By The Canadian Press

Survivors call on Ottawa to pass bill to criminalize forced or coerced sterilization

Feb 24, 2026 | 9:30 AM

OTTAWA — Parliament must pass legislation to criminalize non-consensual sterilization, survivors said Tuesday in a press conference on Parliament Hill.

Bill S-228 passed the Senate last fall, and is scheduled to have its first real debate in the House of Commons on Thursday.

The bill would amend the Criminal Code to make sterilizing a person without obtaining informed consent an act of aggravated assault.

The Survivors Circle for Reproductive Justice said it’s estimated between 12,000 and 15,000 individuals have been sterilized in the country without proper consent, including cases as recently as last year.

The procedure disproportionately harms Indigenous women but has also affected people with disabilities, racialized women and members of the LGBTQ community.

Heather Bear said stories like hers aren’t acceptable.

“It’s been hard and gruelling to realize that you were violated — that I was violated in that manner. We trust doctors, we’re supposed to trust the health care system. (When) it’s breached, it does leave you with a sense of vulnerability,” Bear said.

Sen. Yvonne Boyer, who introduced the bill in the Senate, said women told her they were sterilized during “their most vulnerable” moments, sometimes during labour or while medicated.

She said while there are existing provisions in the Criminal Code that deal with assault, they’ve never been used to prosecute forced sterilization.

“That silence has allowed confusion, inconsistency and, ultimately, impunity,” Boyer said.

“Bill S-228 sends a clear message: In Canada, no one has a right to permanently take away another person’s ability to have children through coercion, pressure, deception or abuse of authority.”

The final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, released in 2019, documented forced sterilization in Indigenous women, which they said was used as a means to lower Indigenous populations.

The Assembly of First Nations has long called for the criminalization of forced sterilization, calling it a “gross violation of human rights.”

Senators on the human rights committee studied the issue in depth, hearing from survivors and advocates, including from Sen. Amina Gerba who herself was sterilized in 2005.

Gerba said her gynecologist signed her up for an endometrial ablation, which involves the removal of some tissue that causes heavy menstruation.

In 2016, during treatment for an unrelated medical issue, Gerba’s doctor ordered a pelvic ultrasound.

She said she was baffled when her doctor told her she no longer had a uterus because she believed she had only undergone a minor procedure — not a hysterectomy.

“I was never informed,” she told The Canadian Press in October. “It was when I listened to the witnesses that I realized that I was actually a victim of this.”

Conservative MP Jamie Schmale, who is sponsoring the legislation in the House of Commons, said he is hoping the bill will pass as soon as possible.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 24, 2026.

— With files from Dylan Robertson

Alessia Passafiume, The Canadian Press