Putting Parents in Handcuffs: The Effects of Bill C-6 on Minors and Parents
The Federal Government’s consistent line on Bill C-6 has been that it is about banning coercive and abusive therapies. As we have repeatedly pointed out, however, this is not in fact true. What this Bill sets out to oppose, in reality, is any “practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual, to change a person’s gender identity or gender expression to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour or non-cisgender gender expression.” The Bill stops short of entirely criminalizing this “conversion therapy” with respect to adults. When it comes to minors, however, the ban is total : “Everyone who knowingly causes a person who is under the age of 18 years to undergo conversion therapy is guilty of an … offence.” Coercion or abuse are not the decisive factors here. Any practices, treatments, and services of the kind described in the Bill’s Definition are to be criminalized, and those who engage in them are to be subject to long prison sentences.
It becomes immediately important for any Canadian parent, then – faced with the constantly challenging task of raising their children well – to know what these practices, treatments, and services include. The problem is that none of these three key terms is defined elsewhere in the Criminal Code of Canada, and the word “practice” is particularly broad in its normal usage. According to Merriam Webster, it refers to any “repeated or customary action.” So let us be clear: if Bill-C-6 becomes law, any Canadian parent will potentially become liable to prosecution who engages in “repeated or customary action” intended to (say) “repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour or non-cisgender gender expression” in their children.
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This is not an exaggeration. At one telling point in the Justice Committee hearings on Bill C-6, the Bloc Quebecois MP Rhéal Fortin placed before a Department of Justice official a hypothetical case in which a mother concerned for the well-being of her son refuses to allow him to go to school dressed up as a girl. Fortin asked whether this counts as “conversion therapy” under the terms of the Bill. The official responded by saying that this does not constitute a “practice, treatment or service” – it is not a “formalized intervention,” she claimed However, when Fortin objected that surely the mother is engaging in a “practice,” the official acknowledged that “practice” is indeed a broader term than the other two in the Bill’s Definition, and (at least for a moment) she appeared herself to define “practice” as that which is “habitual and regular” rather than “formalized.”
Fortin then followed up with another question, which concerned the world beyond immediate family conversations. What if parents were to suggest to a psychologist that (s)he might dissuade their son from wearing make-up and heels to school? Would they be committing a crime under the new legislation? The official declined to answer the question, placing the burden on the courts to decide if, and when, the crime of “conversion therapy” had been committed. And of course we already know very clearly from the text of Bill C-6 that the psychologist in such a case would certainly be subject to criminal prosecution if (s)he agreed to the parents’ request, because that would for sure be engaging in a “treatment or service designed to … repress or reduce … non-cisgender gender expression.”
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So the government claims that Bill C-6 is designed to criminalize only certain coercive and abusive practices. However, the Bill itself makes no pretense of limiting itself to this goal. It moves way beyond this realm, threatening the freedom of parents and other responsible adults to look after minors of all ages in the way that they believe to be right, and to access professional and pastoral help congruent with their beliefs and values in doing so. If Bill C-6 passes into law, many minors will in fact be deprived of the kind of counselling that they need in the midst of confusion and distress about their identity. Those suffering from gender dysphoria, for example, will have no trouble in finding counselling that affirms their desire to gender-transition, but they will be greatly challenged (along with their parents) in finding counselling that affirms them in their given body. This is because any “practice, treatment or service” that can be characterized as “designed to change” an individual identity already present “within” a minor (of whatever age) can now lead to prosecution. And the legal sanction envisaged for a professional person in this context is more than severe enough to cause many of them to walk away from this now dangerous
and unpredictable business before trouble ensues.
Bill C-6 “handcuffs” parents and others in their important calling to look after the best interests of children. And if it passes into law, adults who persist in this calling are likely to end up in more literal handcuffs and on the way to prison.
and unpredictable business before trouble ensues.
Bill C-6 “handcuffs” parents and others in their important calling to look after the best interests of children. And if it passes into law, adults who persist in this calling are likely to end up in more literal handcuffs and on the way to prison.
By Dr. Iain Provan
Free to Care
https://www.freetocare.ca/blog/putting-parents-in-handcuffs-the-effects-of-bill-c-6-on-minors-and-parentsl
Free to Care
https://www.freetocare.ca/blog/putting-parents-in-handcuffs-the-effects-of-bill-c-6-on-minors-and-parentsl