The program, which was hosted virtually with the Ontario Bar Association’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Community on June 6, was moderated by Teddy Weinstein, a staff lawyer for Legal Aid Ontario, and included Florence Ashley, a BCL/J.D., LL.M, doctor of juridicial science candidate from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and Joint Centre for Bioethics; Douglas Judson, counsel for No Conversion Canada; and Ben Rodgers, the executive director of C.T. Survivors Connect.
Rodgers, who is a C.T. survivor, stressed that one of the things that needs to change is the terminology as there is “no therapeutic value whatsoever, there’s no healing value, there is no health value to what conversion practices do and what they are.”
Douglas Judson, No Conversion Canada
Judson explained that if you survey “the legislation we have on conversion practices” it’s often “couched, especially at provincial jurisdiction, within the health-care context. It’s often targeted at preventing these practices from being subjected to minors, and it suggests that there is an age-appropriate level that conversion practices are OK within a health context.”
“That’s another reason, I think, that we need to push back against that tacit acknowledgement of the legitimacy that the concept of therapy gives to what we’re talking about,” he added, noting he would refer to it as “conversion practices” from now on.
Speaking about the importance of advocacy, Judson noted that No Conversion Canada is “a national non-for-profit” dedicated to “ending conversion therapy and conversion practices in Canada.”
“We generally take the view, and this is core to the mission, that every level of government has a role to play in addressing conversion practices. At the provincial level, we do continue to see more of a patchwork approach,” he said, noting that in “Ontario, Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and Yukon the current legislation is generally confined to health care” and “focuses on protecting minors.”
“In Quebec we see legislation preventing from performing conversion practice to a third party regardless of age, and that legislation actually allows survivors to obtain reparations for harms. But there continues to be no provincial legislation in the west, though I do note that Manitoba has a policy in place governing the conversion practices in health care,” he said, adding that at this point, “most forms of conversion practice do not take root within the health sector, which is sort of why we needed to expand the scope of legal tools we had to deal with this problem.”
“Criminalizing those practices was really a top priority for No Conversion Canada,” he said, but now that a federal ban is in place, they “have a bit more breathing room to shift some of that focus in how we support survivors and that is an emerging area of work.”
Florence Ashley, doctor of juridicial science candidate from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law and Joint Centre for Bioethics
“At CAMH,” they noted, the youth clinic was once “the only place you could go to if you had a trans kid, [and] their practice was directly aimed at preventing kids from growing up trans by discouraging their gender identity and gender expression.”
Ashley explained that the U.S. started introducing “more bans on conversion practices starting with California’s ban in 2012,” which caught the attention of people in Ontario who “raised the alarm about CAMH.”
Ashley said the issues with CAMH were raised both at the institution and legislative level, “which eventually had this feedback effect because it inspired, in part, Bill 77.”
“A lot of survivors, people who had gone through CAMH, were the ones to testify at the legislature in passing the law. Which is a big change for most bills because most bills have historically focused on conversion practices targeting sexual orientation and Ontario was the first one to really centre the experiences of trans people,” they added, noting that once Bill 77 was passed there was an “external review of the clinic’s practices” which found that the clinic was “not aligned with best practices and that a lot of things that they did looked like conversion practices in the general sense of the term.”
Although this led to the closure of the CAMH clinic, Ashley explained that “a lot of the fuzziness about what falls under the law and what doesn’t is precisely what has been enabling people to continue engaging in conversion practices, while saying ‘well, no, it’s not conversion practices,” or ‘it kind of is, but it falls under this or that exception under the law and therefore it’s legally OK.’ ”
“There’s a lot of equivocation that comes from the fact that the laws are not necessarily clear in their terms, they’re often very broad,” they added.
Judson noted that No conversion Canada has made submissions to “many city councils, mainly in the west, that have put in place bylaws prohibiting conversion practices.”
“Those bylaws largely take the form of business prohibition bylaws, so what that means is that the municipality prohibits certain types of businesses from operating in the city and conversion therapy businesses are a type of business that are on the prohibited businesses list,” he explained.
Judson also explained that the “bylaw power” is a “unique feature in the municipal statutes of the western provinces,” in that “they can prohibit a certain type of business from operating outright.”
“By comparison, here in Ontario, where we have not adopted any such bylaw in any municipality, our Municipal Act empowers municipalities to develop business licensing systems, but it does not explicitly confer that power to prohibit a type of business. At least if it does it’s more of a constructive power, it’s not one that’s explicitly spelled out in the legislation,” he added.
Judson noted that No Conversion Canada has been “pointing out to lawmakers and city staff” that “there are sections of the Municipal Act which are helpful and those are the sections which allow the municipality to enact bylaws related to matters such as … the health, safety and well-being of persons, the social well-being of the municipality, the protection of persons and property, including consumer protection and public nuisances.”
“The courts have generally stated, repeatedly, that law-making powers for municipalities are to be interpreted broadly and generously, so in our view, these types of powers provide municipalities with various tools they can use to deal with conversion practices. We’re not just talking, necessarily, about ban bylaws, like the business prohibition bylaws that we see in the west, but also to adopt different types of complementary regulation that could perhaps work in concert with the federal framework that we see in the Criminal Code,” he explained, noting that this might come in the form of “restrictions on advertising or marketing, or policies governing municipal grant funding, or on the availability and use on municipal facilities.”
“For example, almost every municipality in Canada has an arena, and they sell advertisements around the outsides of the boards. There are policies that govern what kind of content can go in placements like that,” he added.
However, Judson said, “there’s a lot of buck-passing in Ontario municipalities and a part of that is a culture of risk aversion.”
“Nobody wants to be a first mover that gets hit with litigation that is financially ruinous for their municipality, so they’re looking for someone to lead the way. They’re looking for some precedents to work with because they have limited resources as well to begin with,” he explained, noting that No Conversion Canada is trying to make that case that “there are other tools that can be used at the local government level to support the policy objectives of Bill C-4 …”
Judson stressed that there continues to be an ongoing need to support survivors and some municipalities, such Kitchener, have pledged financial resources. He noted this as a practical step because “we are talking about a level of government that directly funds public health initiatives and social services … that are directed towards social well-being, and equity, and keeping people safe and healthy in the community, which conversion practices are inherently undermining.”
“That’s the work that’s ahead of us now: to find ways to complement that federal framework, but also pointing out that there are a number of tools, and, in our view, a broad jurisdiction available to municipal lawmakers to act on this problem,” he emphasized.
Ashley concurred and stressed the need for “creativity.”
“Worldwide the responses to conversion practices have been so bland, so unimaginative … there are so many different tools, and I would really like to see governments try them out and actually consider them,” they said.
Judson noted that while criminalization is an important tool, “a lot of people who find themselves the target of conversion practices are not necessarily always positioned to safely make reports to law enforcement.”
“So, if we can provide other types of supports within our social infrastructure, we can provide other ways that they can seek protection. It’s one thing to have a criminal law, but if you’re a young person who is dependent on your family or your faith community, it’s very difficult to take full advantage of that tool,” he added.
Ashley shared that same ethos, asking “do you really think that queer and trans kids are going to trust cops?”
“They’re really not. They don’t feel comfortable with cops,” Ashley said, noting they’ve had friends go to cops and “ended up being traumatized worse than the offence that led them to call the cops in the first place.”
“People don’t really want to go to cops, and I think this is a shortcoming that goes much deeper. We’re talking about a really traumatizing experience, and we’re saying ‘hey, we’re not going to take the power of this whole process and put it in the hands of survivors,’ we’re going to take it, and we’re going to put it in the hands of cops and prosecutors,” they added, explaining that this is “fundamentally disempowering.”
Ashley noted that “having the power of when to initiate proceedings be essentially in the hands of police and prosecutors, is not really helpful for survivors.” They also noted that there are “shortcomings” in the federal bill, which is why it’s important that municipalities and provinces keep “improving upon bans by doing stuff that goes beyond them.”
“This cannot be the end of the story for how we address this problem because yes, our criminal statute requires a certain way that things are structured, but it can’t be the only piece,” added Judson, noting that “the key message” is “about who is empowered to actually enforce this type of restriction and to act under the laws that we have is an important delineation.”
“It appears to me that as [Ashley] said, the law empowers prosecutors and police, but what does it actually do for survivors and that’s where the missing piece of the puzzle remains,” he added.
Judson noted that he lives in a community where there was a former residential school and “there is an innate understanding in this place, in the north of Ontario, about what conversion practices are and what they are trying to do.”
“It chills me to have to tell you that I have file in this office that implicates some of the very same individuals and organizations that used to run residential schools to now engaging in, what looks like, conversion therapy. It’s a very short walk from the ideology of residential schools to that of conversion practices. Both are bent on the destruction of the individual and crushing their spirit,” he stressed.
Ben Rodgers, C.T. Survivors Connect
“Currently, the only official support organization that exists is C.T. Survivors Connect, which just became federally recognized in February,” he said, noting that the organization “started a virtual support group for survivors to be able to meet via Zoom and start to connect” and are now trying to provide more health supports.
“The key things legal people can really do; listen to survivors, listen to the people who are making the statements because the reality is you’re not necessarily going to get buckets and buckets of proof. I only have proof of my conversion therapy because I found an old binder with my journals in it. Otherwise, the only proof I have would be my statement. A lot of people did, likely the same as I did, I burnt most of the stuff I had from the church because it was all part of a life that simply hated me,” he stressed.
“Being willing to listen, being willing to be an advocate and support the survivors and support the people who are going through this right now,” Rodgers added is important.
“Lawyers,” he said, “are a very powerful force.”
“You have a capability to hear survivors and make changes happen in a legal format, which is something we don’t have as just regular, everyday survivors,” he added, stressing the need for legal advocacy for C.T. survivors.
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