Hon. Mobina S. B. Jaffer: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak on second reading of Bill C-4, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy).

I want to begin by thanking Senator Cormier, the sponsor of this bill. He has worked very hard on the former Bill C-6 and now Bill C-4. He and his office, including Marilyse Gosselin, have worked exceptionally hard to ensure that Bill C-4’s vision is realized and we will all see that. Thank you for your dedication. I also want to thank my own team, including Madison Pate-Green, for all their hard work and support.

Honourable senators, like many of you, I have received countless emails and calls from Canadians who have views on all sides of this bill. I believe we need to ensure all sides are heard in this debate. One email I received pleaded with me:

If passed into law, parents risk five years in jail for asking a counsellor to help them work through gender dysphoria issues with their child. . . .

If this bill is passed it will prevent members of the LGBTQ+ community from getting the help they desire. During debate on Bill C-6, this bill’s predecessor, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights heard testimony from LGBTQ+ Canadians about how counselling helped them understand their identity and reduce their non-heterosexual sexual behaviour. . . .

Parents, teachers, and pastors should all be able to play a supportive role in the life of a young person struggling with gender identity. . . . Harmful forms of conversion therapy should be banned. But Bill C-4 is too broad, and wrongly includes Christian counselling and other support services in the ban.

Honourable senators, we just heard from Senator Cormier — and we will hear from others — that it will make Canadians realize that conversation is not what this bill is about; it is about harming individuals. And I believe, senators, there is still doubt in the minds of some Canadians that this bill prevents conversations. They only have to hear what Senator Cormier said — and I’m sure when the minister comes to the committee it will give them assurance that it is not about banning conversations between parents or counsellors; it is about harming an individual. Just as we did with medical assistance in dying, we have a responsibility to listen to all Canadians across our country and really consider what they are telling us. Given that this is second reading, I will continue listening to all the speeches as this debate continues.

Many Canadians believe that conversion therapy is rooted in the idea that to identify as anything other than straight or cisgender — meaning a person whose personal and gender identity are the same as their birth sex — is a mental illness. There are lots of studies that tell us children who are forced into unaccepting and thus harmful environments will, in turn, often experience detrimental mental health. This can manifest in many ways, such as symptoms of anxiety, depression and, in the worst and most traumatizing circumstances, death by suicide.

David Kinitz is a PhD student in social and behavioural health sciences at the University of Toronto. He very courageously shared his story:

I am a survivor of conversion therapy and I know first-hand how harmful it is. At 16, I decided to self-enrol in conversion therapy out of a desire to be “straight” and act in more masculine ways. My formative years were filled with invalidating experiences and heteronormative pressures that led me to the point of thinking that being queer was something that was incompatible with living in our society, forcing me to want to consider changing, or worse, take my own life.

I’m telling my story because I believe no other youth should go through what I, and so many others, have experienced.

He goes on to say that, “Conversion therapy should be criminalized.”

I am now a health researcher and an advocate of LGBTQ+ equity working on a project at Simon Fraser University led by social epidemiologist Travis Salway. The study hopes to understand experiences of survivors and to recommend healing methods.

Echoing David’s sentiment, in 2012, the Pan American Health Organization found no medical justification in the practice and that it threatened the health and human rights of those who endure it.

In 2016, the World Psychiatric Association reportedly found “. . . no sound scientific evidence that innate sexual orientation can be changed.” Further, the Independent Forensic Expert Group of health specialists regard conversion therapy as deceptive, false advertising and fraud.

Less than 25% of Canadians believe that you can actively convert an LGBTQ+ person to become heterosexual through psychological or spiritual intervention. Support in banning conversion therapy across Canada was highest amongst women, at 62%, and those aged 18 to 31 at 64%. In 2019, an opinion poll highlighted that a majority of Canadians, three in five, are against conversion therapy. That same year, the current federal government publicly called upon all provinces and territories to ban this torturous practice.

Recently, a UN envoy cited a global survey that suggests four out of five people who endure conversion therapy were younger than 25, roughly half of whom were under the age of 18.

Honourable senators, I now want to read to you parts of conversion therapy that are far too often swept under the rug of paralyzing shame and unhealed trauma: beatings, rape, forced nudity, force-feeding or food deprivation, isolation and confinement, forced medication, verbal abuse and humiliation.

According to Article 37(a) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child:

No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age;

(1620)

Honourable senators, I know that conversion therapy strips a person of their most basic and intrinsic liberty to be free from persecution, free from hatred and free to be themselves without fear.

Senators, I want to share with you that when we went through the MAID hearings, they were long. We had all kinds of people who spoke to us with different points of view on that bill. When I travel across the country even now, I hear from people who are still not sure, but they were at our hearings and said that at least they were heard.

I genuinely believe that in our country today we need conversations. We need to understand the points of view of other people. If we shut down debate, we are essentially saying that we don’t care how you feel. If we open the door, even if we don’t agree with them, we’ll make them feel heard.

That’s why today, senators, I stand in front of you at second reading and ask that you consider sending this bill to committee so that those people who feel that their point of view should be heard will be heard. I thank you for your attention, senators.

Hon. Mobina S. B. Jaffer: Honourable senators, pursuant to rule 12-26(2) of the Rules of the Senate, I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which deals with the expenses incurred by the committee during the Second Session of the Forty-Third Parliament.

(For text of report, see today’s Journals of the Senate, p. 117.)

Hon. Mobina S. B. Jaffer: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to the urgent need to all violence against women and girls. As you all know, yesterday, December 6, marked a very significant day of commemoration in the fight against female violence. Thirty two years and one day ago on December 6, 1989, 14 young women were killed by misogynistic, senseless and indefensible violence. These 14 women were attending L’École Polytechnique and working on obtaining their engineering education when a man decided to open fire in their classroom and killed them just because they were women.

Honourable senators, there are many types of violence against women. They include intimate partner violence, which includes battering, psychological abuse, marital rape and femicide; sexual violence and harassment, meaning rape, forced sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, street harassment, stalking and cyberharassment; human trafficking, which can mean slavery, sexual and exploitation; child marriage; and female genital mutilation.

In 1997, the Government of Canada passed a law to amend the Criminal Code and have female genital mutilation recognized as a form of aggravated assault. Unfortunately, this legislation has never been enforced in Canada. Female genital mutilation happens in over 90 countries and on every continent. The End FGM Canada Network estimates that there are more than 100,000 survivors across Canada, and possibly thousands of girls remain at risk.

Honourable senators, December 7 falls within the United Nations’ annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. Today, yesterday and every day we remember the urgent need to end violence against women in all of its sinister forms.

According to the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability:

. . . 92 women and girls were killed in Canada in the first six months of 2021, up from 78 during the same period in 2020 and 60 in 2019.

Honourable senators, this is not an issue of the past. It is a present issue, and without serious action it will continue in the future. Let us work together to ensure our granddaughters are not facing the same violence our mothers faced, our sisters faced and our daughters face. Thank you, senators.