Senator Yvonne Boyer, a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario, said coerced sterilization is not only a historic problem in Canada but a current concern. Boyer arrives for a news conference on July 14, 2022 in Ottawa.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
A non-profit group is compiling a new registry to produce data on the prevalence of forced and coerced sterilizations involving Indigenous patients in Canada to bolster awareness of the practice and research ways of preventing it.
The registry was launched on Friday by a group called the Survivors Circle for Reproductive Justice. It is a non-profit that focuses on the experiences of individuals who have experienced forced or coerced sterilization.
Sterilizations, also known as a tubal ligations, involve the severing, burning, or tying of the Fallopian tubes and prevent an egg from being able to move to the uterus. The result is individuals can no longer get pregnant.
Claudette Dumont Smith, a board co-chair for the Survivors Circle, said the registry will bring together survivors and help support their healing and reconciliation process “as we work together to put an end to this crime.”
“Canada has a long history of using forced and coerced sterilization against Indigenous women,” she said.
The issue of forced and coerced sterilizations in Canada, including among Indigenous patients, has been a topic of discussion on Parliament Hill for many years and the subject of study in the Senate.
In 2021, the Senate committee on human rights said the precise number of Indigenous women who have been subjected to forced and coerced sterilization in Canada is unclear and it is critical that accurate data be compiled.
Senator Yvonne Boyer, who has worked as a nurse, lawyer and academic, said it is likely every Indigenous person knows someone who has been sterilized or has been sterilized themselves. In an interview, she lauded the establishment of the registry, noting this approach was used in Peru where more than 200,000 Indigenous women were forcibly sterilized.
Ms. Boyer, a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario, said coerced sterilization is not only a historic problem in Canada but a current concern.
The new national registry is designed to capture experiences of thousands of First Nation, Inuit and Métis survivors who have experienced sterilization, the Survivors Circle said in a Friday statement.
Ms. Boyer is a former director of programs for the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, which focused on supports to address the effects of residential schools. She believes the Survivors Circle should receive additional federal funding to examine why coerced sterilizations have happened in Canada, increase awareness and help survivors heal.
The Ontario senator also put forward legislation in June, 2022, proposing that anyone who – through deception, intimidation, threat, force or any other form of coercion, causes or attempts to cause a person to undergo a sterilization – would be guilty of an indictable offence.
The bill, which passed third reading in the Senate, says a guilty individual would be liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years.
Ms. Boyer has spent several years bringing the issue of forced and coerced sterilizations in Canada to light. Prior to being appointed to the Senate, she co-authored a report published in 2017 about how Indigenous women in Saskatoon and surrounding areas were coerced into tubal ligations after they gave birth in hospital.
Ms. Boyer said she was previously hesitant about criminalization because, as a lawyer, she saw how the Criminal Code was used against Indigenous people. But she said many survivors were adamant that this approach is necessary.
Ms. Boyer sees the issue as the “height of racism and discrimination” and the “height of powerfulness versus powerlessness.”
She believes there is a strong possibility her Aunt Lucy, who talked to her about racism in the health care system and who was never able to bear children, was sterilized while at a sanatorium in Fort Qu’Appelle in Saskatchewan. Ms. Boyer has not been able to confirm this because medical records were destroyed.
While working in a 50-bed hospital in Alberta, Ms. Boyer said she overheard other nurses saying the “Indian problem” will be solved when all the women are sterilized.