If Canada passes recently proposed legislation, a young person who is uncomfortable with his or her gender will have limited choices, and so will the parents.

The Senate in Canada will soon be voting on Bill 202, a measure that criminalizes so-called conversion therapy for young people to accept their born gender. It would make doctors, psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists, and pastors, as well as the person who schedules the appointment, in violation of the criminal code.

"That psychologist, if they counsel that child that this is something that child will grow out of, or if they counsel the child that biologically that child is either male or female; they are in the correct body -- that would be an offense under the act," explains Jay Cameron, litigation manager at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

And parents would not be able to seek help for their children.

Cameron

"It deprives parents of the statistically most successful means of treating gender dysphoria; it's the most successful way to treat gender dysphoria because gradually a person becomes comfortable in the body they are in," Cameron submits. "They come to recognize I am a girl or I am a boy, and they stop being uncomfortable, and they go on and they live the rest of their life."

But under Bill 202, there is only one choice left for parents and counselors, and that is to affirm the young person's gender confusion, provide hormone treatments and surgery to transition to the opposite gender -- which is impossible, even with hormone and surgery treatment.