The Senate Human Rights Committee calls for the Criminal Code to be amended to explicitly criminalize forced and coerced sterilization.
Posted at 5:29 p.m.
The Senate committee tabled its second report Thursday morning on forced and coerced sterilization in Canada. In 2021, he had submitted a first study which denounced the operation as still being practiced in the country. In this second part, he offers 13 recommendations to put an end to this “unacceptable practice”.
The development of the recommendations stems from several testimonies, including nine from survivors. Some say they had their fallopian tubes tied without consent when they had just given birth. Those who had been briefly warned before the operation had been given incorrect information. They were wrongly told that the sterilization was reversible, the committee’s report reads.
“It’s in her best interest that she undergo this procedure,” Nicole Rabbit was told in 2001 by hospital staff in Saskatchewan.
The right to procreation and the right to control one’s body are protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, recalls the report. If considered an assault, causing bodily harm and an aggravated assault, forced and coerced sterilization is criminal. However, there is no formal offense relating to intervention in the criminal code.
As women continue to be coerced into sterilization even today, the Senate committee calls for the practice to be explicitly criminal. “If doctors knew that they could possibly face criminal sanctions, that could change behaviors quite quickly,” lawyer Alisa Lombard told the committee.
Canada has a long history of forced and coerced sterilization, primarily among Indigenous, racialized and disabled women. Sterilization policies stem from the eugenics movement of the 1920s aimed at the elimination of indigenous peoples, the report says.
Nearly 1,150 women in northern Canada or treated in federal Aboriginal hospitals were said to have been sterilized, reveal historical documents cited in the report by Dr.r Karen Stote of Wilfrid Laurier University. The Senate committee has identified a total of 12,000 women forcibly sterilized, said Senator Yvonne Boyer at a press conference Thursday morning.
Restore trust
According to testimonies, racism and discrimination are the dominant factors leading to forced and coerced sterilizations. The survivors denounce the serious consequences of this “odious practice” which still continues in the country.
The Senate committee is also asking for a review of the concept of consent, when these women were “manipulated” and “forced” to accept the intervention. Consent is “allowing a person to make a choice,” said Senator Michèle Audette at a press conference.
The second recommendation of the report essentially aims to provide medical associations with a consent framework “clear and in accordance with the legal principles in force”.
The Senate committee also proposes that the government develop a “restitution scheme” for victims for the suffering caused to them. Survivors cannot afford in vitro fertilization, for example.
The other recommendations of the committee relate essentially to a tightening of the measures necessary for the government to ensure the follow-up of investigations in matters of consent and adequately protect patients. A formal apology to the people of Canada is also requested.
Still according to the Senate committee, we cannot have a precise idea of the extent of the problem of forced and coerced sterilizations in Canada, since the collection of data is modest. Several studies have been carried out in western Canada, but in Quebec the data are “particularly deficient”, mentions in the report Suzy Basile, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Women’s Issues at the University of Quebec in Abitibi-Témiscamingue.