Absolutely.
Thank you for your question.
I echo your committee members in thanking Mr. Sanchez and Mr. Keslick for bringing their stories here.
My job as a public health researcher is to talk about threats to groups of people, to populations and to the public. What our research shows is that, overwhelmingly, this practice is associated with harm, and that overwhelmingly the people who experience it, experience it under conditions where their sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression has not yet been affirmed and appreciated. That's the context in which I'm bringing data to you today.
In terms of where the survey respondents felt that the definition didn't quite cut it, the respondents largely fell into two groups.
One is of people who went to a program, service or practice that was advertised not so much to change sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, but rather to encourage behaviours that were consistent with particular heterosexual and cisgender values. Nonetheless, the objective of these programs was to avoid having people in the programs expressing LGBTQ2 identities. For them, what would bring the bill around to cover their practices would be a clarification that this is the intention of conversion practices.
The other group is trans and non-binary people who do not see their experiences as being properly covered by that language of changing a gender identity to cisgender.
As I said in my previous comments, I'm happy to suggest some wording for that. We have Adrienne Smith here, who is also suggesting wording along those lines.