In what former Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer called “a dark day for free speech in Canada,” the House of Commons passed a bill Wednesday that could criminalize the quoting of Bible passages if they are deemed to be hateful.
Bill C-9 passed the House on a 186-137 vote. Liberal Party and Bloc Québécois members of Parliament all voted in favor of the bill, while MPs from the Conservative, New Democratic, and Green parties opposed it en masse “in a rare form of unity among the usually opposing parties,” reported LifeSiteNews.
The previous day, in a nearly identical vote, the same parties shut down all debate on the bill to force it to a floor vote without the opportunity for further amendments.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where it will almost certainly be approved since that body primarily consists of appointees of former Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Canada’s Senate, modeled on the U.K.’s House of Lords, is an unelected body.)
Fraser Burn
Introduced by Liberal Justice Minister Sean Fraser, the “Combatting Hate Act” increases the maximum penalties for crimes “motivated by hatred based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, color, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.” For example, an offense whose maximum sentence is currently two years will have a maximum sentence of five years if the government believes it was motivated by hatred; a sentence of 14 years may be increased to life under the same circumstances. This, of course, gives prosecutors and judges considerable leeway to punish people whose opinions they dislike.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the bill also removes a religious exemption to the existing law’s prohibitions of “communicating statements” that promote or incite “hatred against any identifiable group.” Previously, an individual who could demonstrate that, “in good faith, they expressed … an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text” would not be guilty of a hate crime. Now, quoting Bible (or Torah or Koran) verses that condemn, e.g., homosexuality, transgenderism, or abortion could land someone behind bars.
“If Bill C-9 passes, people could be criminally charged just for reading certain passages of scripture,” Conservative MP Garnett Genuis warned Tuesday.
Canon Fire
Genuis also noted that high-ranking Liberal MP Marc Miller, chairman of the House Justice Committee, “already said he thinks [criminalizing Scripture] SHOULD happen.”
Responding to witnesses before the committee in October, Miller said:
In Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Romans — there’s 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.
Not for nothing did “hundreds of religious leaders” come out against the bill, according to LifeSiteNews. On top of that,
the law was also opposed by the Black Legal Action Centre, Association des juristes progressistes du Québec, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Centre for Free Expression, the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic, the Coalition for Charter Rights and Freedoms, Democracy Watch, the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, and hundreds of other organizations. [Emphasis in original.]
Cracking the Safeguards
Liberals attempted to allay their critics’ fears by inserting so-called “safeguards” into the bill.
“For greater certainty, the communication of a statement does not incite or promote hatred … solely because it discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends,” reads one part of the bill.
Another states — again “for greater certainty” — that the bill does not prohibit “a person from communicating a statement on a matter of public interest … if they do not wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group by communicating the statement.”
Elsewhere, Bill C-9 defines “hatred” as “an emotion of an intense and extreme nature that is clearly associated with vilification and detestation.”
These alleged clarifications only muddied the waters further and made skeptics even more skeptical. Writing in The Epoch Times, John Carpay, founder and president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, observed:
The bill allows Canadians to express “disdain” and “dislike” without worrying about facing criminal charges, yet Canadians must be careful not to possess illegal emotions that involve “detestation” or “vilification.” It’s not “hate” to discredit, humiliate, hurt, offend, and dislike people; it is “hate” to detest and vilify people. Are we clear?
Furthermore, the fact that the Liberals introduced and rammed the bill through, made clear that they believe Bible verses should be criminalized, and have spent more than a decade waging “an all-out assault on religious freedom and civil liberties” makes their assurances “come off as not only untrustworthy, but laughable,” penned LifeSiteNews.
Cooke’s Concerns
“With the passage of Bill C-9 in the House, Christians and pro-life advocates will almost certainly face an entirely new level of hostility, as the door swings open to actual persecution under a cloak of supposed legality,” David Cooke, campaigns manager for the Campaign Life Coalition, told LifeSiteNews.
“Calling abortion what it truly is — killing a human being — could be construed as vilifying women,” Cooke told the website previously. “Stating the obvious — that trans-women, i.e. biological men, should be removed from women’s washrooms and sports — could be construed as detesting transpeople.”
How long before Canada makes it illegal to detest politicians?
