OTTAWA, March 18, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Conservative Party leadership hopeful Derek Sloan has slammed the Trudeau Liberal bill that will make it a crime punishable by up to five years in jail to help minors with unwanted gender confusion or same-sex attraction.
A rookie Ontario MP and father of three, Sloan warned in a March 17 email to Conservative Party members that if Bill C-8 is passed, parents will go to jail for attempting to help their minor children — which the bill defines as under 18 years of age — identify with their biological sex.
“This is madness,” wrote Sloan.
“The Liberals condemn the notion that parents should be able to help a child identify with the body they were born with. ‘Conversion therapy’ is what they call any professional treatment in this area. All the while, the Liberals celebrate giving a child hormones and irreversible plastic surgery as ‘gender affirmation’,” he added.
“If that seems backwards to you, that’s because it is. In fact, for teenagers suffering from gender dysphoria, it can be a nightmare.”
A declared pro-life advocate who is supported by Campaign Life Coalition, Canada’s national pro-life and pro-family political lobbying group, Sloan is in the midst of fundraising the final $150,000 he must submit to the party by March 25 to get on the ballot.
So far only two men — pro-abortion former Nova Scotia MP Peter MacKay and current Ontario MP Erin O’Toole — are verified candidates in the race, which so far remains scheduled to end June 27 with the leader announced at a Toronto convention.
The party’s leadership race committee decided Sunday not to extend the deadline despite requests it do so by some candidates as Canada goes into partial shutdown. At least four provinces so far — British Columbia, Quebec, Ontario, and Alberta — have declared a state of public health emergency in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the National Post reported.
Sloan blasted the Liberals in his email for being so “radically ideological – and completely out to lunch” as to have as their “biggest priority” a bill criminalizing “conversion therapy” even while Canada is dealing with the pandemic.
Tabled by Justice Minister David Lametti on March 9, Bill C-8 will make it an offense under the Criminal Code to: 1) cause a minor to undergo conversion therapy, 2) remove a minor from Canada to undergo conversion therapy, 3) cause a person to undergo conversion therapy against his/her will, 4) profit from conversion therapy, and 5) advertise conversion therapy.
The bill defines “minor” as an individual under 18 years of age — even though the Liberals have lowered the age of consent for anal sex to 16 years of age.
Bill C-8 defines “conversion therapy” as: “a practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour.”
(“Cisgender” is a neologism for a person who identifies with his or her biological sex and is not sexually attracted to a person of the same sex.)
The bill adds: “For greater certainty, this definition does not include a practice, treatment or service that relates (a) to a person’s gender transition; or (b) to a person’s exploration of their identity or to its development.”
Under the bill, causing a minor to undergo “conversion therapy,” either in or outside Canada, or of forcing an adult to do so, is punishable by up to five years in prison. Advertising or profiting from “conversion therapy” is punishable by up to two years in jail.
Sloan pointed out that the federal bill follows similar legislation in PEI, Nova Scotia, and Ontario’s Bill 77, brought in by Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government in 2015. None of these provincial bills involved an amendment to the Criminal Code, which is under federal jurisdiction.
“Now the gender ideologists in the federal Liberal Party want to drag the rest of Canada into an upside-down world that eliminates parental rights in this area,” he wrote.
“Of course, every responsible MP should support measures to prevent coercive counselling that harms patients,” Sloan observed.
But “conversion therapy bans” are “far too broad and represent a dangerous overreach into personal liberties and parental rights,” he noted.
Moreover, “studies show that the vast majority of children who identify as ‘trans’ grow out of it, and by adulthood they end up happily identifying with the body they were born with, regardless of their sexual orientation,” Sloan wrote.
In an email sent by Sloan to his followers on March 10, he called the bill an “Orwellian example” of how the liberal left changes the meaning of words to hide the truth.
In his email, Sloan slams the Canadian Federal Government for promoting the gender ideologist line that a child’s biological sex is “fluid” and “that they indeed might not be ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ as their parents have rightly taught them.”
Sloan’s email said gender ideologists first “lure confused children who develop gender dysphoria to take hormones to alter their still developing bodies.” Then if a child or parent wants to stop the “conversion,” gender ideologists “condemn efforts at counselling as ‘conversion therapy’.”
He added that the whole thing is a “nightmare.”
He pointed the finger directly at the Liberal Party under Trudeau as taking “the rest of Canada” into a lopsided place where parental rights are stripped.
“Now the gender ideologists in the federal Liberal Party want to drag the rest of Canada into an upside-down world that eliminates parental rights in this area,” said Sloan.
“Not only that: these so-called ‘conversion therapy’ bans prevent underage patients suffering from gender dysphoria from getting counselling help, even if they ask for it.”
Sloan mentioned that studies have shown most children who identify as “trans” do “grow out of it” by the time they become adults.
Jack Fonseca, Director of Political Operations at Campaign Life Coalition, told LifeSiteNews that Sloan is to be commended for “calling out the insanity and child abuse being pushed by ‘gender ideologists’ as he calls them.”
“He is 100% correct in his assessment. They are stark raving mad in pushing boys to believe that they are girls in the wrong body, and vice-versa. I would go further and argue that these ideologists are predatory child abusers, pushing kids to sexualize at an early age, and to commit an extreme form of self-harm, in the form of bodily mutilation,” he said.
Fonseca said that Sloan has emerged as the “lone voice of sanity in the House of Commons on this issue, calling a spade a spade with regards to the unscientific theory of Gender Identity. In having the courage to condemn this evil, proposed law, he is demonstrating that he is a natural leader, and truly fit to take on the role of Opposition Leader, and future Prime Minister.”
“I hope that every Conservative MP will carefully read MP Sloan’s analysis of the disingenuously named ‘conversion therapy’ bill, and join him in working to defeat this unconstitutional and child abusive legislation. Not only do we need to defeat C-8, but I think we need to start pushing for a law that makes it illegal to commit sex change mutilation surgery and to give body-modification hormones to still-developing children under the age of 18. When they are adults and more capable of giving informed consent to procedures that have serious and irreversible effects like sterility and loss of bone density, is one thing. But for adults and the government to allow children to decide for themselves such matters — when the law deems those same children are too young and mentally immature to have sex, drive a car, or get a tattoo — represents criminal negligence,” he added.
CLC is urging social conservatives to ensure that Sloan makes it onto the final ballot by helping in raise $150,000 (the balance owing on his $300,000 entry fee) that needs to be submitted to the party by March 25th. Sloan’s campaign page where donations can be made is found here.
Sloan’s denunciation of Bill C-8 has been echoed by other pro-family groups, including Parents As First Educators (PAFE). Campaign Life’s analysis of Bill C-8 is here, and PAFE’s is here.
Campaign Life is also supporting Toronto lawyer Leslyn Lewis and Ontario businessman Jim Karaholios in the race. Information on the three candidates is available at Campaign Life’s website here.
Campaign Life is urging Canadians 14 years of age and older to buy Conservative Party memberships before April 17 to be eligible to vote in the leadership race.
Note: Anthony Murdoch contributed to this report.
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