House of Commons unanimously agrees to pass conversion therapy bill

The House of Commons unanimously agreed to pass Bill C-4, the legislation to ban LGBTQ2S+ conversion therapy, through all stages without study or amendment after a Conservative motion, making it the first bill to pass the House in the 44th Parliament and head to the Senate. This rapid fast-tracking came just two days after the Liberals tabled the expanded legislation.

This rapid fast-tracking came just two days after the Liberals tabled re-worked and expanded legislation aiming to outright prohibit both adults and children from being subjected to harmful conversion therapy practices.

Bill C-4 proposes to eliminate the harmful practice in Canada for all ages, through four new Criminal Code offences. It includes wider-reaching vocabulary of what constitutes conversion therapy than what the federal government attempted to pass in the last Parliament.

Conversion “therapy,” as it has been called, seeks to change a person's sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender. It can include seeking to repress someone’s non-heterosexual attraction, or repressing a person’s gender expression or non-cis gender identity.

These practices can take various forms, including counselling and behavioural modification, and they have been opposed by numerous health and human rights groups.