I think the most typical scenario would be a minor who's living under guardianship. Their parent or guardian might be concerned when their child expresses a form of distress or starts questioning their gender or their sexuality. At that point you might imagine—given what we've talked about—that a parent who feels unaware or maybe unconnected to resources like Pflag, or a parent who feels unsure of whether their child can have a happy, healthy life as an out LGBTQ2S person might feel drawn toward one of these programs that falsely promises a different way forward in the form of conversion.
It's my understanding that this is typically the scenario when someone is being brought to the programs. There is a large and growing community of survivors of conversion programs in Canada. I've spoken to several of them in the last few days. Generally, their experience is that there's is a range of discomfort through to trauma in these programs. Very often they find their way out of the programs and find other forms of support through organizations like the ones that have given statements today. In some cases, unfortunately, they do not because there is a lot of internal pressure put on people who participate in the program. It's probably well-meaning parents, but in the absence of other resources they are turning to these practitioners—for lack of a better word.