It’s a historic day in Canada for the LGBTQIA+ community and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s minority government fighting against the odd sex conversion therapies. Canada’s House of Commons on Tuesday passed a bill banning any such measures and therapies. These therapies are widely regarded as human rights violations.

While over half of the Opposition members voted against it, other members of the leadership extended overwhelming support to the bill. It will now proceed to Canada‘s Senate.

Minister of Justice David Lametti tweeted, “If passed, #BillC6 will make Canada’s criminal laws on conversion therapy the most progressive and comprehensive in the world.”

The text defines conversion therapy as “practices, treatment or services designed to change an individual’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender or to reduce non-heterosexual sexual attraction or sexual behaviour.”

Around the world, these said conversions have been attempted through beatings, rape, electrocution, forced medication, confinement, forced nudity, verbal humiliation and other acts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, according to an independent expert report to the UN.

According to a recent official survey, 47,000 Canadian men, who identify as part of a minority sexuality group, had been subjected to conversion therapy. The new bill would prohibit subjecting a minor to the practice, either in Canada or abroad.

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An adult would also not be able to undergo so-called conversion therapy against his or her will, and no one would be allowed to profit from or advertise it. Criminalising conversion therapy was one of the Liberal party’s main 2019 election pledges.

A similar bill was introduced in March 2020, and despite the support of most lawmakers, it failed to pass before Parliament was suspended for a summer break as the coronavirus pandemic hijacked the legislative agenda.