New law banning conversion therapy goes into effect

A Canadian law banning conversion therapy went into effect Friday, making it a crime to provide or promote services intended to change or repress a person’s sexual orientation or gender expression.

With the new law, Canada’s criminal code will prohibit forcing someone to undergo conversion therapy; taking a minor abroad to take part; and profiting from, promoting or advertising the practice. Violations can draw sentences of up to five years’ imprisonment.

“This is an incredibly important step to making sure queer and trans people in Canada feel valid and deserving of full protection,” said Michael Kwag, a policy director at the Community-Based Research Center in Toronto, which researches the health of people of diverse sexualities and genders.

The law was the Canadian government’s second attempt last year to bring an end to the widely discredited practice and its third since 2020. The previous bill was set aside in August after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has described conversion therapy as “harmful” and “degrading,” called an election.

In November, David Lametti, Canada’s justice minister, and Marci Ien, the minister for women, gender equality and youth, resurrected the effort, introducing amendments that they said would make Canada’s protections against conversion therapy among the most comprehensive in the world.

The law goes further than the previous two bills because it broadens the consent issue to protect adults and minors, said Nicholas Schiavo, executive director of No Conversion Canada, a nonprofit organization that lobbied to support the bill.

“The intention behind the first two were good, but they left a loophole for adults to undergo conversion therapy,” he said. “They can’t consent to something fraudulent.”

Ted Falk, a Conservative member of Parliament from Manitoba, said he and other conservatives were “blindsided” by the fast-tracked bill that disregarded written viewpoints and concerns.

Canada is among the latest countries to ban conversion therapy. The French Parliament voted Dec. 14 to ban the practice. At least a dozen countries have also adopted some form of legislative protections against it, including India, Malta, Ecuador and Germany.

In the United States, California and 19 other states and Washington, D.C., have passed laws banning conversion therapy, according to Born Perfect, a group seeking to outlaw the practice.