Honourable senators, I rise to speak at second reading of Bill S-228, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sterilization procedures). I want to thank Senator Boyer for introducing this bill early this Parliament, the previous iteration having died on the Order Paper when the Forty-fourth Parliament prorogued in early January.

I also want to thank Senator Boyer for her very detailed and moving speech last week. It was not the first one she has given on this issue, and I’m certain it won’t be the last. I won’t go into the same level of detail on the reintroduced bill, as Senator Boyer has fully conveyed both the content of the bill and the scope of the issue it seeks to address.

Honourable senators, this bill may be new, but the issue it deals with has been before the Senate for some time. In fact, the bill was a response to a recommendation made by the Senate Human Rights Committee, which conducted two studies on the issue, one in 2019 and another in 2022. I sat on the Human Rights Committee during the second study on this issue in 2022. The recommendation from that committee’s report, recommendation 1, states, “That legislation be introduced to add a specific offence to the Criminal Code prohibiting forced and coerced sterilization.”

Senator Boyer, citing that recommendation, first tabled her bill in June 2022 and spoke to it at second reading in early February 2023. It was referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee in April 2023, came out of that committee in September 2024 and was reported to the Senate the following month. It passed third reading and was sent to the House on October 8, 2024. Before it could be dealt with over there, Parliament was prorogued.

I was the critic of the first iteration, and I’m the critic of the bill before us now. I cite all this as a bit of a civics lesson for the new senators who arrived here at the beginning of this Parliament. As each of us learns after we have been here for a while, the wheels of Parliament, like those of justice, can turn slowly.

Honourable colleagues, I don’t know if any of you noticed, but coincident with the opening of this Parliament was the beginning of the French Open tennis championship in Paris. Anyone who spent time watching it would have seen the slogan scrawled across the main court stadium: “Victory belongs to the most tenacious.” I mention it because it reminded me of Senator Boyer, who has relentlessly and single-mindedly pursued the issue of forced and coerced sterilization for the past 10 years — 10 long years.

I have spoken about her heroic efforts before at both second and third reading of Bill S-250 in the previous Parliament, the initial version of this legislation. But, of course, her efforts extend well beyond that and, indeed, beyond her time here in the Senate. As a former medical professional, a lawyer, a member of the Métis Nation, she is absolutely perfectly suited to champion this issue and to be the champion of this movement. Moreover, prior to coming to the Senate, she was a director at the University of Ottawa Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. What more could you ask for in a champion?

I spoke on the bill in the last Parliament at both second and third reading, as I mentioned, and was as frustrated as anyone — well, almost anyone — when it died on the Order Paper in January. Colleagues, my voice on this issue pales before the voices of the victims, but I will repeat some of what was said when I spoke on the previous bill. I’m not an authority on this issue, but if you have a greater interest, I invite you to go back and look at the debates that took place on forced and coerced sterilization when the bill was last before us, and maybe to nudge you to go even further and look at the committee transcripts and the heart-wrenching witness testimony of survivors we heard in the study of the bill, some appearing in silhouette and under altered names. I have met courage and bravery before, but never like during that testimony.

The first thing I should mention is that when I was introduced to the issue, I was certain the practice was a thing of the past, that the committee was taking a look back, as Senator Boyer noted in her speech at second reading last week, not something that was happening today. I was wrong. Cases have been reported as recently as this year, as we have heard.

There have been more than 12,000 cases in all, and no one has been convicted of a crime, much less charged with one. And yet we were told by some witnesses who felt this bill would be redundant that there are laws on the books to deal with these crimes, specifically section 265 of the Criminal Code, which relates to assault, section 267, which relates to assault causing bodily harm, and section 268, which relates to aggravated assault, all applicable to a medical setting where informed consent for a procedure was not present.

Since 1997, the Criminal Code has included a law against genital mutilation, which could include forced sterilization, yet still no charges.

So what will one more law do if all the others are not being used? Well, I’m a critic, and my argument today is in support of this bill. It’s the same as my support of Bill S-250. I’ll quote what I said in that prior speech:

. . . criminalizing the practice sends a clear message that the government acknowledges forced sterilization as a violation of an individual’s human rights and not to be tolerated in any way. The threat of criminal prosecution would also act as a deterrent to health care providers and institutions that might consider engaging in such practices . . . knowing there are explicit and serious legal consequences. For those who do perform the procedure, criminalization will hold offenders accountable.

It will also give victims past and present some measure of comfort that their voices have been heard. That is at least something.

Honourable colleagues, when I spoke on Bill S-250 at third reading, it was an amended bill, an improved bill. I think the danger of a bill like the one before us today and its predecessor is that it is steeped in emotion, in lives changed. It involves a very gut-wrenching issue, and we react to it emotionally — and deservedly so. But as a result, our emotions can end up running away with us. To let that happen in the Senate — especially the Senate — is to abdicate our responsibility. Remember our job is to provide considered thinking, to let cooler heads prevail, to bring reason before emotion.

That’s exactly what happened when it comes to the amended bill. It was our colleague Senator Batters of Saskatchewan who first raised the issues in committee as to why the other assault provisions in the Criminal Code weren’t sufficient, which led to discussion in committee of section 45 protections in the Criminal Code and, eventually, an amendment by Senator Boyer to her own bill, to include those protections as part of the bill. And of course, Senator Dalphond’s probing questions in committee on this issue deserve credit here as well.

Honourable senators, I was supportive of the unamended bill as a necessary step to begin to address this grievous wrong. I’m supportive of the amended bill, which to my mind is equally potent, but which also avoids what I have warned about in this place before: well-meaning legislation that leads to unforeseen and unintended consequences.

Sometimes those are unavoidable, but I’m confident that some of the possible consequences that were raised in debate on Tuesday can and will be avoided in this bill. As critic, I take these concerns seriously, and I wanted to make sure I had fully examined the issues raised.

After discussions with Senator Boyer and reviewing testimony from departmental officials given during the study of Bill S-250 during the last Parliament, I’m satisfied that this bill will not have the unintended consequences that some senators raised. More importantly, it will have the intended consequences we seek.

To speak to the technical details, the “for greater certainty” clause clearly brings coerced sterilization into the aggravated assault provisions in section 268 of the Criminal Code. As we are aware, the phrase “for greater certainty” in legal documents is used to clarify and emphasize specific points to deflate the prospect of ambiguity or misunderstanding about the application or interpretation of a law. The proposed section 268.1(1) uses similar language as 268(1) and ties the section into 268(1), aggravated assault. And in proposed section 268.1(2), a sterilization procedure is described.

Furthermore, parliamentary intent is well documented with respect to this bill, and the Crown contemplating a charge would be required to defer to it in its determination of whether a charge should be pursued.

This bill is clear — medical providers who inadvertently or through a manifestation of a disclosed risk, where possible, sterilize someone during a planned or emergency surgery, are protected by section 45 of the Criminal Code. This bill is clearly targeting forced sterilization, so it will not impact reproductive freedoms for those who wish to be sterilized, that is voluntarily. The intent of Parliament has been and continues to be clear on this important issue.

I want to thank all the members of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee for the exemplary work they did in the last Parliament in studying this issue. I also commend my colleagues on the previous Committee on Human Rights in the earlier studies. They were thorough and wide-ranging examinations. I do hope, given that, and given Senator Boyer’s flexibility in amending the bill and reintroducing it here, we can move this bill, Bill S-228, forward through the necessary stages in this Parliament with speed and get it over to the other place as quickly as possible.

Finally, Senator Boyer is the bill’s champion. She is also the champion of thousands of victims of forced and coerced sterilization — thousands of people with no voice, victims and their partners — for without her, this would never have been brought forward. So thank you, Senator Boyer. You are almost there. Thank you, colleagues.