Justice Committee on Dec. 3rd, 2020

[Timothy Keslick]

Thank you, Mr. Fortin.

Thank you for your question.

There's actually a great distinction between the two. One, a member of the clergy is not a licensed or regulated member of a professional college. They don't have formal training in psychology or psychiatry. Their realm is the spiritual, not the psychological, emotional or other non-faith-related needs of the human person. At the same time, in that meeting, the sole goal of the preacher was to stop the attraction itself.

In terms of the therapy I receive, the goal is not to stop the attraction to people of the same sex; the goal is to stop those sexual behaviours regardless of who it's with. It doesn't matter if I were doing those behaviours with a man, a woman or a trans individual. It doesn't matter. The goal is that the behaviour itself is unhealthy because it would put my sexual health at risk, and also my physical health and my emotional health.

The counsellor is not telling me to stop being a gay person. They're not telling me to stop being a queer person. They're not telling me to stop pursuing relationships with people of the same sex. They're saying, hey, these specific behaviours are unhealthy, and stop doing those behaviours.

In the same way that a doctor may say, hey, smoking is not good for you, or, hey, you should maybe lay off the McDonald's and try a salad instead, they're not trying to stop my actual behaviour at its roots; they're not trying to stop my attraction. They're just trying to stop the particular aspect of how I exercise that behaviour in a way that's unhealthy.

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

If I understand correctly what you told us, in the definition, a distinction must really be made between sexual behaviour and sexual attraction. So treatments to change behaviour should be allowed, regardless of the age.

Did I understand correctly?

[Timothy Keslick]

No. That's actually not what I'm saying.

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

Okay.

[Timothy Keslick]

I haven't made any comments in terms of limitations about age. My sole point is that there should be a distinction between attraction and behaviour in terms of exactly what those distinctions look like and how those play out. I'm not a lawyer, nor am I a politician. That's not my realm of expertise.

In terms of language, though, the concept of an attraction and stopping an attraction and the concept of a behaviour and stopping the behaviour are two totally separate things.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

We'll stop there. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Fortin.

Now, last but not least, we'll hear from Mr. Garrison for two and a half minutes.

Go ahead, sir.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to go again to Adrienne Smith, lawyer and transgender non-binary person. We've had some comments on the question of parental rights versus kids' rights when it comes to questions of identity and orientation. They raise this intersection of the provision of, or the failure to provide, gender-affirming health care. Could you make some comments—in both of those capacities—about the rights of kids to their own identity and sexual orientation?

[Adrienne Smith]

Chairperson, thank you.

I would respond to the member by clarifying that the decision around consent to health care for young people is regulated by the provinces. In British Columbia, this is set out clearly in the Infants Act. In my province and Mr. Garrison's province, it's a question for medical practitioners to decide.

For young people, it is quite foreign from what we're talking about here. Despite efforts of some witnesses to draw us astray into that debate, speaking for myself, I was clear as a young person about who I was and what I needed to thrive and survive. Those services were not available to me in a way that they are now. I'm actually quite hopeful that we're supporting trans, non-binary and two-spirited young people differently.

If I could take the liberty, Mr. Garrison, I will answer a question that Monsieur Fortin asked me earlier and that I think we've been getting at. The core of the problem around the definition is really about harm. I would exclude programs that are coercive and that are not part of legitimate health care, which would include spiritual conversations that are involuntary and that hurt us, and private conversations that are involuntary and that are part of programs designed to hurt us.

If we focus on harm, then the container of the law around the mischief is clear, and there's no problem with the age of consent because harm is the focus, rather than features of the individual and the reason they have been enrolled or sought counsel or health care.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much for both of those answers. I think they are quite useful to the committee.

In the interest of time, Madam Chair, I will conclude my questions there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Iqra Khalid]

Thank you very much, Mr. Garrison.

At this time, I'd like to thank all of the witnesses on behalf of the committee for your powerful testimony and for appearing before us today in our deliberations on Bill C-6.

Thank you very much. We're looking forward to the next meeting.

For now, the meeting is adjourned.