House unanimously agrees to pass conversion therapy bill

The House of Commons has unanimously agreed to pass Bill C-4, the legislation to ban conversion therapy, through all stages in the House without study or amendment, based on a Conservative motion.

This rapid fast-tracking came just two days after the Liberals tabled re-worked and expanded legislation aiming to outright prohibit both adults and children from being subjected to conversion therapy practices.

The legislation, titled Bill C-4, proposes to eliminate the harmful practice in Canada for all ages, through four new Criminal Code offences. It includes wider-reaching vocabulary of what constitutes conversion therapy than what the federal government attempted to pass in the last Parliament.

While The Canadian Press had reported that Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole was set to make the bill a free vote, meaning he wouldn’t whip his caucus to vote one way or the other, there was no objection heard in the chamber to seeing the bill be expedited without changes.

Conservative MP Rob Moore was the one to raise the motion, asking that the bill move straight into the Senate. When House Speaker Anthony Rota said that he “declared the motion carried,” MPs rose in a standing ovation and those responsible for the bill on the government side went across the chamber to shake hands and hug their Conservative colleagues.