Most Canadians cheered when Pierre Trudeau famously stated that “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Parliament repealed the criminal prohibition on consensual same-sex activity. If the state has no place in the nation’s bedrooms, why does it now claim a place in the nation’s counselling offices and psychology clinics?
Since Bill C-4 became law in 2022, it has been a criminal offence in Canada for counsellors, doctors, pastors, priests, or even parents to help a consenting adult who wants to feel more comfortable with their biological sex, reduce unwanted same-sex attractions, or align their “gender identity” with their biological reality. Bill C-4 passed with unanimous support from the Conservative Opposition and all parties in the House. This legislation was sold to Canadians as a ban on “conversion therapy,” a term associated with inhumane practices such as forcing people to undergo electric shock during the presentation of same-sex erotic images, something that has not been practiced for many decades. In a clever but deceitful fashion, Bill C-4 purported to prohibit what was already illegal, namely, force and abuse.
Canadian parents can now be jailed for the “crime” of helping their own gender-confused children to feel comfortable in the body they were born with. Counsellors, too, are exposed to criminal liability if they help someone who previously identified as transgender and now wants to “detransition,” or if they help someone who wants to stop having same-sex attraction. Instead of proposing ways to overcome unwanted gender confusion, the only legally safe option for professionals and parents is to “affirm” it.
In March 2026, in Chiles v. Salazar, the US Supreme Court struck down a Colorado law similar to Canada’s Bill C-4. Kaley Chiles is a licenced counsellor in Colorado with a master’s degree in clinical mental health. She does not impose any predetermined goals on her clients. Instead, she listens to what they want to achieve and helps them pursue those goals through ordinary talk therapy. Some of her clients wish to reduce or eliminate unwanted same-sex attractions, change certain behaviours, or feel more at home in the body they were born with. Colorado’s law made the latter objectives illegal, while permitting (and in effect requiring) counsellors to support only a person’s transition to the opposite sex.
With a majority of eight-to-one, the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado’s ban violated the First Amendment’s free speech protections. Laws that target speech based on its content or viewpoint amount to unconstitutional discrimination. The US Supreme Court declared that history “is littered with examples of governments that have sought to manipulate professional speech to increase state power, to suppress minorities, and to censor unpopular ideas.” The Court also noted that the First Amendment “stands as a bulwark against any effort to prescribe an orthodoxy of views.”
The client-centred approach taken by Ms. Chiles is similar to that of the late Dr. Joseph Nicolosi (1947-2017), who counselled men who wanted to reduce their same-sex attractions. In his book Case Stories in Reparative Therapy, Dr. Nicolosi explained that many such men had received little or no affection, approval, or attention from their own fathers. Emotionally distant from their fathers, they grew up feeling alienated from their own masculinity and never fully developed a secure inner sense of maleness. Dr. Nicolosi argued that when a boy’s masculinity is not integrated into his identity as a boy, he will crave masculinity when he becomes an adult. Dr. Nicolosi posited that a boy’s unmet need for a healthy, non-sexual connection with other males could later become eroticized. Same-sex attraction, he argued, can represent a striving to reclaim a lost part of one’s masculine identity.
In today’s political and cultural climate, it’s easy to dismiss Dr. Nicolosi as a pseudo-scientist, a dangerous fraudster, or worse. However, there are many men and women who speak publicly about their own experiences of a change in sexual orientation. One could argue that these people are deluding themselves or lying, but modern research confirms that sexual orientation is fluid and can change with time.
Why, then, should the state be allowed to criminalize the personal counselling choices that consenting adults wish to make? Why should parents risk jail for trying to help their own gender-confused children feel comfortable in their bodies, rather than steering them toward medical transition and “affirming” said confusions?
Most Canadians believe, as the US Supreme Court affirmed last month, that the state has no place in the therapy offices and counselling centres of the nation. If Canada’s laws truly reflected the majority public opinion, and if our laws respected the personal freedom and choice of consenting adults, Bill C-4 would never have been approved by Parliament. Without Bill C-4, Canadians would still enjoy the basic liberty to seek the psychological help that best aligns with their own values and goals, and parents would be free to help their gender-confused children without fearing criminal charges.
John Carpay, B.A., LL.B., is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (jccf.ca).
