A March 29 social media post by Veterans Affairs Canada wishing veterans a “happy March holiday season” caused quite an uproar among many politicians and veterans, who worry that the Christian Easter holiday is being purposely renamed.
“Is [Veterans Affairs] too woke to acknowledge either the cultural or religious significance of Easter?” Conservative MP Michael Barrett wrote on X on March 30, adding, “53% of Canadians are Christian. And nobody worth worrying about is offended by wishes of a Happy Easter.”
Observers have noted increasing instances of Christians feeling sidelined in Canada in recent years.
Canada is rated as the third-worst persecutor of Christians among 34 Western nations, according to the 2024 edition of a report on the “intensifying intolerance toward Christians in the West,” published in January by the U.S.-based Family Research Council. The council’s Center for Religious Liberty documented incidents of discrimination and found 36 in Canada between 2020 and 2023, behind the United States at 58 and the United Kingdom at 43.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, within the Constitution Act of 1982, states that “Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” The charter says that it “guarantees” the freedom of conscience and religion; the freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression; the freedom of peaceful assembly; and the freedom of association.
Life Issues
In March, Montreal’s Roman Catholic archdiocese sought to be exempt from a Quebec law requiring all palliative care centres in the province to provide medical assistance in dying (MAID). St. Raphael’s palliative care centre is located in a former church still owned by the archdiocese. Its lease with the archdiocese forbade the facility from offering MAID.On March 1, Quebec Superior Court Justice Catherine Piché denied the request, saying that Quebecers’ right to choose their medical care was “fundamental” and that “religious beliefs [had] less legal weight.”
A hospice in B.C. faced a similar issue. The Delta Hospice Society had its lease and service agreement with the Fraser Health Authority revoked because it refused to offer MAID onsite.
A Christian organization had to resort to a lawsuit last year after the Quebec government cancelled an event it had planned at a provincially owned venue due to the group’s “anti-abortion” views.
The federal Liberal government announced in late 2017 that organizations applying for a 2018 grant under the taxpayer-funded Canada Summer Jobs program must declare they support abortion rights. Ottawa backtracked at the end of 2018 amid lawsuits by faith groups. However, the program is still off-limits to organizations whose main objective is to oppose abortion.
Beliefs
Back in 2012, Trinity Western University (TWU), a private Christian institution in Langley, B.C., sought to open a law school. However, law societies in B.C. and Ontario said they would not accredit the proposed law school because of its mandatory covenant requiring students to abstain from sex outside of heterosexual marriage. In 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the law societies’ right to do so. Months later, TWU made the covenant optional, Maclean’s reported.In 2017, an Edmonton evangelical Christian couple was denied the ability to adopt a child because of their religious views on gay marriage and homosexuality. However, their ability to adopt was reinstated following legal action.
Pastor Derek Reimer was forcibly removed from a Calgary public library in February 2023 for protesting at a drag queen storytime event for children. He was arrested and charged with a “hate-motivated crime.”
A month later, Mr. Reimer was arrested a second time for protesting another drag queen storytime at a public library. He was charged with causing a disturbance, engaging in criminal harassment, and breaching a release order.
Mr. Reimer’s actions prompted the City of Calgary to introduce a bylaw to ban protests within 100 metres of libraries in March 2023. The same month, he was issued a 30-day trespass notice following a silent prayer session at city hall in protest of the new bylaw, because he was praying without a permit. The charges were dismissed in February this year.
In 2022, Grade 11 student Josh Alexander was suspended from his Catholic school in Renfrew, Ontario, for expressing his religious belief that God created only two genders and for protesting against allowing transgender students who were biological males to use the girls’ washroom. He was later arrested for trespassing when he went to attend school.
In 2020, the federal government introduced Bill C-6 to amend the Criminal Code to ban conversion therapy. At the time, some Conservative MPs warned that the legislation’s broad definitions could criminalize normal conversations between children and their parents, counsellors, or religious leaders about gender and sexual behaviours.
An renewed version of the legislation in 2021, Bill C-4, criminalized practices, treatments, or services designed to, among others, “repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour” or “repress a person’s non-cisgender gender identity.” This time, the bill was adopted unanimously by MPs in the House and then similarly fast-tracked in the Senate before being passed into law in December 2021.
In February 2024, the B.C. Prosecution Service said it would address acts that “target and seek to repress, reduce, or change particular sexual orientations, gender identities, or gender expressions” as hate crimes according to a new policy.
Freedom of Assembly
The Center for Religious Liberty’s 2024 report counted many instances where churches were targeted for holding in-person services during the pandemic between 2020 and 2023. Pastor Artur Pawlowski of Calgary was arrested repeatedly. He received a 60-day jail sentence after being found guilty of counselling mischief for having delivered a speech to protesters in Coutts, Alberta, in February 2022, during the Freedom Convoy protests.Pastor James Coates of GraceLife Church near Edmonton was jailed for one month and six days in 2021, charged with violating public health orders restricting church attendance. The provincial government also seized and barricaded his church. Two years later, an Alberta court in July 2023 ruled that the public health orders issued during the pandemic were invalid.
Pastor Henry Hildebrandt and the Aylmer Church of God in Ontario were ordered to pay $274,000 in fines for violating pandemic rules by holding several drive-in services in 2021. After legal wrangling, Pastor Hildebrandt paid $65,000.
In March 2021, the B.C. Supreme Court stuck down public health orders that banned outdoor protests but maintained bans on in-person religious gatherings.
In March this year, the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear an appeal led by several Manitoba churches challenging the province’s lockdown restrictions affecting churches. This followed the top court’s announcements in August 2023 that it would not hear similar appeals by Pastor Hildebrandt in Ontario and three churches in B.C.
Federal Policies
In 2017, Parliament passed M-103, a motion introduced by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination.”Alternative wording proposed by Conservative MP David Anderson, in an attempt the Tories said was to make the motion more inclusive, was rejected. The Conservatives proposed stating that the government should condemn “all forms of systemic racism, religious intolerance, and discrimination of Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, and other religious communities.”
In December 2023, Conservative Marilyn Gladu introduced legislation to declare December “Christian Heritage Month.” Bill C-369 has so far not advanced past first reading. Meanwhile, Parliament proclaimed October as “Canadian Islamic History Month” back in 2007.
As well, in recent years, the federal government expanded the declaration of Pride Month, in June, to Pride Season, running from June to September.
Dozens of churches in Canada have been set ablaze in the past few years. Many fires followed the alleged discovery of unmarked graves near a residential school in Kamloops, B.C., in May 2021 and claims that indigenous children are buried there. So far, the site has not been excavated.
In 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the church burnings were “unacceptable and wrong,” while also saying that anger against the federal government and “the Catholic church ... is fully understandable given the shameful history.”
As The Epoch Times reported in October 2023, the Office of the Chaplain General at the Department of National Defence has issued a new policy to replace public prayer with non-religious “spiritual reflections” and to avoid the use of words like “God” and “Heavenly Father” in official ceremonies.
