Bill C-6: Phone Campaign

Instructions

Thank you for participating in this important mini-campaign! See below for the members of the Justice Committee (and their contact information) and call them to express your concern about the bill they are studying that deals with conversion therapy. All these MPs urgently need to hear these concerns so don’t only call MPs from a single party. The Liberal, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois MPs need to hear these concerns as well. Feel free to use the telephone script below to guide your call.

Justice Committee Members

Telephone Script

Hi there!

My name is __________. I’m calling today because MP [fill in the blank] is a member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and this week Bill C-6 (conversion therapy) isbeing reviewed by this committee.

I am opposed to conversion therapy and all forms of abuse associated with attempts to “convert” someone. No person should be subject to shock treatments, coercion, or isolation; these are clearly forms of abuse.

Yet, I do have concerns with Bill C-6. The bill defines conversion therapy as a “practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour.” This definition is so broad that it has the possibility of criminalizing body-affirming counselling that attempts to reconcile an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity with his or her God-given sex, and making them comfortable in the body they are in.”

As MP [name] studies it in committee, I have three requests or recommendations that I would really appreciate you passing along to other committee members and colleagues:

1. Please amend Bill C-6’s proposed definition of conversion therapy by adding the word “therapeutic” or “coercive” before the word “practice”. This will help focus the scope of the bill.
2. Please remove the words “to heterosexual” and “to cisgender” from the definition of conversion therapy in Bill C-6. This will ensure that a criminal law ban on conversion therapy is neutral on direction.
3. Please add a point to the “for greater certainty” section that makes it clear this bill is notseeking to criminalize good faith teaching or discussion regarding conscientious beliefs –be they moral, religious, scientific or otherwise.

Thank you for taking the time to hear my concerns. I hope that you will take them to heart and share them with MP [name] and his/her colleagues on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.