The Latest Religious Incident Reverberating Across Canada: Bill C-9 and the Arc of History

People walk in the parliamentary district in Ottawa on March 10, 2025. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Commentary

In July 1940, the federal government banned Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs). As William Kaplan explains, it became “illegal for Jehovah’s Witnesses to worship God as they wished—and the law was vigorously enforced. Beatings, mob action, police persecution, as well as state persecution, were the order of the day as Jehovah’s Witnesses ignored the ban and continued to go about their work, spreading the word of God.”

The persecution of JWs led to several cases before the Supreme Court of Canada. In the Court’s 1953 Saumur decision, Justice Ivan Rand stated, “a religious incident reverberates from one end of this country to the other, and there is nothing to which the ‘body politic of the Dominion’ is more sensitive.”

Now, the federal government is embroiled in yet another religious incident reverberating across the country. The turning point came when Culture Minister Marc Miller expressed his views to the parliamentary committee reviewing Bill C-9, the “Combatting Hate Act.”

Bill C-9 has the potential to make the federal government’s 1940 actions against the JWs seem like child’s play. Ostensibly, the bill aims to fight hate and protect religious places of worship. However, it is now apparent that this is an attempt to criminalize religious views that the government finds objectionable.

Responding to the presentation at the committee meeting by Derek Ross of the Christian Legal Fellowship, Miller opined:

“In Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Romans—there are other passages—there’s clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals. I don’t understand how the concept of good faith can be invoked if someone were literally invoking a passage from, in this case, the Bible—there are other religious texts that say the same thing—and somehow say that this is good faith.”

He continued: “Clearly there are situations in these texts where these statements are hateful. They should not be used to invoke, be a defence, and there should perhaps be discretion for prosecutors to press charges. I just want to understand what your notion of good faith is in this context where there are clearly passages in religious texts that are clearly hateful.”

Ross responded: “I don’t know that I would agree with that characterization, Mr. Chair, that passages are categorically hateful, especially not passages in the Bible. If members of Parliament are of the view that passages of the Bible are hateful, that’s something that Canadians should be aware of.”

Indeed, Canadians are now fully aware.

For the last two decades, Canada has endured a legal revolution against the accommodation of religious practices and beliefs. There are many layers to this opinion but suffice it to say that Canadian law has come a long way in 20 years from the Supreme Court of Canada’s statement in the 2004 Marriage Reference case: “The protection of freedom of religion afforded by s. 2(a) of the Charter is broad and jealously guarded in our Charter jurisprudence.” Through a series of decisions, such as the Hutterian Brethren case and the Trinity Western law school case, the court has followed government restrictions on religious freedom. The Canada of 2004 is a far different country than the Canada of 2025— “they do things differently there.”

Government policies now restrict religious groups’ access to Canada Summer Jobs grants if the groups do not subscribe to government ideology on a host of cultural issues; there is a refusal to accommodate religious objections to health-care mandates; and the recent Finance Committee’s 2024 recommendation to remove the charitable status of pro-life pregnancy care centres and the advancement of religion are but a few examples of this legal revolution. There is much more on tap, including Quebec’s Laïcité.

The so-called “cultural issues” are particularly acute today, and it would appear from the minister’s comments that they are top of mind for why the federal government wants to expand the definition of “hate” in this legal revolution against religious views and practices seen as challenging the publicly acceptable narrative.

It is imperative to understand that religious freedom did not come without a price. Governments and authoritarians have always been at odds with Christianity. On Feb. 24, 303 A.D., Roman Emperor Diocletian issued his First Edict to destroy Christian churches and scriptures. Christianity was seen as a seditious movement because it did not accept the Roman gods nor the Roman emperor as the supreme authority. Its scriptures were politically incorrect. Churches and scriptures were burned throughout the empire on a massive scale.

Diocletian was not done with burning churches and religious texts. His Second Edict jailed all Christian clergy. Dictatorial authority has little patience for centres of influence against its policy.

Diocletian’s Third Edict required the death of clergy who refused to sacrifice to the Roman gods and released those who acquiesced to Roman religious imperatives. In every persecution, there are those who succumb to fear and a precious few who do not.

Finally, his Fourth Edict in early 304 A.D. mandated that all inhabitants of the Roman Empire publicly offer sacrifices to the traditional Roman gods. Nothing less than universal religious conformity was demanded in public spaces for all to see. Refusal to follow the order led to imprisonment, torture, and execution.

The Roman state would tolerate no competition to its authority from the upstart Jewish sect with a mission to evangelize the world based on the teachings of Jesus Christ—the same Messiah Rome crucified on a cross. Rome’s splattering of Christian blood became the seed of Church growth, despite the butchering and burning of churches and scriptures.

Throughout the millennia, the Christian Church has faced persecution in one form or another as political powers sought to commandeer religion for their own purposes. One Christian branch was often played against another, and those out of power were brutally assaulted and murdered. It continues to this day.

The 2025 “World Watch” report by the NGO Open Doors states that more than 380 million Christians are subject to “high levels of persecution and discrimination.” One in seven Christians worldwide faces “high” levels of persecution and discrimination, including one in five in Africa and one in seven in Asia.

Persecution of Christians (and other religious minorities) often follows the Roman model. Places of worship and religious texts are among the first to be attacked. It does not have to be state action at first; it may be the state turning a blind eye to chaos in the streets or in its public institutions. Canada’s federal government is just now becoming aware of the long arc of history and Justice Rand’s prescient statement about the sensitivity of “a religious incident.”

The revolution in Canadian society against traditional religious views on “cultural” issues is evident in public institutions—the media, the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the medical and legal professions, the business community, the universities, and the various levels of government.

For many Christian groups, the recent debates on Bill C-9 have a cultural and historical resonance. They have seen this playbook before.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.