Moved third reading of Bill S-228, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sterilization procedures).

Honourable senators, I speak today as the sponsor of Bill S-228, a bill to amend the Criminal Code to make explicit that sterilization procedures performed without consent constitute aggravated assault.

I first want to acknowledge Senator Gerba and her devastating experience. I thank you for your courage to speak up and share your experience with all of us today. It is clear that this bill is not only important but necessary for our children and for generations to come.

Honourable senators, this bill is before us today because of the careful and thorough work of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. Over two separate parliaments, the committee studied this issue with diligence and compassion. We heard from survivors, legal experts, doctors, midwives and representatives of national organizations. The testimony was at times heartbreaking, but it was also clear and consistent: Forced and coerced sterilization is still happening in Canada, it must stop and the law must be strengthened to prevent it.

The committee’s study transformed Bill S-250 into the simplified, targeted legislation we now see as Bill S-228, and it is thanks to that work that we can proceed with clarity and purpose today.

This bill is the continuation of work that began years ago, work that has already been studied, debated and unanimously endorsed in this very chamber. In 2024, the Senate passed the amended Bill S-250, before it died on the Order Paper in the other place when the election was called.

When I speak of sterilization without consent, many people still ask me, “But isn’t that something from the past?” The answer is no. This is not only a part of our past. It is happening in Canada today. It is happening more often than most Canadians would ever want to believe, and to people to whom you wouldn’t believe it could happen — as we just witnessed.

My office has become a place of refuge for survivors. Women call me in tears. Some only discover decades later that they were sterilized. Others call me days after giving birth. Over the past seven years, I have spoken with hundreds of women. This is not a relic of the past. It is happening here and now.

Let me share with you some of the human faces behind these stories.

Today, you heard from Senator Amina Gerba and her harrowing story that hits close to home. If that can happen to a senator, it can certainly happen to our daughters and granddaughters.

Nicole Rabbit, her mother and her niece were all sterilized without consent. She told us plainly:

You took generations from us. I could have had more kids. My daughter could have had more siblings . . . . It’s like you wiped out a generation.

Katy Bear, a young First Nations woman from Saskatchewan, was sterilized at 21. Years later, despite being sterilized, she had an ectopic pregnancy and was rushed to emergency surgery. She had that fallopian tube removed. She later paid for surgery to have her remaining tube put back together with the scar tissue removed.

With little chance of conceiving, she became pregnant again. Just this past March — six months ago — as an experienced mother, she was worried that her full-term baby was not moving enough. She went to the ER, and while in an examining room at the very hospital where she had been sterilized 21 years before, the attending obstetrician, who is also a professor of medicine, asked her for her consent to be re-sterilized during her impending Caesarean section. Imagine the re-traumatization that she had to go through.

Louise Delisle was only 15 when she gave birth in Nova Scotia. Without her knowledge or her mother’s consent, the doctor performed a partial hysterectomy. She only discovered the truth years later when she and her husband tried to start a family. The decision to deny her the ability to have more children was made without her consent, without her knowledge and without any regard for her future.

We also heard from Sylvia Tuckanow, who described being wheeled into an operating room after giving birth, restrained and sterilized as she cried uncontrollably, begging them to stop.

Honourable senators, I want to recognize the Survivors Circle for Reproductive Justice. This circle was born out of the determination of women who had endured forced or coerced sterilization, yet they refused to let their voices be silenced. For too long, survivors were spoken about but not spoken with.

The Survivors Circle has changed that. It now provides a safe space where women can share their experiences, support one another and lead the call for justice. The Survivors Circle is not only a gathering of those who have suffered harm; it is a powerful force for change. By coming together, survivors have built a unified voice that governments and institutions can no longer ignore. Their testimony before Senate committees has moved us all — not only because of the pain they carry, but because of the strength and clarity with which they call for action. These are powerful Indigenous women.

As a board member of the Survivors Circle, Nicole Rabbit told us that when survivors stand together, they carry the wisdom and strength of their mothers and grandmothers, ensuring that their stories cannot be erased.

The Survivors Circle reminds us that this legislation is not abstract. It is about real people, real families and generations that were forever altered. Bill S-228 is their bill. It exists because they demanded it, and we owe them nothing less than to see it through.

The Survivors Circle for Reproductive Justice is working to build a registry of those who have been subjected to this horrific procedure. Their membership is over 300 and is growing every day, as countless more come forward. Many will not come forward because they are too traumatized, or worse yet, they do not know it was done and won’t find out for years to come.

Instances of forced and coerced sterilization are not isolated. They are echoes of a system that has consistently devalued the bodies of Indigenous women, Black women, marginalized women, persons with disabilities and others who find themselves vulnerable in the hands of authority. It is the powerful versus the powerless.

Bill S-228 will give the power back to those who have been ignored for far too long, and it will provide an opportunity for the health care profession and Indigenous communities to work together to develop new approaches to trauma-informed culturally appropriate care.

I must highlight that the harm is not in the past. I was asked to investigate and stop an informal policy in a northern health care system called “Nipples to Knees” – where any Indigenous woman who had surgery on her body, ranging from her nipples to her knees, was sterilized without consent.

Then we have Dr. Andrew Kotaska, a prominent obstetrician in Yellowknife and former president of the Northwest Territories Medical Association, who, in 2019, removed both fallopian tubes of a 37-year-old Inuk woman without her consent. During the operation, he even remarked, “Let’s see if I can find a reason to take the left tube.” For this violation, he received a five-month suspension, was ordered to take an ethics course and was fined $20,000. He continues to practise medicine. What message does that send? That sterilizing an Indigenous woman without consent is a lapse in judgment rather than a crime.

Some will ask why this new legislation is necessary when the Criminal Code already contains assault provisions. In theory, those provisions could apply. In practice, they haven’t. Not one doctor in Canada has ever been criminally convicted for forced sterilization, despite thousands of cases. Civil lawsuits are ongoing, but civil justice alone cannot prevent the next sterilization.

Survivors themselves have told us, unanimously and with one voice, that they want and need this to be a criminal offence. That is why the Senate Human Rights Committee issued its first recommendation: to amend the Criminal Code to specifically prohibit forced sterilization. Bill S-228 is a direct response to that call.

The bill is simple and clear. It inserts a “for greater certainty” clause into section 268 of the Criminal Code, the aggravated assault provision, affirming that sterilization without consent is a form of wounding or maiming. It streamlines the former Bill S-250 from 55 lines down to 14; it ensures that doctors acting in emergencies remain protected under section 45; and it does not interfere with voluntary access to sterilization, gender-affirming care or reproductive choice. This bill is not about politics. It is about consent and human dignity.

We have already done the homework. The Senate has studied this issue exhaustively, through two major Human Rights Committee reports, through the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, through the testimony of survivors, experts, doctors, midwives, lawyers and through one of our own. The evidence is overwhelming. The message from survivors is consistent and urgent: We need this law, we need accountability and we need this to stop.

I want to take a moment to thank the members of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, both in this Parliament and in the last. You examined Bill S-250 with care, you heard difficult testimony and you worked collaboratively to refine the legislation into the clear and effective form we now see before us as Bill S-228. Your work ensured that the concerns of survivors, experts and colleagues were fully considered, and that this bill emerged stronger as a result.

I also want to recognize Senator Wells, who has been a strong supporter of this legislation throughout. His willingness to speak plainly about the need for action, and his insistence that Parliament send an unambiguous message, has been instrumental in carrying this bill forward.

Colleagues, every day that passes without this bill becoming law is another day when someone in Canada may be sterilized against their will. This is not theoretical. This is not symbolic. It is necessary.

We have listened. Now Bill S-228 is our chance to act and to ensure that never again will someone in this country be robbed of the right to decide if, when and how to have children. Let us honour the survivors; let us heed the recommendations of our own committees; and let us finally move this bill forward.

All my relations, meegwetch, thank you.