Honourable senators, I’m honoured to speak to you today from the unceded territories of the Mi’kmaq people.

Colleagues, June is Pride Month in Canada. It is a time when we celebrate LGBTQ+ people, acknowledge their history, the hardships they have endured and many still endure, the progress and triumphs they have achieved and the many contributions they make to our society, our communities, our families and, colleagues, to our Parliament.

The June 15 report issued by Statistics Canada for Pride Month indicates that Canada is now home to 1 million people who identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community, accounting for 4% of the Canadian population.

Colleagues, I rise today to add my voice in support of Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy) because it is time we demonstrate our respect for the rights of LGBTQ+ Canadians and acknowledge our responsibility to respond to their plea to stop the harm conversion therapy has caused and is still causing to them. Pride Month would have been a fitting time to pass this long-overdue bill.

I would like to commend my colleague Senator René Cormier on his leadership in sponsoring both this important bill and the previous Bill S-202, initiated by our former colleague Senator Serge Joyal.

Senator Cormier, you’re right. It’s high time that Canadians stood up for human rights and demanded justice and compassion.

Change does not always come quickly but change is necessary when we look at the kind of Canada we want for all of us, in particular for our children and grandchildren. In 1971, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau said:

There is no such thing as a model or ideal Canadian. What could be more absurd than the concept of an “all-Canadian” boy or girl? A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate. A society which eulogizes the average citizen is one which breeds mediocrity. What the world should be seeking, and what in Canada we must continue to cherish, are not concepts of uniformity but human values: compassion, love and understanding.

Colleagues, it is time to stop othering people who do not conform to some artificial concept of what is “normal.” It is time to stop fearing difference in others. It is time now, more than ever, to embrace diversity.

For decades, members of the LGBTQ+ community have faced systemic oppression and violence. They’ve been told that they are immoral and that they are sick. They have been made to feel like outcasts in their communities, in their congregations, in their workplaces, in their schools and, sadly, sometimes even in their own families.

For much of our past, the government has been complicit in this disenfranchisement by criminally charging Canadians with sodomy, banning homosexuals from entering the country and barring LGBTQ+ people from serving in the Canadian military. The list goes on.

In doing so, the government sent a clear message that anyone who was not heterosexual and/or cisgender did not belong in Canadian society and would not receive the same rights, freedoms and protections as their so-called “normal” counterparts. This is the atmosphere in which conversion therapy came to be. Since the 1950s in Canada, it has been touted as a cure for an entire group of people who were already made to feel like outcasts. A cure for what, I ask? A cure for not conforming to society’s heteronormative expectations or, quite simply, a cure for who they are?

Let’s be clear, colleagues: conversion therapy is “. . . akin to torture . . .” as Randy Boissonnault, the former Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on LGBTQ+ issues, has stated. And, as much of it is inflicted on children, colleagues, conversion therapy is, quite frankly, a severe form of child abuse. It has taken on many forms and has been offered by clinical professionals, by religious officials, by community leaders and by many charlatans.

In the Canadian Mental Health Association of New Brunswick’s position paper on conversion therapy in Canada, it is stated:

“Conversion therapy” dates to the late 19th century, when the German psychiatrist Albert von Schrenk-Notzing claimed he’d turned a gay man straight through hypnosis sessions and several trips to a brothel. The practice accelerated through the 20th century even as the techniques remained crude and often barbaric. Historian Chris Babits, for instance, has found evidence of the widespread use of ice pick lobotomies performed on homosexual children in the 1940s and 1950s. Other techniques involved forced castration of homosexual men and electroconvulsive therapy.

Honestly, I just shudder when I think of the cruelty and pain inflicted on innocent people, in particular children and youth.

George Barasa, a gay gender-nonconforming Kenyan living in South Africa and a survivor of conversion therapy, said the following:

Conversion therapy is not a single event — it is a process of continued degradation and assault on the core of who you are. There are often repeated violations in the form of psychological and sometimes physical abuse. . . It is not one instance — it is a continued sense of rejection. The pressure is enormous.

David Kinitz, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, wrote:

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.

Erika Muse, who provided testimony on Bill C-6 to the House Committee on Justice and Human Rights said:

. . . I am a survivor of trans conversion therapy. . . . at the now-closed youth gender clinic at the Centre for Addictions and Mental Health, CAMH, in Toronto, with Kenneth Zucker.

Dr. Zucker saw me as a patient for seven years, from the ages of 16 to 23, and denied me trans-affirming health care in the form of both hormones and surgery until I was 22. Dr. Zucker . . . . interrogated me in talk therapy for hours at a time, inquisitorially attacking, damaging and attempting to destroy my identity and my self-esteem, and to make me ashamed and hateful of myself.

Conversion therapy almost broke me and I live with its physical and emotional scars to this day . . . .

Colleagues, there are many different methods used in conversion therapy — many now online — from talk therapy, spiritual interventions and prescribing medication, to more extreme forms. Conversion therapy goes by many different names, including reparative therapy, reintegrative therapy, reorientation therapy, ex-gay therapy, gay cure and sexual orientation and gender identity and expression change efforts, each with the same goal of changing a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender.

Colleagues, there are no credible scientific studies that can demonstrate an association between conversion therapy and an influence on a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. The Canadian Psychological Association has stated that conversion therapy can:

. . . result in negative outcomes such as distress, anxiety, depression, negative self-image, a feeling of personal failure, difficulty sustaining relationships . . . self-harm, suicide ideation, sexual dysfunction as well as guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, shame, social withdrawal, substance use, stress, disappointment, self-blame, decreased self esteem, increased self hatred, hostility and blame towards authority, anger, loss of friends, high risk sexual behaviours and a loss of faith.

In 2012, the Pan American Health Organization stated that conversion therapy poses, “. . . a severe threat to the health and human rights of the affected persons.”

The results of the 2019-20 Sex Now survey found that 10% of respondents had been exposed to some form of conversion therapy in Canada and that 72% of those started conversion therapy before the age of 20. Among respondents exposed to conversion therapy, transgender, Indigenous, racial minorities and low-income persons were found to be disproportionately represented.

As Minister Lametti noted in the other place:

This data is significant cause for concern. Not only does conversion therapy negatively affect marginalized persons, but it negatively affects the most marginalized within that group.

The Yukon, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Prince Edward Island and my own province of Nova Scotia have put in place laws that restrict conversion therapy.

Bill C-6 was drafted to protect all Canadian minors from undergoing conversion therapy either in Canada or abroad. It does this by providing a clear definition of conversion therapy, which you have heard, and by creating five new Criminal Code offences. To remind you, these are: causing a minor to undergo conversion therapy; removing a minor from Canada to undergo conversion therapy abroad; causing a person to undergo conversion therapy against their will; profiting from conversion therapy; and finally, advertising an offer to provide conversion therapy.

Bill C-6 represents an important step forward in LGBTQ+ rights and sends a clear message to LGBTQ+ youth that no one should be forced to deny who they are.

Still, colleagues, Bill C-6 answers only one section of a much larger portfolio of issues that need to be tackled in terms of LGBTQ+ rights in Canada. It has been 36 years since the Parliamentary Subcommittee on Equality Rights released its report entitled Equality for All, highlighting the physical and psychological oppression of sexual minorities in Canada. We must continue the progress we have already made and strive to do better in the areas that still require work.

The past several years have brought some positive change for LGBTQ+ people around the world. In January 2020, same-sex marriage legislation took effect in Northern Ireland. In May last year, Germany banned conversion therapy for minors. Last July, Mexico City banned conversion therapy and Sudan removed the death penalty for homosexuality.

Yet, there are still over 70 countries in the world where being LGBTQ+ is a crime. Colleagues, I’m horrified to say that there are still six countries in which it is punishable by death. In nearly 30 countries, the practice of conversion therapy is still supported by the state through private health clinics and schools that provide this “service.”

Colleagues, Bill C-6 seeks to ensure that the dangerous and damaging practice of conversion therapy is banned everywhere in Canada and that our children and grandchildren grow up in a world where it is not only safer to be open about who we are but where our differences are celebrated and embraced.

There is momentum for change both in Canada and around the world, and we must not let up on this important human rights work. As senators, it is our duty to represent the interests and protect the rights of all minorities in our country, and in particular, the most vulnerable.

Colleagues, I support this bill because I believe it is the right thing to do. Our fellow Canadians, and children in particular, must be allowed to be who they truly are, to love whomever they want and to live without fear.

Honourable senators, as I move toward concluding my remarks, I would like to quote Jonathan Brower, a theatre artist and conversion therapy survivor. Jonathan said:

I don’t want healing any more, not from who I am. I just want healing from the scars from trying to change.

Finally, colleagues, I thought it was appropriate to quote human rights crusader Martin Luther King Jr., who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Honourable senators, let’s move this critical bill forward and continue to bend that arc toward justice for Jonathan, Erika and David and all LGBTQ+ Canadians. Happy Pride Month, my fellow senators. Thank you, wela’lioq.

Honourable senators, I wish to speak to you today about Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy). If you will allow me, I need to begin, as I so often do, with a story.

Two and a half years ago, when I was named to the Senate, I received a phone call from our Usher of the Black Rod, Greg Peters, to discuss preparations for my swearing in. Would I like to be sworn in on a bible? When I told him I was not a religious person, he suggested I affirm my oath while holding a copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The symbolism seemed perfect. An expression of my commitment as a senator to uphold the rights and freedoms of all Canadians. But a bare scroll, the Black Rod said, might look a bit plain. He suggested the scroll be tied up with a ribbon symbolizing a cause close to my heart. Perhaps a rainbow ribbon?

Well, I had written many news stories about the hard-won battles for gay rights in this country and in my province. I covered the Delwin Vriend case, when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Alberta must include sexual orientation in its provincial Human Rights Act.

I’d written about the fights waged by same-sex couples to foster children or receive inheritances. I had covered the fight for gay marriage, from the time when it seemed a radical, subversive idea, to the point where it became humdrum. I covered Edmonton’s first lesbian wedding, with a front row seat, since one of the brides happened to be my own sister-in-law. After the wedding, I guess you’d say both brides were my sisters-in-law.

I wrote about young Albertans fighting to start gay-straight alliances in their schools. I wrote about the fights over funding for life-altering surgery for trans Albertans.

But I’m not gay myself. So, I was worried about the appearance of appropriating a powerful symbol of the fight for queer and trans rights when that fight was not my own.

I canvassed my gay and lesbian friends and relations. Would they feel offended if I wrapped my Charter with a rainbow ribbon? They all told me they’d see the ribbon as a compliment to them and a signal that I would continue to fight for their rights.

Only one person questioned my choice, but she happened to be the one whose opinion mattered most because she is the person I love and respect most in the world, my daughter.

“You’re not a lesbian,” she said. “You’re just lesbian adjacent.”

She had reason for skepticism and for questioning my sincerity because for all my vaunted allyship, when my own daughter came out to me four years ago I didn’t respond like a perfect mother. I certainly didn’t respond like the “woke” social justice warrior I fancied myself to be.

I didn’t disown my daughter. I could no more cut her out of my life than I could cut my heart from my body. I didn’t reject her. But I refused to hear her.

“Of course you’re not gay,” I scoffed. “You have a membership at Sephora. You have a closet full of dresses. You wear high heels.” I simply couldn’t accept that my graceful princess, my angel, was a lesbian.

Instead of welcoming her brave announcement with joy and excitement, I tried to brush it off. “It’s just a phase,” I said. “Once you meet the right boy, you’ll forget all about this.” Then I said a few more unpardonably stupid things, straight from the hurtful hetero cliché handbook. “Maybe you’re just bisexual. Maybe you just think you’re gay because you have cool gay friends. Was it something I did wrong as a mother? Is it my fault?”

Why am I sharing this deeply personal story about my greatest parenting failure and perhaps my greatest moral failure? It’s because I want all the parents who’ve been writing to me, who’ve been filling my inbox with angry, frightened letters about Bill C-6, to understand that I am not lecturing them from some self-righteous posture of moral superiority.

I want them and you to know that I understand that fear and pain. I understand how the world tilts when your child comes to you with news that you aren’t ready to hear. Even the most loving parents can feel blindsided when their child tells them that they’re gay, lesbian or trans. I understand that denial because I felt it myself, despite all my public advocacy, all my parade-going, all my professions of allyship.

I’d been one of Edmonton’s most outspoken advocates for queer equality. But as my own daughter stood in pain before me, I realized — with scalding clarity — that as much as I loved my gay friends and family, as hard as I’d fought for them, I’d done so not just out of a sense of justice but out of pity. I had, at a deep, unacknowledged and embarrassing level, been thinking of homosexuality or transsexuality as a kind of affliction.

I’d fought for gay and trans-rights — and not just performatively or hypocritically, at least I hope not — but deep down, I didn’t want my perfect daughter — the light of my life — to be one of “them.” I didn’t want her to be a victim of society’s prejudice or bigotry.

I suddenly recalled the time the orthodontist told us that my daughter needed braces and an appliance to correct her bite. I was so upset. My daughter? My daughter was perfect and beautiful. She wasn’t like one of those kids with crooked teeth. How could she possibly need braces? Were her orthodontic issues somehow my fault?

It dawned on me that I was responding to my daughter’s news about her sexuality in exactly the same way, as though it somehow reflected badly upon my parenting. I had taken this most intimate announcement about her and her truth and somehow made it all about me.

But my daughter did not need to have her sexuality corrected or converted. We’d straightened her bite with braces and appliances. But there were no tools or tactics to straighten her. Nor did there need to be.

Her sexuality isn’t something for me to accept or tolerate. It’s something to celebrate and embrace, because it’s part of what makes her the loving, creative, thoughtful person she is. It’s part of what makes her a fine writer and part of what inspires her as a law student to fight for justice.

When I think about her wonderful squad of friends who are queer or trans, or bi, or gender non-conforming, or gender fluid — when I think about Basil and Manny and Leo and Sasha and Geena and Kaili and Blue — I feel so grateful for all they’ve taught me, and so grateful to them for always having my daughter’s back even when I didn’t.

In the end, my generous, sardonic daughter gave me her blessing to tie up my Charter scroll with a rainbow ribbon, not so much because I’d earned the right to call myself an ally, but more because that ribbon was a reminder to me of how much more work I needed to do. Just as God gave Noah a rainbow as a sign of his covenant, that rainbow ribbon marked a covenant between my daughter and me — a symbol of the vow I took that day to protect the Charter rights of all Canadians.

Let me today speak clearly. Conversion therapy is an abusive, medically discredited practice, even when families who force their children into it do so out of what they feel is love.

We need to pass this bill at the earliest opportunity. We need to criminalize this dangerous junk-science quackery that puts the physical and mental health of vulnerable people at risk. We need to send a clear message to all Canadian parents and their children that gender and sexual identities are not sicknesses to be cured, but part of the glorious human diversity that makes our country and our world a better place.

Conversion therapy is a euphemism that occludes ugly truths. There is nothing therapeutic about such coercive re-education. Therapy is defined by the Oxford dictionary as “treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder.”

But these so-called treatments do nothing to relieve or heal. They instead corrode and undermine a gay or trans person’s very sense of identity and teach them to believe they are damaged or deluded, sick or sinful.

Many of those who’ve written to us about this bill, or who called me, have insisted they’re not homophobic or transphobic, but that they’re worried the bill infringes on religious freedom or freedom of speech. My friends, nothing in this bill infringes on the free speech rights of clergy in the pulpit or parents in the kitchen. Nothing prevents them from teaching or preaching that homosexuality is a sin. And nothing in this bill, frankly, prevents parents from rejecting or denouncing their own children.

Bill C-6 instead is narrow and specific. It protects vulnerable adults from being forced into sadistic brainwashing. It protects children from being damaged by psychological manipulations that may erode their sense of self — and it protects them from being taken abroad to undergo abusive pseudo-therapies in other countries.

The bill does not prevent children, teens or adults from getting counselling, secular or religious, if they are questioning or confused or upset about their sexuality or gender identity. Nor does Bill C-6 somehow enable children who feel they may be trans to immediately access hormone therapy or gender confirmation surgery willy-nilly. And despite what some people seem to believe, the bill does not make it a crime to deny someone top surgery or testosterone, either.

Instead, Bill C-6 criminalizes coercive and commercial efforts to make people conform, to erase their identity against their will, to poison them with self-loathing.

Specifically, Bill C-6 makes it a crime to advertise so-called conversion therapy to would-be customers. It makes it a crime to make money by selling such bogus unsafe treatments, from aversion therapy to hypnotism to exorcism. That’s important because the bill would make it illegal for people who practise this fraudulent “therapy” from passing themselves off as legitimate psychologists or counsellors.

Yes, there is a risk that Bill C-6 may simply drive this damaging practice underground. We cannot exorcise homophobia or transphobia anymore than a quack therapist can exorcise homosexuality. But we can send a message when we denounce the commercialization and monetization of homophobia and those who make money by preying on the fears and vulnerabilities of queer Canadians and their families. And we can send a message to every gay, lesbian, bisexual, two-spirited, trans, queer, asexual, gender-fluid, gender-non-binary or gender-nonconforming person that they are not afflicted but gifted.

Today, I want to publicly apologize to the queerly wonderful members of my own family for my imperfect efforts to be the ally you needed. To Paul and Brian, to Tina and Sandra, to Taylor and Laura, to Peter and Kristy and Lisa and Julie and Jason — I love you all so much. Thank you for being such wonderful aunts and uncles when my daughter needed you as role models and mentors, and when I did, too.

To my daughter’s entire posse comitatus — all her amazing friends — thank you for your brilliance and your courage.

And to my daughter, you are my inspiration every day. Thank you for your permission to tell your story, and thank you for holding me accountable always. The greatest joy and privilege of my life has been to be your mum. With you as my daughter, every month is Pride Month.

Thank you. Hiy hiy.

Honourable senators, I rise to speak to Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and an act that will ban the harmful practice of conversion therapy in Canada. I don’t wish to take too much time, but I insisted on showing support to the LGBTQ2+ community that has systematically suffered through discrimination, hate and violence because of who they are and who they love.

Since once again we will be taking a decision affecting people who are under-represented in the Senate, I elect to take a different approach in my speech.

I am not a member of the LGBTQ community myself, so I will use this time to give voice to Lucas Wilson, PhD candidate in comparative studies at the Florida Atlantic University, a sessional lecturer at the University of Toronto and a young Canadian who suffered through the horrors of conversion therapy. I share his words with you today with his permission.

My name is Lucas Wilson, and I am a survivor of conversion therapy. I used to be uncomfortable with the term survivor to describe myself, but after years of working through the deep-seated shame, guilt, self-hatred, and anxiety that were instilled and distilled within me, I now think the term survivor is only fitting nomenclature to describe my four years in conversion therapy. Indeed, conversion therapy amplifies and deepens the cultural homophobia that we queer people were taught from a young age, as it seeks to erase and eradicate a constitutive part of what makes queer people themselves. It can thus be said that the desire of conversion therapists for there to be no queer people in Canada is — definitionally and without any measure of hyperbole — a genocidal intention. And these intentions result in sustained abuse — sustained abuse that I experienced, and sustained abuse that thousands continue to experience at the hands of conversion therapists. However, might I be so bold to say that abuse should never be an option for anyone? It is indeed mind-boggling to me that there is currently a debate about whether or not individuals who are motivated by genocidal intentions should be able to abuse countless LGBTQ+ individuals.

Please do what is right and what is noble, and please protect Canadians from the death-dealing and horrific work of conversion therapy.

Colleagues, if you deserve to live a full life, full of self-expression, self-love and pride in the person you are, then every Canadian deserves this as well.

Thank you. Meegwetch.

Honourable senators, as an independent senator from Manitoba, from Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation, I rise today to support Bill C-6, which makes it illegal for anyone to force or encourage a minor to undergo conversion therapy through new offences limited to practices, services or treatment, and excluding private discussions between an individual struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity and those seeking to support that individual.

I add my appreciation to Senators Joyal and Cormier for their leadership in bringing this issue before us more than once and thank Minister David Lametti for introducing the version of the bill we are debating today.

Honourable senators, I will not take up your time by repeating the powerful points already made by previous speakers today. I will be brief in speaking personally in support of this bill because it is an important addition to legislation in Ontario, Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and the bills introduced in the Yukon, Quebec, New Brunswick, and the municipal bylaws in Vancouver and Calgary, as well as the law in the country of Malta. The proposed offences would be limited to practices, services or treatment and therefore would exclude purely private discussions. They would also not include services relating to an individual’s gender transition or an individual’s exploration of their identity or its development when this process is voluntary.

The offences in this bill would criminalize providing conversion therapy to all children and to any adults against their will. This bill would also criminalize providing conversion therapy in exchange for any material benefit. Thus, these offences have been carefully tailored to meet the objectives of this bill.

New section 320.103 of the code makes it an offence to cause a person who is under the age of 18 years to undergo conversion therapy. In other words, under this act, a child cannot consent to receiving conversion therapy nor can a parent or guardian consent on their behalf.

This bill is an example of how the Criminal Code can be used appropriately in setting legal standards of acceptable conduct in our society.

Dear colleagues, I am the proud mother of a non-binary queer person who, as a child, was secretly taken to gender conversion sessions until I found out. This is a brilliant, strong, compassionate person who brings huge light to our world. To this day, more than 30 years later, they remember that terrible time even though they have not only survived, but they thrive and share the power of love every day, in so many ways, with so many people.

I am also a proud auntie, adopted by a trans man who came to Canada as a refugee fleeing from attempted honour killings for being who he truly is.

In this Pride Month, let us move forward together to strengthen our democracy, our families and our communities through practising love and inclusion. That is what this bill is about. Love is love, dear colleagues, and this bill will be an act of love. Thank you. Meegwetch.