TORONTO

Ontario would officially ban “conversion” therapy for gay and transgender children and teens under legislation introduced Wednesday by NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo.

The Affirming Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Act would also prohibit OHIP coverage of adult therapy based on conversion, DiNovo said.

“Being lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, two spirited or queer is who one is,” DiNovo said. “To tell a child that who they are is wrong, we consider abusive.”

While counselling to convert a homosexual patient to heterosexuality has been broadly discredited in medical circles, there are still practitioners who believe that transgender individuals should be given therapy to accept their body’s birth gender, McMaster University researcher Jake Pyne said.

Some, but not all, of this therapy is religious-based, he added.

Erika Muse, a transgender woman, said she grew up in Hamilton where the only counsellor available to her offered conversion therapy.

While undergoing therapy from the age of 16 to 23, Muse said she was denied the medical treatment she requested to halt her body’s changes and instead told to try to be a “better man.”

“I live in a body that I hate and he could have stopped it,” Muse said.

Dr. Joey Bonifacio, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist at the Hospital for Sick Children, said conversion therapy is unethical, and can trigger depression and suicide in young people.

Mental and health-care professionals have a huge impact on the future of LGBTQ youth, he said.

“I see these families with children who identify as transgender desperately looking for guidance,” Bonifacio said. “I see the young adults who have depression and are cutting after meeting a homophobic therapist.”

DiNovo said her bill would ban conversion therapy for youth under 18, and prohibit health professionals from billing OHIP for adult conversion therapy.

Health Minister Eric Hoskins said such therapy is already prohibited by anti-discrimination provisions in the Ontario Human Rights Code.

OHIP has no specific billing code for conversion therapy either, he said.

“I’m not aware that it is going on but certainly I believe that the (College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario) would see it as almost certainly an act of professional misconduct,” Hoskins said.

Any patient or individual aware of a health professional providing conversion therapy should report it to the appropriate regulating body, he said.

“I want to acknowledge the private member’s bill that Cheri DiNovo is putting forward … I want to applaud her on the motivation behind that,” Hoskins said. “I hope to have the opportunity to work with her on this important issue.”

antonella.artuso@sunmedia.ca