PERPETUATING HARM
The Liberals want to convince you that Conservatives are responsible for Canada’s ongoing failure to ban conversion therapy — a discredited and widely-condemned practice which uses mental and physical abuse, often to the point of torture, to “fix” LGBTQ people. “Fixed” individuals often end up scarred for life and have a tendency to commit suicide.
Yet conversion therapy actually remains legal owing to the cynical politicking of the Trudeau government, which has sabotaged attempts to ban the practice, at the cost of LGBTQ people’s lives, so that it can continue to be exploited as an election issue.
During their first three years of majority government, the Liberals made no attempt to ban conversion therapy. When, in March 2019, they were pressured by the NDP to change that, they argued that conversion therapy falls under provincial jurisdiction as it is relates to health care.
The Trudeau government then conveniently changed its mind a few months later, just in time for election season, and campaigned on banning conversion therapy at the federal level. This inconsistency is unsurprising given that the Liberals similarly campaigned on ending the gay blood ban while quietly arguing that it wasn’t actually their responsibility.
After the 2019 election was over, the Liberals, now vulnerable with a minority government, seemingly followed through on a promise and tabled a bill to ban conversion therapy in March 2020 (Bill C-8).
C-8 would have criminalized profiting from conversion therapy, as well as practising conversion therapy on minors or non-consenting adults. Voluntary conversion therapy for adults would have remained legal in respect of Canadians’ charter rights.
However, Conservatives were concerned about whether “conversion therapy” was too vaguely defined in the bill. Imagine a minor goes to their imam, rabbi or pastor and asks whether being LGBTQ is compatible with their religion — and the religious leader says, “No, you should not be LGBTQ if you want to be in God’s grace.” Would that kind of conversation be criminalized?
Eric Duncan, the Conservatives’ first openly gay MP, proposed clarifying the ban by borrowing the Liberals’ own words, as the Justice Ministry’s news release for C-8 stipulated that these kinds of cases would be excluded.
But then the pandemic halted everything and C-8 languished as Parliament focused on emergency measures — which is understandable.
Less understandably, Trudeau decided to avoid scrutiny for the WE scandal by proroguing parliament last summer, which nullified Parliament’s legislative agenda, killing all bills that had yet to pass. The conversion therapy ban was reintroduced in October 2020 as Bill C-6.
During C-6’s second reading (a preliminary stage of law-making), Duncan once again advocated for using the Liberals’ own words to fix the bill’s ambiguity.
As Conservatives believed that the clarity issue would be resolved, C-6 passed its second reading with near-unanimous support and was referred to committee for review. Only seven Conservative MPS voted against it, representing five per cent of the Conservative caucus.
But then, from December 2020 to April 2021, nothing happened. C-6 sat in limbo as the Trudeau government avoided bringing it up for Parliamentary debate. Some have argued that this was because parliament was toxic and dysfunctional at the time, making bills generally hard to pass.
However, the government unilaterally decides which legislation comes up for debate and when. How could Canada’s opposition parties have possibly obstructed legislation that the Liberals deliberately chose to keep off Parliament’s agenda for almost half a year? Either the Liberals did not consider the ban important, or they purposefully froze it to keep in their political back pocket.
In April 2021, the Liberals finally deigned to bring C-6 to a third reading, having rejected the Conservatives’ proposed amendments and consequently leaving the Conservatives divided over the clarity issue. Dissatisfied with the bill’s wording, 62 Conservative MPS voted against C-6 while 51 voted for it. The other parties showed unanimous support, and so the bill passed and was sent to the Senate.
Owing to the Liberals’ stalling, the Senate was unable to properly review C-6 before being adjourned for the summer, putting the bill in limbo again until the Senate could reconvene in mid-september. The Liberals then accused the Conservatives of preventing the Senate from being recalled to pass C-6 during the summer, despite the fact that the Speaker of the Senate, who is a de facto Liberal (Liberal senators are nominally “independent”), can recall the Senate unilaterally.
But this debate was soon moot. When Trudeau called another election, he once again nullified parliament’s agenda and killed the conversion therapy ban for a second time — because the well-being and lives of LGBTQ children are just playing chips for Liberal realpolitik.
Now, the Conservative election platform pledges to ban conversion therapy using clearer language, while the Liberals have pledged to ban the practice within the first 100 days of forming government, despite having stalled the ban for at least two years.
Throughout this saga, the Liberals have blamed the opposition for stalling legislation and have stoked the narrative that Conservatives condone the torture of LGBTQ children. For example, they have consistently tweeted condemnations of Conservative votes against C-6 while conveniently ignoring the clarity issue, leading readers to infer that Conservatives oppose the ban in principle rather than particular wording. It’s cynical and dishonest, but effective. On social media, Conservative advocacy for LGBTQ rights (such as ending the blood ban, supporting LGBTQ refugees, and legalizing poppers) has often been met with some variation of: “Yeah but don’t they support torturing queer kids?”
Undoubtedly, some Conservative MPS used the clarity issue as political cover to justify opposition to banning conversion therapy. Yet, reading through their parliamentary speeches, the vast majority seem earnest about ending the practice and genuinely concerned about unclear scope — concerns which could have easily been assuaged if the Liberals actually cared about LGBTQ lives. Is it so hard to add a single sentence, taken from your own news release, to a bill?
But the Liberals only care about LGBTQ issues insofar as they can be electorally exploited. If children have to be tortured to wedge voters, that’s OK with Trudeau. It’s deplorable.