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.