Compulsory sterilization in Canada of individuals deemed mentally unfit or "socially inadequate" was widespread in the early to mid-20th century. Laws based on the principles of eugenics led to the compulsory sterilization of thousands of individuals, many of whom were Indigenous women, persons with disabilities and intersex individuals.
The legal basis for compulsory sterilization in Canada can be traced back to the passage of the Sexual Sterilization Act in Alberta in 1928. This legislation allowed for the sterilization of mental hospital inmates to prevent the transmission of disability, resulting in 2,800 sterilizations prior to its repeal in 1972. Similar legislation existed in British Columbia from 1933–73, affecting an estimated 200-400 people.
Allegations of both physically forced sterilization and coerced sterilization, with procedures either not explained or presented as 'reversible', have been reported. In 2019, an investigation by the Standing Committee on Human Rights in Canada was opened into the compulsory sterilization of Canadians. The paired reports, released in 2021 and 2022, concluded that the compulsory sterilization was ongoing in Canada, highlighting a risk to indigenous, disabled and racialized women, in addition to institutionalized persons and intersex children.
In 2021, Bill S-250 was introduced to amend section 268 of the Canadian criminal code, including forced sterilization under the definition of aggravated assault. The bill was terminated when parliament was prorogued and dissolved in January 2025, and was later reintroduced as Bill S-228.
History of eugenics in Canada
Eugenics movements appeared in many European and American jurisdictions in response to historical, social, scientific, economic, and political processes occurring at the time. Francis Galton invented the term "eugenics" in 1883, building it from its Greek roots meaning "good in birth" or "noble in heredity". Eugenics "was concerned with the improvement of the human standard and focused on the influence that would give 'the more suitable races or strain of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable'". Eugenicists were concerned with managing the direction human evolution would take: natural selection, about which Galton's cousin Charles Darwin wrote, was insufficient to deal with the needs of modern society.Bashford, A., Levine, P. (Eds.). (2010). The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics. If left solely to nature, eugenicists argued, the dangerous classes, who were thought to have a high-volume reproductive rate, would take over. These ideas, which were promoted abroad, were quick to gain popularity in Canada in the early 1900s.Grekul, J., Krahn, H., & Odynak, D. (2004). "Sterilizing the 'feeble-minded': eugenics in Alberta, Canada, 1929–1972". Journal of Historical Sociology, 17, 358–384. Nova Scotia was home of the first "eugenics movement" in the country when the League for the Care and Protection of Feebleminded Persons was established in the province in 1908.The Right to Consent?: Eugenics in Alberta, 1928–1972, Jana Grekul 2009 In Quebec, Ontario, and elsewhere, academics and physicians worked to enlist hereditarians to their ranks and publicly supported eugenics.
Eugenicists sought to actively support the reproduction of some women while at the same time seeking to ensure their cooperation in efforts to curb the reproduction of others through their support for measures like marriage regulation, institutionalization and sterilization.Menzies, Robert. (1998). "Governing Mentalities: The Deportation of 'Insane' and 'Feebleminded' Immigrants Out of British Columbia From Confederation to World War II". Canadian Journal of Law and Society Many eugenicists were prepared to support certain rights for some women to the extent that these would help support the political and economic enterprise of nation building based on an inherently racial notion of who belonged.McLaren, Angus. (1986). "The Creation of a Haven for 'Human Thoroughbreds': The Sterilization of the Feeble-minded and the Mentally Ill in British Columbia". Canadian Historical Review, LXVII, 2, pp. 127–150. Official compulsory sterilization as a part of the eugenics movement in Canada began in the 1920s.
Ideology worked to conceal the historical and material relations that gave rise to many of the social problems of Canadian society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by allocating the causes to poverty, crime and illness within individuals instead. Adoption of proposed interventions like sterilization served as a cost-effective public health solution allowing systemic explanations to be avoided, private interests to benefit and exploitative relations to continue. In their efforts, eugenicists also encouraged the reproduction of the "fit", namely women of Anglo-Saxon, middle- and upper-class origins. Fearing a decrease in the birth rate due to their increased access to education, the achievement of work outside the home and rising infant mortality rates, eugenicists sought to bring these women "back home" by enticing them to become crusaders to the eugenic cause.Equality Deferred Sex Discrimination and British Columbia's Human Rights State, 0953-84 DOMINIQUE CLEMENT 2014
United Nations Concerns and Review The 1999 international conference of The United Nations Human Rights Commission, stated that Canada "is in violation of international law in its treatment of its aboriginal people" and that the condition of natives in Canada is "the most pressing human rights issue facing Canadians."
The United Nations Committee Against Torture requested that Canada take action against forced sterilization in their 2018 periodic report on Canada. Reviewing reports from the 1970's onward, the committee presented 2 major recommendations that the senate:
"(a) Ensure that all allegations of forced or coerced sterilization are impartially investigated, that the persons responsible are held accountable and that adequate redress is provided to the victims;
(b) Adopt legislative and policy measures to prevent and criminalize the forced or coerced sterilization of women, particularly by clearly defining the requirement for free, prior and informed consent with regard to sterilization and by raising awareness among indigenous women and medical personnel of that requirement."
The same concerns were repeated during the re-evaluation of Canada by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and UN Special Rapporteurs in 2019.
Alberta
The most damaging sterilization program in Canadian history was afforded via the passing of the Sexual Sterilization Act of 1928. From the years 1928 to 1972, sterilizations, both compulsory and optional (when approved by guardian or parent), were performed on nearly 3000 individuals of varying ages and ethnicities. In total, over 2800 procedures were performed. Initially, the act only provisioned sterilizations where consent was given by the subject or legal guardian of the subject, depending on the competency of the individual scheduled to undergo the operation.
The 1937 amendment to the act, during the term of William Aberhart's Social Credit government, allowed for sterilizations to be carried out without consent in the case of those deemed mentally defective. Sterilization of individuals deemed mentally ill still required consent. At the end of World War II, while other eugenic sterilization programs were being phased out, Alberta continued on, even increasing the scope of eligibility for sterilizations. They continued until 1972, when approximately 5000 people were operated upon.
Targeted sterilization Youths, minorities, and women were sterilized in disproportionately high numbers. Minors, because of their legal dependency on adults, were almost always assigned as "mental defectives", thus bypassing the parental consent requirement.Canada, Parliament, Senate. Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights. (2021). FORCED AND COERCED STERILIZATION OF PERSONS IN CANADA. 43rd Parl., 2nd sess. Rept. 3. Retrieved from the Senate of Canada website: https://sencanada.ca/content/sen/committee/432/RIDR/Reports/RIDR_ForcedSterilization_e.pdf Albertan Indigenous people and Métis, regardless of age, were also targeted. Towards the end of Alberta's sterilization program, Indigenous people and Métis made up 25% of the sterilizations performed.
Furthermore, those of Indigenous ancestry were disproportionately assigned the "mentally deficient" rating, which denied them their legal rights and made them eligible for sterilization without consent. Indigenous people represented only 2.3% of Alberta's general population but 6% of the institutionalized population due to systemic impediments such as poverty, discrimination, and inadequate access to education and healthcare. Women, particularly those who were young, poor, and unmarried, were also disproportionately represented; they were thought to be at high risk for prostitution or at the very least promiscuity, activities suspected of breeding further immorality. While it was conceded that sterilization would not change the behavior of these women, sterilization was intended to prevent them from bearing similarly defective progeny.
Aftermath Nearly 3000 people were rendered sterile by the Sexual Sterilization Act. The true nature of the Act was revealed when Leilani Muir, a former inmate of the Michener Centre (also known as the Provincial Training School for Mental Defectives, PTS), discovered in 1971 that she had been sterilized. After being admitted to the PTS at age 10 as an unwanted and abused child, Leilani was given a substandard education. She was inaccurately designated a mentally defective moron (an individual with an IQ between 51 and 70), effectively nullifying her human rights. She was administered powerful antipsychotic agents without any due cause, as she had not manifested any symptoms of psychosis during her incarceration at the PTS. Eventually, she was given an impromptu IQ test, on which she scored a 64. Shortly thereafter, she was taken before the Eugenics Board, and sterilization was authorized pending her mother's consent (which was readily given).
In 1995, in damages for her humiliation at being labeled a moron and her subsequent sterilization, Leilani was awarded C$750,000 and C$230,000 (together $ in dollars). Since the victory, another 1300 cases have been opened, several of them concerning individuals who may have actual mental disabilities.
British Columbia