Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for having us.
My name is André Schutten. I'm the director of law and policy with ARPA Canada. With me is Tabitha Ewert, my articling student.
It's a pleasure and a privilege to be able to speak to you this afternoon. I want to thank you, honourable members of the committee, for the hard work you do. It's very much appreciated by the community I represent.
Our concern lies with section 176 in clause 14 of Bill C-51. Perhaps there is a bit of ignorance here, and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense; I mean it simply in the sense that there is a lack of familiarity with what happens in a religious service. Perhaps that's what's motivating the recommendation to remove this section from the Criminal Code.
What actually happens in a religious service, I submit, is that it's an encounter with the divine at a time of vulnerability, which sets it apart as being different in kind from any other public encounter or event, such as a university lecture, a rally in a public park, or, dare I say, even a hockey game here in Canada. A reading from Torah in the synagogue, a prayer service in a mosque, a song in a Sikh temple, or a worship service in a church—all are communal events that involve an encounter with the transcendent that sets these kinds of events as apart, as being different in kind from university lectures and so on.
Some have suggested that causing a disturbance is already covered by the Criminal Code. Section 175 has been brought up a few times already today. That causes me some concern. Surely the members of this honourable committee are familiar enough with the protests happening at university lectures across this country where a lecturer is shouted down because people disagree with the opinions he or she might be sharing in this lecture. Police or security will happily sit back and watch that protest disrupt the university lecturer for 10, 15, or 20 minutes, or perhaps for an hour or more. We submit that if that were to happen in a religious service, that would be a massive blow to religious freedom in this country. Certainly it would be a huge harm to religious worship across the board.
Perhaps it would be helpful to give you an analogy. It's not a perfect analogy, but it's one that I have found helpful. Imagine somebody came to this committee and said, “You know, we really do have to simplify the Criminal Code. It is a bit cumbersome. It's pretty long. Why don't we get rid of all of those other types of assaults in the Criminal Code? We already have assaults prohibited in section 265. Let's get rid of sexual assault law as prohibited in sections 271, 272, and 273. We don't need it. It's already covered under assault. Sexual assault is a type of assault. No biggie. Let's just clean up the code.”
Obviously, I think everyone here would right away agree with me that, no, there's something different in kind with sexual assault. Sexual assault is different in kind from assault simpliciter, and therefore we need both provisions to be in the Criminal Code. We're deterring two different things here.
It's not a perfect analogy, but I think it is analogous to what we're talking about here with section 176. Religious services are different in kind from a university lecture or a rally in a public park.
We've been talking with other faith communities across the board here in Canada. We've talked with Muslim leaders, Jewish leaders, Buddhist leaders, and Coptic, Catholic, and Protestant. We worked on drafting an open letter to the justice minister sharing our concerns. I respectfully request that we be able to table that letter with this committee, once we have sent it to the justice minister, if the committee would be willing to consider it as well.
We'll try to get it to you before noon on Friday, Mr. Chair, if that's okay. I can certainly forward that as soon as it's available.
I have two other points. One is that in the written submission we provided earlier to the clerk of the committee, we made some line-by-line recommendations for amending section 176 to address some of the concerns the justice minister raised when she was interviewed by this committee. I think the section can be cleaned up. We recommend cleaning it up and not keeping it as is. I'd be happy to entertain any questions from the members on our recommendations.
Finally, I want to address the question that came up today about equality in section 15 of the charter. The charter protects equality, obviously, but it does not mean that the law, that Parliament, needs to treat everybody exactly the same all of the time. That would be called “formal” equality, and that doctrine was rejected by the Supreme Court under a section 15 jurisprudence. Instead, section 15 protects something called “substantive” equality.
We have a case in our case law going back to the 1960s or 1970s in which a woman was denied unemployment benefits because she was pregnant. The Supreme Court at that time said, “Well, you're not being discriminated against; you got yourself pregnant and the law is actually even. As long as you're not pregnant you get the unemployment benefits.” The Supreme Court actually ruled against the pregnant woman. Post section 15 being implemented in 1985—actually, it was implemented a few years after the charter was passed in 1982—the Supreme Court rejected that idea. It said we need substantive equality, which is different from this formal equality.
If some people in Canada do not identify as religious, if they do not encounter the divine in religious celebrations and services, that's fine. But that does not mean that we have to delete section 176 so that they feel equal to the rest of us who do encounter the divine in religious worship. Instead, what we do is still protect those who have religious experiences in community through religious worship, and for those who don't use it, that's fine. If they don't need that kind of protection, then it's there for those who need it.
Subject to any questions from the committee, those are my submissions.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.