The B.C. Prosecution Service (BCPS) has revised its
hate crimes policy to expand the definition of what constitutes hate-motivated offences in the province.
In a
media statement released on Feb. 16, the prosecution service said the definition of hate crimes now includes, among other prohibited acts, “hate propaganda offences” such as “advocating or promoting genocide,” “public incitement of hatred,” and “wilful promotion of antisemitism.”
The latest changes also saw the prosecution service listing conversion therapy as a hate crime.
The changes follow recent statements by Premier David Eby and the Vancouver Police Department saying that the start of the Israel-Hamas war last October had sparked an increase in hate-motivated acts in the province.
B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma said in a Feb. 16
statement that “the inclusion of hate propaganda and conversion-therapy offences” in particular will help the province hold those carrying out those activities accountable.
Offences related to conversion therapy refer to acts that “target and seek to repress, reduce, or change particular sexual orientations, gender identities, or gender expressions,” according to the revised
Hate Crimes policy.
The four specific offences include causing a person to undergo conversion therapy, promoting or advertising this practice, profiting from providing the practice, and moving a child out of Canada with the intention of having the child undergo conversion therapy.
Federal Ban on Conversion Therapy
The ban on conversion therapy was initiated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in October 2020, during the previous parliamentary session.At the time, some Conservative MPs
warned that the broad definitions of conversion therapy in
Bill C-6 could potentially criminalize normal conversations between children and their parents, counsellors, or religious leaders about gender and sexual behaviours.
The bill completed second reading in the Senate in June 2021 and had just been referred to committee before it died when the Trudeau government dissolved Parliament on Aug. 15, 2021, and called the federal election.
Some two months after the Sept. 20, 2021, federal election, the Liberals in the new Parliament
tabled Bill C-4, an even tougher conversion therapy bill that not only banned the practice for children but for consenting adults as well. However, it did
clarify that conversations between parents and children about sexual orientation would not be criminalized.
Specifically,
Bill C-4 sought to criminalize “a practice, treatment or service“ designed to “change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual,” “change a person’s gender identity to cisgender,” or “change a person’s gender expression so that it conforms to the sex assigned to the person at birth.”
The definition of conversion therapy would also include acts to “repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour,” “repress a person’s non-cisgender gender identity,” or “repress or reduce a person’s gender expression that does not conform to the sex assigned to the person at birth.”
A motion to accept Bill C-4
without amendment was presented by Conservative MP Rob Moore and adopted unanimously by MPs in the House of Commons on Dec. 1, 2021. The bill was then similarly
fast-tracked in the
Senate, without any debate or committee study. It had its first reading on Dec. 2, 2021, and both its second and third readings on Dec. 7 before being passed into law on
Dec. 8 that year.
Lee Harding and The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
