Easter is almost here – and Canada’s Liberal government has chosen this sacred season to display its utter contempt for Christianity. It is currently forcing through the outrageous Bill C-9, which could make it a hate crime to quote from sections of the Bible.
The Liberal government has laid the foundations for religious persecutionca
More than 40 civil and religious groups had asked that for the Bill’s language be clarified and its scope more carefully defined so that religious texts would not be subject to hate crime legislation. But all in vain. After a hot debate in the House of Commons, the Liberals highhandedly ended a Conservative filibuster and fast-tracked the bill. It has now been sent to the Senate to decide if Canada is the kind of country that wants to turn quoting St. Paul into a criminal act.
The Combatting Hate Act is not just concerned with religious speech. It is a sweeping but vaguely-worded law intended to fight “antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia.” One of its new categories of hate crime is intimidation. This is defined so loosely that all kinds of lawful behavior, including peaceful protest and religious expression, could be criminalized in consequence.
Intimidation, according to the bill, means “engaging in any conduct” – any conduct, not necessarily threatening conduct – “with the intent to provoke a state of fear in a person in order to impede their access to a building or structure.” Canadian police will have to get very good at mind-reading. How else will they know if an idler on the pavement is simply gazing into space, or staring at someone “with intent” to cause fear?
New police training will be needed in any case. The bill grants the police unprecedentedly wide discretionary powers and removes oversight from the Attorney General. The bill also increases the sentences for hate crime to up to ten years of jail. This is a potent combination. We will have a loosely defined thought crime; increased police powers with a reduction in oversight; and massively increased sentencing. The innocent will have the cards stacked against them.
But the most controversial part of all is the removal of the hate-crime exemption for good-faith interpretation of a religious text, which was previously enshrined in the criminal code to prevent religious persecution and harassment.
The Bible is certainly in the government’s crosshairs. Marc Miller, the minister of Canadian identity and culture, testified in parliamentary discussions about the legislation that he believes there is “clear hatred” in the Bible, particularly in Deuteronomy, Leviticus and St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. He said he didn’t understand how the concept of good faith can be invoked in quoting certain passages from the Bible, and there should be discretion for prosecutors to press charges for criminal hate speech.
This should have instantly delegitimized anything further Miller had to say on the topic, and he should have apologized. How can he, or indeed any elected official, decide what the Bible means, or question whether Christians can quote its texts in good faith? If the government of Canada wanted to understand a difficult Bible passage, it should approach a qualified religious authority – perhaps the Canadian Catholic bishops’ conference, whose concerns about the legislation went unheeded – and respectfully asked for an explanation.
But instead, they escalated from insult to injury. After disregarding numerous protests, petitions and letters from religious and civil liberty associations, the Carney government has rushed through this hugely problematic piece of legislation. In doing so, the Liberal government has laid the foundations for religious persecution.
In Canada, where at least 123 Christian churches have been burned or vandalized since the government recklessly lent credence to unsubstantiated reports of mass graves in Kamloops, such attitudes puts people and institutions at risk. The previous Liberal prime minister famously shrugged off church burnings as “understandable” – and the arsons continued. They are still going on.
Even if no judge is so witless as to jail a person for quoting the Bible, this supposedly anti-hate law will actually fuel anti-religious hatred, promote a climate of fear among Christians (who will now wonder if they will be prosecuted for expressing their religious convictions), and give abusive authorities leeway to harass them on religious grounds.
For a government that wants to end hatred, the Liberals seem remarkably keen to discredit a religious text that requires its adherents to have charity for everyone, including enemies and ill-wishers. If they had taken the time to study St. Paul before picking up their legislative pens, perhaps they could begin to understand the complexity of the human heart: “the good which I will, I do not; but the evil which I will not, that I do.”
Some tasks are above the powers of government. Interpreting the Bible is one; unraveling the loves and hates of the human heart is another. The Orwellian authors of this anti-hate legislation should learn to accept their limitations.
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