The Canadian bill C-16 ("An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code") has been the subject of heated debate and controversy. I admit I hadn't followed it very closely, but I've seen many articles and videos discussing that it somehow made not addressing someone with their preferred pronoun illegal (e.g. here).

Today, I finally read what I think is the text of the bill and its accompanying analysis from the official site of the Canadian parliament and, as far as I can tell, all this bill is doing is adding gender identity to the list of reasons for which one should not be discriminated against.

So, why all this discussion about pronouns? I saw no mention of pronouns there nor any text that would suggest that intentionally not using someone's preferred pronoun could be considered illegal1. So why has so much of the negative reaction to the bill been centered around the concepts of free speech and misgendering people? Is there more text that I haven't found? Am I missing certain implications of the bill's language? Where does pronoun choice come into it?