Bill C-8: Banning conversion therapy

Vincent J. Curtis

10 Mar 2020



Bill C-8 is a bill before the House of Commons of Canada that intends to criminalize so-call "conversion therapy" (CT).  Bill C-8 is an bizarre gesture by the Liberal party to a few extremists in the LGBT community.  To make it clear that C-8 is a gesture of support, indeed moral approbation, the Minister of Justice claimed that CT is “premised on a lie, that being LGBT is wrong and needs fixing.”

Let's disregard the obvious moral and psychological opinions in the Minister's statement and concentrate on the law as such.

The bill would criminalize: causing an adult to undergo CT against their will; performing CT on minors in Canada; and removing a minor from Canada for the purpose of CT - all punishable by up to five years imprisonment.  The bill would also make it an offense to profit from offering or advertising CT therapy.

Advertising is a form of speech, protected by the Charter, so banning advertising is already a problem.  What “therapy” looks like physically makes “offering CT” hard to prove, since we don't know what the therapy actually is, we know only an intended result.  Therfore, being paid for performing CT is also nebulous.

And what makes this bill truly bizarre is that it is criminalizing an intent.  Physical acts are objective, intent is not.  Besides, what makes “causing an adult to undergo CT against their will” different physically from kidnapping, something already criminal? (If, and I'm assuming here, CT involves a lot of talking combined with psychological pressure, the restraint necessary to hold an adult in that situation 'against their will' seems to amount to kidnapping.  So why focus on the intent of the talking, except as a favorable moral holding on the condition of being LGBT?)

Banning parents from having CT (whatever that therapy physically is) on their minor children is an extraordinary intervention of the government into the relationship between parents and child.  The admitted reason for such intervention is the Minister’s opinion that LGBT is not wrong and doesn’t need fixing.  Maybe parents think otherwise.  (Maybe the parents want grandchildren.  Maybe they see the unhappiness of many LGBT lives and want something better for their child.  Maybe they are church-going Christians who think LBGT acts are immoral and don't want their child to engage in those acts.)  Is a psychologist or a parish priest to be criminally liable for speaking against LGBT conduct?

In any case, upon conviction, the state will separate the parents from their child by five years of incarceration for the crime of daring to disagree with the opinion of the Minister.

CT must be some wild bugaboo in the LGBT community.  I've hardly heard about it.  Objectively, we don’t know what makes it different from talk.  It is unclear what objective physical acts should be criminalized.
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