Madam Speaker, I appreciate the feedback and will now continue with my speech.
I was quoting from the member for Rivière-du-Nord with respect to the addition of the reference to non-cisgender gender expression. He said:
The Department of Justice website states that “gender expression is the way in which people publicly present their gender. It is the presentation of gender through such aspects as dress, hair [,etc]...” If I go back to the text defining conversion therapy, I understand that the bill would prohibit any practices, treatments or services designed to repress that.
Here is the example that comes to my mind. Let's say that, in the morning before going to school, an eight-year-old boy decides to wear a dress. His mother might say yes, or she might say no. Either way, if we use that definition, it would be a criminal offence for a mother to tell her son that she does not want him to wear a dress and to force him to wear pants. That's the definition we are about to adopt, and I see a problem with it.
The same member said later:
I confess that, as a parent, I have told my daughter that she should not wear so much make-up. From what I understand, by engaging in that practice—and I do feel it can be considered a practice—I would have committed a criminal offence. I'm sure no one wants that.
Despite the serious concerns raised about this further expansion and confusion of this definition, this amendment on gender expression passed the committee by a vote of six to five.
The House has now received back from the committee a bill that is substantially worse than the one it was sent. This is because now it more clearly says any treatment, practice or service, which could be anything at all that involves an effort to reduce non-heterosexual, sexual behaviour or non-cisgender gender expression, so everything from advice about sexual and romantic activities to conversations about dress and make-up, could now very easily constitute a violation of criminal law.
The definition could have easily been fixed, but I think it was for political reasons the government chose not to, because if it fixed the definition then this bill would have had the unanimous support of the House, which would have deprived the government of the opportunity to use this issue to drive a political wedge.
At the end of the day, though, regardless of anyone's evaluation of the government's intention or political strategy here, we are now at third reading and are voting on the final text of the bill. We are not voting on aspirations or intentions, or on a response to conversion therapy as the term was historically defined. We are voting on a piece of legislation that would put many kinds of private conversations, counselling or advice about sex, relationships and anything captured by gender expression under Criminal Code scrutiny. This is fundamentally unacceptable in a free society.
Bill C-6, in its final form, is a bad bill. I will be voting against it and I encourage my colleagues to do likewise. Canadians are rightly disappointed by the politics being played by the Liberals by failing to work constructively with other parties to fix the flaws in the bill. For them, this is now clearly about trying to drive a political contrast rather than trying to get the bill right. The implications of that choice are the freedom of all Canadians to have conversations about sex and relationships being impaired if this bill passes. Such conversations are very different from conversion therapy but they are swept into it by this definition, as written.
We hear repeatedly from government members on effort to set up this false choice in terms of the debate. They try to tell us that we either have to pass this bill in its current form, yes criminalizing conversion therapy but also sweeping up all kinds of other things that have nothing to do with conversion therapy, or we do not pass it and we do not ban conversion therapy.
This is a false choice. This is a false choice of the government's own making. There is an alternative, which is the alternative Conservatives and other members have been calling for from the beginning of this conversation, which is for a clear ban on conversion therapy, a fixed definition and clarity that excludes the private conversations, the conversations that happen where individuals share their opinions about sexual behaviour.
We can have clear exclusions in line with the reasonable amendments proposed at committee and then we can get this done and passed and moving forward quickly. Everybody should want to see that happen, but the government is creating a false choice for political reasons. Let us reject that false choice. Let us fix the definition. I would submit there is still time. There is still time in this Parliament for us to work collaboratively across party lines to fix the definition and pass a clear, comprehensive conversion therapy ban that does not limit the rights and freedoms of people to have conversations about sexual behaviour.