Let me go back to thought, belief, conscience, and so on. One could make the argument, I guess, that religious freedom could be protected under freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, assembly, and so on. But it's not. Religion was distinctively added, recognizing UN declarations and the charter.
We're saying that just as religion is distinctively identified as a guaranteed freedom it is also appropriate to have distinctive protection for religious worship, the expression of religious freedom in the Criminal Code.
To your second point about equality rights, consider subsections 176(2) and 176(3): “Every one who wilfully disturbs or interrupts an assemblage of persons met for religious worship or for a moral, social or benevolent purpose”. It's the same thing with subsection 176(3), which actually broadens it. If you have a meeting that is race-based or focused on a specific distinctive race, of whatever category, it may well be included in this. Rather than taking away from the protection of religious freedom, the onus would be on including more explicit protection, if it's not already here. But I think it's probably already here.
It's the same with Bill C-305, which created an initial offence for mischief against religious institutions and schools but also had institutions for benevolent, social, or moral purposes. The same thing is actually captured there.