I sort of agree with what Cardinal Collins was saying earlier that this is unfortunately the text that will have to be the legal support for those bans, but I unfortunately find it confusing.

That said, I personally feel that good faith conversations should be allowed, but I am wondering what would constitute a good faith conversation. Couldn't that conversation “in good faith” from one individual's point of view appear to be “in bad faith” from another point of view? What I mean by that is that religious and moral beliefs vary from one individual to another and from one religion to another.

Cardinal Collins, how would you view a question from a citizen who came to see you—for example a 13 or 14-year-old adolescent—and was questioning their gender identity and saying that they think they are bisexual, that they are sexually attracted to young women or young men and that they find that okay. What would be your opinion on that kind of a statement, Cardinal Collins?

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Santoro, about the broadness of the definition of conversion therapy and C-6 as it is now, do you believe because of how the bill is written now that it could be struck down?

[His Eminence Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop, Archdiocese of Toronto]

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon and thank you for providing me with the opportunity to speak with you about Bill C-6. I am grateful for the work of the justice and human rights committee and for all that you do to serve our country in your role as elected members of Parliament.

As the Archbishop of Toronto, I serve as the spiritual leader of two million Catholics in the greater Toronto area. At the outset, I should clearly state that the Catholic Church opposes any coercive practices that undermine a person's free will and human dignity. We believe that every person is a gift from God to be treated with love, compassion and respect. In a society where mutual respect and love of neighbour should define us in all that we do, we must all ensure that no one experiences coercion or manipulation. I'm most appreciative of Minister Chagger's insistence that we act against coercive practices.

I am deeply concerned, however, that the current definition of conversion therapy found in Bill C-6 goes much further than the stated goal of criminalizing coercive behaviour. In this bill, there is no requirement that the practice, treatment or service in question be coercive or cause harm. The bill fails to define exactly what constitutes a practice, treatment or service. Actions that are now lawful could be subject to the Criminal Code.

In its current form the legislation lacks protection in relation to the following: the fundamental right of parents as first educators and guardians to make decisions regarding the welfare of their children, specifically their freedom to instruct them in accord with their religious and ethical beliefs; the right and freedom of every Canadian to voluntarily seek support to live in a manner consistent with their identity and beliefs, and in accord with their personal convictions; the right and freedom of the church and other religious communities to support persons who choose to live their lives and sexuality in accord with moral teachings and the dictates of conscience; and the right and freedom of the church and other religious communities to share their religious and ethical beliefs regarding the human person and human sexuality.

Now some within the government have said that clearly this bill is not intended to criminalize some of the points that I have just mentioned. Be that as it may, no such protection is actually present in the text of the legislation and it is the text that will become law.

If I may cite an example, when the euthanasia law was passed in 2016, we were assured that the language in the preamble would be sufficient to protect conscience rights for those not wishing to participate in the act of taking a patient's life. That has turned out not to be true.

Any law concerning conversion therapy must strike a careful balance. On the one hand, the law must recognize that coercive and harmful practices have no place in our social order. On the other hand, the law must not criminalize the charter-protected beliefs of Canadian people. While these beliefs may not find popular acclaim and may even be offensive to some, the fact remains that many people freely choose to live their lives in accordance with traditional principles and beliefs. Tolerance and diversity are a two-way street. Educators, counsellors, parents and pastoral leaders should be allowed to express their views freely and without fear of punishment. This is certainly true when it comes to faith communities because in practice in our society they are now and always have been at the forefront in caring for the most vulnerable.

I hope that this committee will seriously reflect on these concerns and amend Bill C-6 to criminalize conversion therapy in a more careful and accurate manner. While we must address the suffering caused by any harmful coercive practices to ensure they are no longer present in our country, at the same time we must permit respectful dialogue and expression of diverse views in a way that supports deeply enshrined principles in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is the coercive and harmful element that we must focus on and not be too broad in the definition.

I thank you for the opportunity to share my comments with you this afternoon.

[Rabbi Michael Whitman, As an Individual]

Madam Chair, members of the committee, I am honoured to appear before you today to speak in support of Bill C-6.

My name is Michael Whitman. I am the senior rabbi of ADATH Congregation in Hampstead, Quebec, a modern-orthodox Jewish synagogue. I am a sessional instructor at McGill University Faculty of Law. I am involved in many communal efforts in Montreal and across Canada and have been engaged in providing pastoral counselling throughout my career of 37 years and counting.

My involvement in this specific issue began in 2012 when I read that the renowned psychiatrist Dr. Robert Spitzer, who years earlier had written a seminal paper that was used to support conversion therapy, recanted that research and wrote, “I owe the gay community an apology.”

After learning about the destructive effects of conversion therapy and hearing first-hand the harm of its effects, I would rephrase the now widespread sentiment against conversion therapy, paraphrasing the Bible: “We are ashamed of what we did to our brothers and sisters. We saw them suffering when they cried out to us, but we did not listen to them.” Today I ask that you do listen to them and take action to prevent this particular cry from ever being repeated in Canada.

For me, this is a straightforward issue of human rights. I find the earliest expression of human rights near the beginning of the Bible: that every human being is created B'Tzelem Elokim—in the image of God, cherished by God, deserving of respect and dignity. Our rabbis in the Talmud expanded this into the wide-reaching rubric of Kavod HaBriyot—the innate right of human dignity, that we are prohibited to embarrass, humiliate or debase anyone.

About five years ago, I was appointed the annual convention chair of the RCA, the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest professional organization of Orthodox rabbis. My committee and I had the responsibility to program instruction and resources for rabbis across North America and the world to assist them in leading their congregations. The theme we chose was “caring for LGBT Individuals and their families”. Our goal was to listen to these individuals and the helping professionals who support them. I am proud that the RCA gave prime time to a subject that enables all rabbis to do our jobs better.

It's central to my mission as a rabbi and my identity as a Jew to make every human being feel welcome and respected. Conversion therapy does just the opposite. It is inherently belittling and dismissive. It demands that people live inauthentically, untrue to themselves, and requires a harsh cure where there is no disease. Its methods are often humiliating and traumatizing. There is no place for it in Canadian society.

I remember hearing a radio interview. Dr. Spitzer was asked how he felt, after writing his retraction at the age of 80, that his entire life's work and reputation would be tainted by this one research paper. I remember that he said, “I feel very bad, of course, for the hurt I have caused, but at the same time, when I realized I was wrong, I retracted it. I said it was wrong and I apologized to those I had hurt.” Not many people do that, and it is something to be proud of.

Conversion therapy has continued in Canada for far too long. It is wrong, and I ask you to do something about it. That will be something you will be proud of.

Thank you very much.

[Daniel Santoro, Barrister and Solicitor, As an Individual]

Good afternoon.

I am a lawyer in Toronto, Ontario, with extensive experience conducting complex criminal trials and appeals for all manner of offences. Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to testify respecting this proposed conversion therapy offence.

There are three main problems with this legislation as currently drafted. I will suggest solutions to all these problems that I think are simple and consistent with a lot of the evidence you've heard.

The first problem is that the definition of conversion therapy is overly broad and imprecise. It's likely to capture situations that are not actual conversion therapy and cause confusion. The second problem is that the existing exception for medical treatment is too narrow, because it specifies only one lawful form of treatment: gender transition. The third and final problem is that the exception allowing exploration of identity is unclear and does not adequately protect charter freedoms.

On the first problem, that the definition of conversion therapy is overly broad and imprecise, multiple provinces have, or are considering, conversion therapy legislation. In all cases, this legislation is passed pursuant to the provincial power to regulate health care. In order for this bill, Bill C-6, to be a valid exercise of the federal criminal law power, it must have a criminal public purpose, which means some specific public evil that is targeted. In this case, I think everyone can agree that the target is coercive and harmful practices that are designed to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

The bill defines conversion therapy as the following:

a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour.

There are many difficult-to-define and undefined terms and words in this definition, and there are many difficult concepts that will be very difficult for criminal courts to nail down. This will prove to be a very difficult definition to interpret for the many, many reasons you've heard from different witnesses.

Realistic situations will arise that may be captured by this definition. For example, we have already heard mention of whether a therapist will be allowed to assist an adult person who wants to go through a detransitioning process, or whether a youth who is experiencing gender confusion will be able to access any therapy that would be affirming of their birth gender. There are many other situations as well. The difficulty is that if this definition is not properly tailored, it will be seen perhaps to not only be unconstitutional, because it regulates “criminal” in the field of health care, but to also be overbroad and contrary to section 7 of the charter.

My first suggestion is very simple. You need to restrict the definition to “a coercive practice”. I suggest that the definition should read, “Conversion therapy is a coercive practice.” This is a clear definition of a criminal public purpose. “Coercive” is a well-known term in the Criminal Code. It comes up in other sections. You can also consider whether you want to add the requirement that conversion therapy “causes harm”, whether that be bodily or psychological harm. Those are also well-defined concepts in the Criminal Code.

The other problem with this definition is mainly in the last part. If we define conversion therapy as “a coercive practice designed to change sexual orientation or gender identity” and remove all the extraneous language with relation to specifying “sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce" attraction or behaviour, we can be very much more simple in our definition here by saying, “Conversion therapy is a coercive practice designed to change sexual orientation or gender identity.” You can remove the rest of the language.

The second problem is with the medical treatment exception. It specifies only one sort of medical treatment that's allowed, and that's gender transition. Other medical exceptions in the Criminal Code, in order to avoid delving into the provincial regulation of health care, set out objective criteria according to which a judge or a person can understand whether what they're doing is allowed. In the euthanasia provisions and in other provisions in the Criminal Code when medical treatment is discussed, the exception is phrased that any treatment is allowed if exercised with “reasonable knowledge, care and skill". It does not specify one particular form of treatment that is allowed to the exclusion of all other forms of treatment.

Not only is that not allowed and unconstitutional because it would be regulating health care; it would be arbitrary and overbroad, because it captures situations such as treatments that doctors such as Dr. Dobson or some of her colleagues might suggest aren't gender transition. What you need to do is employ objective language.

The third issue has to do with the—

[Dr. Jane Dobson, As an Individual]

Thank you, members of Parliament, for this chance to speak with you. I am here as a concerned family physician.

I want you to picture a young teenage girl who starts to question her gender identity. As you may know, questioning and exploring identity is a key part of adolescent development. She is referred to a gender clinic by her family doctor. Instead of having her anxiety and depressive symptoms treated, she is fast-tracked onto puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and at age 20 she has both breasts removed.

At age 23 she regrets her hasty decision and begins to detransition. She is left with a permanent five o'clock shadow, a permanently low voice and no breasts. Now she wonders how all this happened to her, simply because she questioned her gender identity. She says, “I made a brash decision as a teenager, as a lot of teenagers do, trying to find confidence and happiness, except now the rest of my life will be negatively affected. I feel I was a guinea pig.”

This is not an imaginary person. This is Keira Bell, the young woman who successfully sued England's Tavistock gender clinic. As a result, the British High Court has now ruled that children must understand the immediate and long-term consequences of taking puberty blockers to be able to consent. The court's permission is now needed to start anyone under 16 on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

I wish I could share specific stories from my and my colleagues' medical practices, but of course I cannot.

Are adolescents being fast-tracked onto this biomedical regime here in Ontario? Yes. Why are their concomitant psychiatric diagnoses not being treated first? The therapist will be accused of conversion therapy.

In Ontario, since Bill 77 was passed in 2015, the psychotherapy-first approach has been stigmatized as conversion therapy. This psychotherapeutic approach has a proven positive track record.

Prior to 2015, when a gender-confused child received this treatment, they would be helped and encouraged to identify with their natal gender and be allowed to go through puberty unobstructed. Studies show that 80% to 88% of these children identified with their natal gender by adolescence. They accepted their biological body as their own.

Now, however, only one approach is offered, gender affirmation. Only one narrative is spoken, that gender identity is immutable.

What happens to young children who receive the gender affirmation approach? They are first socially transitioned, given new names, pronouns and new clothes. When they show early signs of puberty, they are placed on puberty blockers, which can cause brittle bones and may arrest natural brain development. Then they're placed on cross-sex hormones, which can increase anger and aggression, acne and hair loss, cause liver dysfunction, increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes, diabetes and blood clots, and cause sterility and sexual dysfunction. If they have further surgeries, they may well experience urinary incontinence.

One might well ask: How can a young child, a five-year-old, legally consent to this? The developmental stage of a five-year-old is still in concrete thinking. They can have no idea what could have happened if they had been offered the psychotherapeutic approach. They also can have no ability to understand what the future risks of this biomedical approach will entail.

My question is: Why is the government telling people what sexual or gender goals they should have? They are effectively doing this with Bill C-6, as the bill broadens the definition of conversion therapy from abusive and coercive therapeutic practices to also include talk therapy, watchful waiting, interpersonal conversations and spiritual practices, widening the net to now potentially criminalize parents, spiritual leaders and medical professionals for simply practising tested and tried therapy to help an individual reach their self-directed goals.

Further, it shouldn't be the government that decides what theories and therapies win out but the scientific community itself as it debates, studies, revises theories and moves forward.

What we should be asking is why referrals to gender clinics are soaring by as much as 1,000%, especially in adolescent natal females; why concomitant psychiatric diagnoses are so high, diagnoses that often predate the gender dysphoria; and why there are a growing number of detransitioners. Instead, Canada is seeking to stifle these questions by criminalizing proven therapy and allowing only one viewpoint to be heard.

Sweden is in the midst of a major review of their gender clinics. Finland has gone through their review, and now they require that psychiatric comorbidities be treated before medical transition is considered.

Instead of following the examples of England, Sweden and Finland, we are going in the absolute wrong direction. Will it take a lawsuit to change our direction? How many Keira Bells need to happen here in Canada before we change our approach and before we truly respect the rights of all Canadians?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

I call this meeting back to order.

We are studying Bill C-6. We welcome our guests and witnesses for the second panel.

Just before we go into that, I'll remind our witnesses and members that when you are speaking, please speak slowly and clearly with your microphone unmuted. When you are not speaking, please have your microphone on mute so as not to disrupt other speakers.

As we deal with this bill, I will remind members and witnesses to please maintain respectful dialogue and to be respectful to fellow members and witnesses at all times. It is in our best interest that we get through this and hear a diversity of opinions.

With that, I'd like to introduce our witnesses for the second panel.

As an individual, we have Dr. Jane Dobson. We have Daniel Santoro, who is a barrister and solicitor, and we have Rabbi Michael Whitman. We also have, representing the Archdiocese of Toronto, His Eminence Cardinal Thomas Collins.

Welcome.

We'll start now, for five minutes, with Dr. Jane Dobson.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I am talking about the definition of conversion therapy under section 320.101, or clause 5 of Bill C-6.

[Lisa Bildy, Barrister and Solicitor, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms]

Thank you.

I am a lawyer with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

Objectively harmful coercive practices that are designed to change a person's sexual orientation, as we've just heard, should be banned. That is what Canadians think of when they hear the phrase “conversion therapy”. But when it comes to gender identity, improperly conflated with sexual orientation in this bill, what we think we are talking about and what activists mean and are pushing for are not the same.

By conversion, they mean talk therapy or watchful waiting to help a child or adolescent become comfortable in their own body or that addresses other mental health concerns or past traumas, something that about 85% of them will do if given that space. That is what they want banned on pain of criminal sanction.

When they say “affirmation” they mean rejecting the body a child was born in and embarking on a path of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, multiple surgeries, and a lifetime of medication and dire consequences such as sterility and loss of sexual function. A whole industry is developing around this conversion of kids, and it is being encouraged through the influence of gender activists on social media and even in our schools.

Yes, that is the real conversion here that is endorsed and supported by this bill. The LGB Alliance Canada report, which I implore you to read, speaks of lesbians and gays saying to each other in whispered conversations, “Thank God I am not a gay kid growing up right now. If I had been, there's no question that I would have identified as transgender and been sent for sexual reassignment.”

Yet we have to pretend that talk therapy and a cautious measured approach is the danger. A free society that supports individual rights, as Canada is supposed to be, would allow parents, children and health professionals to find the best path for each unique child, not have the state preordain that transition is the only permissible option.

It is not for the government to dictate such outcomes, and doing so in our submission contravenes the rights of parents and children guaranteed under section 7 of the charter. The bill needs to remove gender identity entirely.

Other countries are beginning to realize the horrors that have unfolded from allowing and encouraging kids to self-diagnose at the behest of gender ideologues. Progressive Sweden has shifted course dramatically just in the last few months, and in the United Kingdom we are seeing positive signs of this.

The Keira Bell case last week was groundbreaking. It confirmed what many parents, therapists and other medical professionals have been warning about for years: The affirmation bandwagon puts kids on an irreversible path to permanent changes that will adversely impact their physical health, bone density and other complications and likely cause them sterility and an inability to experience sexual pleasure. The court reviewed the evidence with some horror and concluded that once children go on puberty blockers, they almost invariably proceed through all the stages of transition, and that children under 16, and those likely under 18, cannot possibly provide informed consent to those consequences.

Canada is going in the wrong direction. We're being steamrolled by an aggressive ideology that changes our language, undermines our usual safeguards relating to children, demonizes as bigots those who are cautious, refuses to consider evidence that counters the approved narrative, and demands complete fealty on pain of social cancellation.

Standing up to this is not transphobic. It is being child-centric and rational and it is necessary. It in no way prevents adults who wish to transition from doing so, or even children whose parents and a licensed health professional think transition is the best outcome for that child. But it isn't the right outcome for all children.

I was surprised to learn yesterday that the committee would not be hearing from important voices like LGB Alliance Canada and Detrans Canada. Detransitioners are ignored because they shatter the narrative. The preamble to the bill says that it's a myth that people can change their gender, but those who have detransitioned are proof that either their gender can be changed or that what some young people go through when they say they are transgender is indeed a phase that they might simply outgrow.

Detransitioners are usually homosexual, mostly young people who have gone through medical transition and have some serious regrets. Many self-diagnosed as having gender dysphoria as minors and subsequently accessed irreversible hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones and double mastectomy without any form of psychological assessment, all by the age of 16.

I invited a member of Detrans Canada to share my time today, but that was not allowed. They have three major concerns with the bill as written, which I share.

Affirming every single patient with gender distress or confusion as trans, including medical transition, will definitely result in more detransitioners in the long term.

It will be illegal for mental health professionals to support detransitioners because they do not seek affirmation, but wish to reconcile with their sex.

Minors who have experienced medical malpractice through unnecessary medical transition will have no course for redress because service providers will cite Bill C-6, which mandates affirmation as the only legal treatment.

I encourage members, as part of their due diligence in considering this bill, to read their excellent submissions and testimonials, as well as those of LGB Canada. It’s important to make fully informed decisions and get this right.

Thank you.

[Alexandra Zannis, Social Policy and Communications Coordinator, Canadian Association of Social Workers]

Thank you to this committee for asking us to come here today.

As listed in our written submission, CASW strongly urges the following amendments to strengthen Bill C-6:

First, CASW recommends that the bill be amended to include gender expression.

Second, any language focused on the issue of consent or coercion is misdirected as this wording could create a significant loophole limiting the protective effect of this proposed law by claiming an individual can consent to a therapy that has been deemed psychologically harmful.

Third, in its current state, the bill implies that conversion therapy may be dangerous and harmful to minors, but not necessarily to adults. It is harmful to all people.

Fourth, any federal legislation should also revoke the charitable status, if held, of any organization that promotes, advertises or practices any form of conversion therapy.

Fifth, CASW strongly supports investing in a survivors' fund to access reparations and supports for those who have experienced this practice.

Finally, CASW advocates that funding accompany this bill for education and awareness campaigns highlighting the need to officially end all conversion therapy practices in Canada.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[Joan Davis-Whelan, President, Canadian Association of Social Workers]

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Joan Davis-Whelan, and I'm the president of the Canadian Association of Social Workers. We represent over 20,000 social workers across Canada.

It is my privilege and honour to be here today to provide witness to this historic legislation that will serve to protect all children and youth from those who are unaccepting of their inherent dignity and worth.

The Canadian Association of Social Workers enthusiastically applauds and provides unwavering support to all parliamentarians for their support of Bill C-6. We call for Parliament, the House of Commons and Senate of Canada, to put the safety and security of children and youth first by unanimously supporting and expediting this legislation into law. Any further delay in passing this reintroduced legislation is unacceptable. Not one more child or youth in Canada should endure the harm of this damaging and discredited attack against their persons.

I would now like to take a moment to thank the individuals who bravely stepped forward to share their stories of lived experience in enduring the harm inflicted by conversion therapy. Due to their relentless advocacy and commitment to protecting others, the vision of a Canada without legal conversion therapy will soon be realized.

In 2018, CASW released a position statement, in partnership with the Canadian Psychological Association, strongly condemning all forms of conversion therapy. Conversion or reparative therapy can take many forms, but can be broadly defined as any therapy with the goal of changing or converting an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity, regardless of age.

It is important to note that this so-called therapy is not evidence-based. It is completely discredited and causes extraordinary harm, especially amongst Canada's children and youth.

We now definitively know, and have heard time and time again, that conversion therapy directly contributes to two-spirited and LGBTQ+ youth experiencing disproportionate and alarming rates of mental health problems. Homelessness, poverty, violence and substance use result from this practice.

CASW would like to thank the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada as well as the Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Youth for including the voice of the social work profession during the process of developing this bill.

Notwithstanding our steadfast support of this bill, CASW encourages this committee to adopt the key recommendations of the guide for legislative action for conversion therapy in Canada. CASW endorses the revised guide. Its recommendations are needed to strengthen this legislation to protect all people from this discredited form of fraudulent therapy.

I will now pass it over to my colleague, Alexandra Zannis, to provide CASW's recommendations.

[Peter Gajdics, Writer and Advocate, No Conversion Canada]

Thank you.

Madam Chair, my name is Peter Gajdics. I'm here to make recommendations for Bill C-6 based on my lived experience. I went through six years of conversion therapy with a licensed psychiatrist when I was a legal adult between 1989 and 1995. I was 24 years old when I met this doctor, 31 years old when it ended.

I'm the author of the book The Inheritance of Shame: A Memoir about my years in this therapy and my road to recovery. For the past 23 years I have spoken out about conversion therapy. In 2018 I helped initiate the first Canadian municipal ban on conversion therapy in Vancouver, my home city.

I had already come out as gay before I met this psychiatrist. After starting counselling with him, he told me that my history of childhood sexual abuse had created a false homosexual identity and so my therapy's goal would be to heal old trauma in order, as he said, to correct the error of my sexual orientation and revert to my innate heterosexuality.

His methods then included prolonged sessions of primal scream therapy, multiple psychiatric medications to suppress my homosexual desires, injections of ketamine hydrochloride followed by re-parenting sessions to heal my broken masculinity, and when none of his methods worked, aversion therapy.

At their highest dosages he was prescribing near-fatal levels of these medications and I overdosed. I still consider it a miracle I didn't die. I left these six years shell-shocked. It was not so much that I wanted to kill myself as I thought I was already dead.

I later sued the doctor for medical malpractice. He denied treating me in order to change my sexual orientation. He claimed I had consented to his treatment. He said he had treated me for depression.

I imagine some will view my experiences as extreme, that it couldn't happen again today, except these are the exact words I've heard for over 20 years. As I write in my book, the horror of it all provokes disbelief. Though the facts of my treatment will differ from others', I believe the basic principles about fraudulent practice combined with a client's vulnerability, trust and lack of informed consent, will always apply to all, even today.

Currently there are no federal laws that would prohibit what happened to me with another legal adult, or even that could hold a similar practitioner accountable for his actions.

These are my recommendations for Bill C-6. The ban must be for all ages.

Banning conversion therapy is about ending a fraudulent practice that causes harm. This applies to all.

The ban should not include the word “will” or any suggestion of coercion. Suggesting coercion or the idea of forced conversion therapy, or even mentioning the will of the client, makes it sound as if conversion therapy could be anything other than coercive. It deflects attention away from the fraudulence and harm of these practices and to the actions of the client, their supposed willingness or consent to participate.

All forms of conversion therapy are inherently coercive and exist solely as a form of oppression over LGBT people. To imply otherwise is to invalidate the experience of survivors. Proper informed consent is not possible in these circumstances because all of these treatments are based on the false premise, the lie, that a person is broken by virtue of being gay or trans and that they can and ought to be changed. To suggest that a person could consent to such a thing is to say that they choose to do to themselves what has been done to them from the start. It is illogical and defeats the purpose of the bill.

Please ban conversion therapy for all, including adults.

Thank you.

[Nicholas Schiavo, Founder, No Conversion Canada]

Good morning, and thank you to the honourable members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and all those who have made this appearance possible.

My name is Nicholas Schiavo, and I'm the founder of No Conversion Canada. No Conversion Canada is a non-profit, non-partisan, grassroots and volunteer-led coalition of conversion therapy survivors, LGBTQ2 individuals, civil society experts, academics and Canadians from coast to coast. We work to eradicate conversion therapy abuse, amplify the voices of survivors and protect the safety of LGBTQ2 Canadians.

Since 2018, we have worked with stakeholders and policy-makers across Canada to develop bylaws and legislation to end this torture.

I am here today to support this human rights legislation and to provide insight and facts to strengthen Bill C-6 for the safety of all Canadians.

I am honoured to be here with a pioneer in this movement, a survivor, author and advocate, Mr. Peter Gajdics, whom I will now cede the rest of my time to.

Criminal Code

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, we are now at the third reading stage of C-7. This means all the amendments that will be considered by the House have now been considered, and we must now pronounce on the final version of the bill and its effects.

Before I speak about this bill in final form, I want to respond directly to what I see as the government's principal argument for this legislation and other similar legislation. It tells us this is all about choice: the choice of individuals to live as they choose and die as they choose. The idea is that moral judgments about good living and good dying ought to be made by the person doing the living and dying, as opposed to by someone else, because the individual is uniquely qualified to make judgments about their own happiness and someone outside their skin simply cannot make those judgments as well.

This is the one serious argument people use to advance this bill and others like it. We should of course appreciate the existence of other unserious arguments, such as the assertion that, “The courts told us to,” or, “This is what people we have consulted told us to do.”

A small part of this bill responds to a lower court decision, but most of it has been invented, out of thin air, by the government and whoever it consulted or did not consult. Over a thousand physicians have signed a letter opposing this bill, and every single disability rights organization that has spoken out about this bill has spoken in opposition to it. These are unserious arguments stemming from unserious readings of court decisions and unserious consultation.

The serious argument made in support of this bill, as I have stated, is that people ought to have the choice to make decisions about their living and dying because they know what will lead to their happiness better than anyone else. This is the argument, but we should also notice how those who use this argument ultimately choose to apply it selectively. Even while suggesting it is all about choice, they insist on changing the words we use to describe the choice in order to make us feel better about it.

The phrase “medical assistance in dying” was invented at the time Bill C-14 was proposed, and is not a phrase used in other countries to describe the phenomenon of doctors killing their patients. If this is really about choice, why do we have to invent new pseudo-terms to make ourselves feel better about that choice?

If I asked members point blank whether they think a person should be able to commit suicide, I am sure many would respond that this is not suicide. It is completely different, as it is medical assistance in dying. Formally, what is meant by medical assistance in dying is facilitated suicide, or killing in a medical context. We claim to be focused on choice, but we still are uncomfortable enough with the choice that we have to invent new words to describe it.

Some members do not like the use of the word “euthanasia” to describe the phenomenon of doctors and nurses killing their patients after being asked to do so. The Minister of Health told the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights that phrases “referring to this bill as 'euthanasia' legislation, which I have heard in the House of Commons, are incredibly demeaning to the dignity of people”.

The health minister may be interested to know the word euthanasia actually comes from two Greek words: “eu”, meaning well, and “thanatos”, meaning death. The term euthanasia means “good death”, and is itself a sanitization of the concept of killing. If the term is misleading, it is not because it is too harsh but because it is too gentle. As we have heard, not all cases of assisted suicide can reasonably be called good deaths by any definition.

Notice that the word euthanasia is never used to describe the administration of the death penalty. The term was invented in order to sanitize the idea of the medicalized killing of a consenting person. It is instructive that a sanitized term for this practice, once people had a full social awareness of its meaning and reality, had to be replaced by a new sanitized term to further obscure the true nature of what is taking place.

No doubt, in 20 or 30 years, the term MAID will be thought gauche and replaced with another, more up-to-date sanitization of a term that no longer makes us feel better about something we naturally feel uncomfortable about. The point is that if this all about choice, and if we are comfortable with this choice, why are we not comfortable speaking plainly about sick people committing suicide and about doctors killing their patients when asked to do so? Would that not be a more plain and accurate description of the choice that many wish to defend?

If there is a practice or activity that people are uncomfortable seeing depicted or hearing described accurately, perhaps we should ask ourselves why we feel uncomfortable instead of demanding that the images and descriptions be put aside.

Members should observe as well that the idea of a choice to die, or a right to die, is being advocated for selectively. Some people have a right to die and some people do not, apparently, so we have to ask why this principle is being selectively applied.

Suppose that I, an able-bodied healthy white man, experienced some great personal tragedy such as the death of a child or the breakup of my marriage. It is possible that following such an event I might start to experience extreme existential pain and suicidal ideation. If I then went to a doctor to share the feelings I was experiencing, I would not be presented with MAID as a way out of the challenges I was facing. The way I look, my health status and other characteristics I have would signal to the doctor that my life was worth living. We know it to be true that when a young, able-bodied person chooses to die, those around them will say, “What a tragedy. He had so much to live for.”

The argument for a choice to die does not apply to those who society believes should not choose to die, even if such people are sincere in their expression of pain, in their sense that their pain is irremediable and in their desire not to continue living, but what of a person who is older, who is disabled, who does not fit the stereotypical social mould of someone who has a lot to live for, presents themself to the health care system experiencing existential pain and suicidal ideation?

We know from testimony from the justice committee that people in this situation are offered and even pressured to opt for MAID. People who are elderly or living with disabilities are often offered and pushed to take MAID without asking for it. This is the testimony given over and over again at the justice committee and confirmed by the minister responsible for disability inclusion, who acknowledged how concerned she is about people with disabilities being regularly and proactively offered MAID that they do not want.

We see here an important and revealing contradiction in the application of the principle of choice. For some in society, death is seen as an unreasonable choice and is actively discouraged. For others, death is seen as a desirable choice and is actively encouraged. This is not just a debate about choice, therefore. Rather, it is a debate about how the architecture of choice is set up differently for different people, based on whether others assess their lives as being worth living.

This is what leaders in the disability community are deeply concerned about: how this legislation includes them and only them in the additional category of those for whom we think death is a reasonable course of action.

Suppose that of my four children one had a disability and suppose that I taught three of my children to always press on because life is beautiful, but I told the fourth child that they should consider death if they ever faced circumstance that they could not handle. Do colleagues think that situation would make my fourth child feel privileged by the special offer of choice or do colleagues think she would feel devalued by the fact that I thought death was uniquely an option for her, based on the presumption that her life was not worth living?

Choices do not exist in a social vacuum. When we speak about choice, we recognize that people are making choices between available options and the nature of those available options is constructed by the society in which they live.

I used to think that people were always better off with more options, that just like a menu at a restaurant, we are always better off with more options available to us: the longer the menu, the better. If I do not like any of the new options available, then no problem. I do not have to choose them, but I should not begrudge other people the opportunity to have more choices available to them, even if I do not like those choices. Nobody is made worse off by the lengthening of the menu. Then I realized that it was not that simple. If I am in a restaurant and the only options available are chicken or beef then, arguably, yes, I am better off with the addition of more items on the menu; a fish option, a vegetarian dish, etc., but there is also a case in which the existence of certain options on the menu fundamentally changes the nature of the experience.

Suppose that while travelling, I encounter a restaurant that offers a human flesh sandwich in addition to the usual fare. It is fairly safe that I would not stay and order in that restaurant even if I had no intention of ordering the human flesh sandwich. It is unlikely that any members of this House would feel comfortable eating in such a restaurant, even if all they planned to eat was the filet mignon. That example illustrates the way that the offer of an additional option can actually change one's entire experience of a place or environment. A person with a disability who is offered death has a very different experience of health care from a person who is consistently offered life-affirming care.

The fact that people are offered or encouraged toward certain choices, and that some people are offered those choices and others are not, changes the entire experience of health care for many people. Part of the response to this brave new world of so-called medical assistance in dying is that people are seeking safe spaces where they can receive care that is life-affirming. There are still many people in this country who have about as much interest in receiving care in an environment where death is being offered as they do in eating at a restaurant where cannibalism is offered. Such people should be free to receive care in a hospice where life is the only choice and where they feel safe from the possibility of pressure of a momentary weakness or from the sense that they are an unnecessary burden. Some are still looking for care that is animated by the conviction that all lives are always worth living, but perversely, those who claim to champion choice are actually attacking these safe spaces. With the absence of conscience protection in this or any other legislation like it, doctors are being forced out of their profession and life-affirming hospice care is being shut down.

We wonder why we have a crisis in long-term care in this country. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that so many of the people in organizations that have historically operated in this space are being pushed out because of a lack of conscience protection. Protecting the conscience rights of physicians and institutions is not just about the rights of providers. It is about the right, indeed the choice, of patients to receive care in a certain kind of environment if that is their desire.

I know from the many conversations that I have had with constituents, including those who are very supportive of the expansion of MAID, that the present realities of the social architecture of choice are top of mind for them during their advocacy. In other words, they want more euthanasia because they find the alternative intolerable. An absence of good care, an absence of effective pain management, an absence of support to live in a way that accords with their sense of dignity and a sense of resignation about these realities leaves them to want to be able to end it all, rather than endure under undesirable conditions, but those conditions could themselves be changed. The expansion of euthanasia, along with continuing pressure on all health care institutions to offer it, will further erode the life-affirming nature of care that people receive.

I remember once having a long conversation with a constituent who explained to me her reasons for advocating for expanded euthanasia. She emphasized the classic arguments about choice and control, and then shared with me a story of being in a care situation and struggling to have a bowel movement unaided. She went to the nursing station for help, and unfortunately was met with a gruff and unempathetic response. Her memory of the sense of indignity she felt, struggling for a long time on her own, and then seeking the help of a person who seemed uncaring and disgusted, was clearly a part of her thought process about the circumstances under which she would want to die.

While I can identify with her feelings in the moment, I think the solution is to give people the choice of compassionate care. It is a tragedy that people are considering death because of moments of perceived indignity that can be quite directly resolved.

Many older people who are considering death say that they do not want to be a burden on others. This is expressed as a matter of choice, but it is also revealing about the architecture of choice. It is generally unheard of for children to insist on paying rent to their parents or living independently because they do not want to be a burden. Certainly, I have never heard such sentiments from my children.

Why are elderly people made to feel like they might be a burden, while children are not? Again, this is an issue of social context. If children were constantly told from a young age that they were a great burden to their parents, that they were costing them money that could be spent on other things, and that they were interrupting their social lives, then children would likely start to worry about being a burden.

Conversely, if seniors and people with disabilities were constantly affirmed for their value and their ability to contribute to society, constantly told that they hold the key to our future rather than constantly being told about the burden they impose, then of course they would be more likely to choose life instead of death.

This is not just a question of choice. It is a question of the social architecture of choice that leads people to make different choices in different kinds of situations based on the limited options in front of them and based on the way that different options impact each other.

To underline this with one further point, it should not escape the notice of members that the government's Bill C-6, the proposed ban on conversion therapy, is built on the premise that people cannot consent to something that is contrary to their human dignity. Although I have concerns about the text of Bill C-6 as written, I agree with the principle that conversion therapy is wrong and should not be allowed.

In light of both Bill C-6 and Bill C-7, it remains unclear to me what the government's view is on the ability of a person to consent to harm. Is it the view of the government that people should be able to voluntarily consent to things that harm them? Looking at these bills together, we might conclude the government finds it okay for people to consent to death but not okay for people to consent to certain things that are deemed worse than death. However, this subjective categorization of certain harms as being worse than others clearly may contradict an individual's own subjective sense of what things are more harmful than others.

It is time for us, as parliamentarians, to talk about the choices that elderly people and people living with disabilities have in front of them, and to give them options besides death, to move from a narrow focus on questions of choice to a discussion of the architecture of choice that puts people in impossible and painful situations. A good society is not just one that gives people the formal right to make choices between different alternatives. It is one that ensures that those alternatives are sufficiently robust so that individuals are able to make choices that truly lead to happiness. Of course not all choices lead to happiness.

People can make choices that they think will lead to happiness, but do not. This is especially serious when a decision is final and irreversible. The wider community has a reasonable interest in ensuring that a person making that choice has at least all of the information in front of them, taking into consideration the fact that people can and often do adapt to new circumstances over time. A belief in the pursuit of happiness entails a belief in freedom but also a belief in the value of encouraging the considered use of freedom through due reflection.

Having reflected on the application of the concept of choice in this context, I would now like to make a few additional comments about the provisions of this bill and the timing of it. This bill proposes to eliminate the requirement that death be reasonably foreseeable for those seeking euthanasia and puts those for whom death is not reasonably foreseeable on a second track with some distinct requirements. The reconsideration of the question of reasonable foreseeability was provoked by a court decision in Quebec, the Truchon decision, which the government could have chosen to appeal but did not.

This bill deals with more than this question. It also arbitrarily eliminates a number of safeguards that have nothing to do with the Truchon decision. It eliminates the 10-day reflection period. It reduces the required number of witnesses. It eliminates the requirement for contemporaneous consent. The removal of the 10-day reflection period in particular has led experts to point out that this opens the door to same-day death, to a situation where a patient could request and receive euthanasia on the same day.

Some members of this House have strenuously objected to the use of this term. Same-day death is a jarring idea that someone's worst day could be their last, and that temporary suicidal ideation could lead to immediate death. However, those who find this term uncomfortable must face up to the fact that the legislation as written contains no parameters for those for whom death is deemed reasonably foreseeable.

If members believe that time parameters exist, then they should point to where they exist in law. If members believe that time parameters should exist, then they should have supported their reintroduction into the bill. As the law stands before us now, there are no legislated requirements around timelines for those for whom death is reasonably foreseeable.

At third reading, members must choose whether or not they will vote for same-day death in Canada. As Wilberforce said:

You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.

The Conservatives have proposed reasonable amendments to reintroduce the reflection period, introduce a shorter reflection period and reintroduce requirements around contemporaneous consent and independent witnesses, in particular, recognizing the different experiences people with disabilities have reported with respect to the health care system. We also introduced a requirement that health care practitioners only discuss euthanasia if it is brought up by the patient first. These safeguards matter and would protect vulnerable people by reducing their risk of being rushed and pressured into vulnerable situations.

In response to our call for safeguards, the government said it trusts health care practitioners and these rules are not required. The purpose of a safeguard is not to respond to what may be the average case, but to establish a minimum standard. We are talking about 100,000 people in this country whose professional qualifications would allow them to administer euthanasia. Are those 100,000 so uniquely virtuous or trustworthy they do not need laws to regulate their behaviour while the rest of us do? I believe most people in medicine are doing their best to selflessly serve others, but one needs only listen to the testimony at the justice committee to realize some of those who are providing health care have fallen short of that call. All of us need laws to regulate our behaviour to some extent. If we need regulations, then how can we expect those 100,000 people to be different? Are there no bad apples? I am not arguing they should be subject to unique suspicion, but that they simply need rules and laws to guide their actions like the rest of us do. People charged with taking another person's life should do so within strictly defined parameters for their own good and that of everyone else. I trust doctors just as I trust police officers, but they still need regulations and oversight. We recognize there are some bad apples on our police forces and if we need safeguards for police officers in light of their power to take life, then we also need safeguards for those in power to take life in a medical context.

The government has been working very hard to push the narrative about timing, claiming the Conservatives are responsible for delaying this bill. It should stand to reason that if the government wants us to invest in rapidly passing its bill, it must proceed to persuade us that it is a good bill, which it has not done. The Truchon decision requires a response, but matters would be much simpler if the bill only focused on a response to Truchon instead of a variety of other changes. As it is, we are forced to consider all of the elements together, not just the narrow part that responds to Truchon. This is the government's choice, not ours.

Let us also take stock of how we have come so close to the court deadline. This legislation was presented in February. In May and June, the Conservatives wanted the House to sit in a modified form, but the government refused to allow it. Then it killed its own bill by proroguing in August. All of these moves pushed us into the mid-fall before the bill was considered. It then received a mere four meetings of witness testimony at the justice committee. The government's approach to this legislation has been to delay until the last minute and then demand urgency instead of a considered review. Let us be clear that this is a political tactic designed to subject these radical changes to as little debate as possible.

As a high school student, I had the honour of participating in a special MLA for a Day program at the Alberta legislature. At one of our meetings, a seasoned Progressive Conservative minister explained to us how legislation was passed. Students were surprised by the length and complexity of the process. They asked why it took so long and could the process not be shortened a bit. The minister told us he was glad it took so long because one of the fastest pieces of legislation to ever pass in the Alberta legislature was the Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928, which allowed the government to sterilize people with disabilities against their will based on the analysis that they imposed an undue burden on society. Legislators at that time should have taken more time to listen to people with disabilities and considered the implications of what they were doing. The point that when we are in too much of a hurry to make decisions we risk undermining the fundamental rights of our fellow human beings, in particular, those living with disabilities, has stuck with me to this day.

Those of us on this side of the House who are raising concerns and demanding that time be taken to consider this bill and appropriate safeguards be put in place are on the right side of history. As was the case with the Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928, when this bill is repealed in five or 50 years, I will proudly tell my grandchildren that I took a stand for the universal immutable dignity of every human being.