Canada’s Parliament passed a hate-speech bill that critics claim threatens religious freedom.
Bill C-9 amends Canada’s Criminal Code and is intended to combat “hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places.”
According to a summary of the bill, the legislation aims to “create an offence of wilfully promoting hatred against any identifiable group by displaying certain symbols in a public place” and seeks to “repeal the defence based on the expression of opinions on religious subjects or texts in relation to the offences of wilful promotion of hatred or antisemitism.”
Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Brad Redekopp said upon the bill’s passage that it was a “dark day in Canadian history.”
“The House has passed Bill C-9—an assault on religious freedom that removes longstanding protections for Canadians expressing sincerely held beliefs,” he wrote on X. “Conservatives fought this bill every step of the way—and we will keep fighting until religious freedom is restored.”
Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre previously indicated that the amendments “criminalize sections of the Bible, Quran, Torah, and other sacred texts.”
Liberal Party MP and Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, Marc Miller questioned how Bible passages condemning homosexuality could be seen as “good faith.”
“In Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Romans, there are passages with clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals. I don’t understand how the concept of good faith could be invoked if someone were literally invoking a passage from, in this case, the Bible, though there are other religious texts that say the same thing,” he said. “Clearly, there are situations in these texts where statements are hateful. They should not be used to invoke…or be a defence. There should perhaps be discretion for prosecutors to press charges.”
