Mr. Speaker, I was first elected just over a year ago. When I stepped foot in the House of Commons and sat in one those famous green chairs, I instantly felt the enormous weight of the responsibility to ethically and professionally represent the 85,000 people in my riding of Kildonan—St. Paul.
It is a very diverse riding. There are many seniors and young families, hard-working small business owners, trades professionals and public servants. There are thriving faith communities, which have risen to the enormous challenges of the pandemic and provided much needed to support to those hit hardest by the economic and health challenges. There are also many people from the LGBTQ community and many more parents, friends, sisters and brothers and neighbours to LGBTQ people.
As the member of Parliament to all these wonderful groups and many more, I have the responsibility to defend our country’s freedoms and civil liberties on their behalf and to help create a society that treats all people with dignity, compassion and respect, especially our society’s most vulnerable. That is why the discussion on Bill C-6, an act to amend the Criminal Code concerning conversion therapy and the LGBTQ community is important to me as a parliamentarian and the federal representative of Kildonan—St. Paul.
We know history has not been kind to the LGBTQ community. In Canada, in the 1800s, same-sex relationships between men were punishable by death. In the 1950s and 1960s, there were efforts to eliminate all homosexuals from the public service, the RCMP and the Canadian military. Following the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1969, things began to slowly change for the better for the LGBTQ community. The Canadian pride movement gained traction in the 1970s, but police continued to raid gay bars and arrest and intimidate LGBTQ Canadians.
However, in 1982, Canada patriated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and section 15 of the charter guaranteed for all Canadians equality before and under the law, and the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination. This section became critical for the LGBTQ community in 1995 when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that sexual orientation should be read in or applied to section 15 of the charter.
Further, in 1992, former Conservative justice minister Kim Campbell lifted the ban on homosexuals in the military. Canada became one of the first modern countries in the world to do so. In 2005, Canada became the fourth country in the world to officially legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. These rights and many more in Canada were hard fought and won by the LGBTQ community and their allies, so they could live free and be equal under the law.
I was born in 1990, so the rights and acceptance of LGBTQ Canadians has largely been the norm for my entire life, and the 2005 same-sex marriage debate occurred just as I was entering young adulthood. For me, protection of sexual orientation, identity and expression are a given in a society that is as free, diverse and accepting as Canada.
However, we know that even today, LGBTQ Canadians face discrimination and immense hardship. When I was the shadow minister for diversity, inclusion and youth, I had the opportunity to meet with many support groups for the LGBTQ community. They shared with me truly heartbreaking stories, stories of how they provided emergency supports for young people who were, for example, kicked out of their homes for being gay, whose parents had disowned them. I was told it happens more often than one thinks.
They shared how trans kids are so often abused by others, whether at home, walking down the street or at school. They also shared how they helped older adults struggling with coming out because they grew up in a different time, when LGBTQ Canadians had to hide in the closet, so to speak. These were very eye-opening conversations for me of the realities faced by many LGBTQ people in Canada.
A young person who recently transitioned, who I have come to know, shared with me what this bill meant to her. She said, “The hardest thing for young LGBTQ people is believing your family won’t support you or love you for who you are. This bill says it’s wrong to pressure or force someone to be someone they—