Efforts for the Senate to deal with the government’s conversion therapy bill this month have collapsed, setting the bill up to die if a federal election is called for the fall. Gold proposed on July 2 that the Senate’s legal affairs committee meet virtually this month to study the bill. Technically any senator could ask the Senate speaker to do so, and the speaker’s office confirmed that no request has been received. The bill would create several new Criminal Code offences, such as making it a crime to force a child to undergo conversion therapy or forcing adults into conversion therapy against their will, as well as prohibiting anyone from advertising or profiting from conversion therapy. “For many members of the 2SLGBTQI community, accessing the protection of the criminal law against conversion therapy is a matter of avoiding irreparable harm,” Egale executive director Helen Kennedy wrote in a letter to Senate Speaker George Furey.

Source: thestar July 15, 2021 00:22 UTC