Thank you so much, Madam Chair and honourable committee members.
Degrading and harmful practices are wrong and they should be banned, yet legislators must be nuanced and precise in their definitions to avoid capturing practices and services that are helpful to some. The definition of conversion therapy in C-6 is too broad and vague. It captures helpful counselling and psychological support for children, teens and adults, as my colleague, Jose, will address in a moment.
As it stands, Bill C-6 would make it a criminal offence for parents to bring their child to a counsellor to address gender dysphoria and for the counsellor to help that child. The penalty for both the counsellor and the parent is up to five years in prison. Bill C-6 will also deny to some members of the LGBTQ community the broad range of counselling choices that are freely available to all other Canadians. In a tragic twist, Bill C-6's overly broad definition ends up discriminating against the very people it purports to help, contrary to the charter.
While the federal government should be concerned about and legislate on dangerous methods, such as electroshock therapy, surgical or pharmaceutical interventions and so on, it must not conflate methods on the one hand with goals on the other. Again, Jose will speak about his personal experience with this in a moment.
ARPA Canada supports a well-defined ban on conversion therapy. Our written submissions propose amendments in more detail. I'll just highlight three.
First, add the word “therapeutic” at the beginning of the definition of conversion therapy to focus the scope of this bill and alleviate legitimate concerns of parents, teachers and spiritual leaders. Second, cut the reference to sexual behaviour from the definition because it unfairly prevents members of the LGBTQ community from accessing counselling that's freely available to all other Canadians. Finally, add a clarification that conversion therapy does not include religious teaching on identify and ethics. That would direct police, investigators and prosecutors to focus their attention not on religious minorities, but rather on outdated therapeutic practices.
I'll now turn it over to my colleague, Jose.