The instructions he gives you are not protected, so I disagree with you on that interpretation. The minister, obviously, is probably following this because he had a very uncomfortable week in the House of Commons, flip-flopping, not being clear with Canadians, backing himself into a corner and trying to appease the Bloc Québécois, which made it abundantly clear that if he pulls out of this secret agreement, don't expect them to support any provision of Bill C-9. That panicked the minister, the Prime Minister and these four members of the justice committee, so that now they're playing coy, saying they want to hear from the committee.
Well, to my colleague Mr. Lawton's point, if that were truly genuine, they wouldn't have cancelled meetings when we had witnesses lined up. Perhaps we could have explored, by hearing from stakeholders, whether or not this is an appropriate removal. That was taken away from us. That was stripped from the justice committee, which I find deplorable.
It's clear that the Liberals will do whatever it takes to pass this amendment, even though it was never their idea or their intention two years ago and during hearings with numerous witnesses, until it became abundantly clear that they would be going into a winter break without the passage of Minister Fraser's signature piece of criminal legislation. It's the only piece of criminal legislation that he brought forward, since the election almost eight months ago, to be studied at committee. I want to put that on the record.
I also have the utmost respect for my colleague Monsieur Fortin. Generally, we align very well on legal issues, but I take exception to his interpretation of the Charkaoui case out of Quebec. I believe his words were to the effect that the Crown prosecution service in Quebec had come to the conclusion that the religious defence would not apply in that particular case. That is wrong, and I'll get into that in a moment.
I want to clarify something that I think is important. Bill C-9, as drafted, references the defences under proposed subsection 319(2.2). The language in BQ-3 is about removing religious exemptions. This is not an exemption; this is a stated legal defence. There is a difference between an exemption and a legal defence. Just to be accurate, our nomenclature throughout this debate, however long it may be, should be referring to the “defence” as opposed to “exemption”.
I have a lot of respect for the folks at the Canadian Constitution Foundation, and in particular Christine Van Geyn, who wrote a piece not too long ago in the National Post when this secret deal between the Bloc and the Liberals became public through leaked Liberal sources. I'm going to read various portions of that article into the record at this time, but I'll start off specifically with the religious defence. The title is quite interesting: “Changes to Bill C-9 aren't combating hate—they're criminalizing faith”. It states:
Bill C-9, the Carney government's combating hate act, would expand criminal prohibitions on expression and increase penalties for speech offences, including online speech. Now, the bill may also gut the defence that protects good-faith religious opinion or speech rooted in religious texts.
As Mr. Lawton indicated:
Throughout the...hearings, Bloc MPs fixated on this defence. Their central example, repeated to nearly every witness, was a group prayer delivered by controversial imam Adil Charkaoui at a Quebec pro-Palestinian rally in 2023. In that prayer, [he] asked God to “kill the enemies of the people of Gaza” and take care of the “Zionist aggressors.”
Those comments were rightly condemned. They are grotesque. Complaints about them were investigated, and the RCMP prepared a report. It was reviewed by three Crown prosecutors, who concluded that no charges were warranted.
As Quebec's director of criminal and penal prosecutions put it, “The evidence does not establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the words spoken constitute incitement to hatred against an identifiable group” under Sec. 319 of the Criminal Code.
One may argue that “Zionist” was just code for “Jews.” One may also believe that praying for death is morally abhorrent. But the decision not to charge Charkaoui turned on the basic threshold of incitement to hatred, not on the religious defence.
And even if it had involved the defence, one inflammatory prayer at a political rally is not a justification for dismantling a safeguard that protects millions of Canadians from state intrusion into matters of faith.
The religious defence has also been essential to the constitutionality of the hate-speech prohibition itself.
We've all talked about the Keegstra decision at numerous times throughout this particular study, and there she says, “the Supreme Court wrote that the offence is a minimal impairment on the right to freedom of expression, in part because of ‘the presence of the Sec. 319(3) defences.’” That includes the religious defence.
She went on:
The courts upheld the law because the religious exemption exists. Remove it, and the constitutional floor collapses.
But even beyond constitutional risk, removing the defence is a profound moral and civil liberties mistake. We should not want, let alone empower, prosecutors to criminalize any form of prayer.
Religious texts across traditions contain pleas for justice against enemies, metaphors for divine retribution and expressions of anguish, symbolism and cosmic struggle. This is not the realm of the police. If the state begins parsing Psalms or Hadiths line-by-line in a courtroom, then we have forgotten why the Charter exists at all.
In practice, the defence is already exceedingly narrow. It has rarely been invoked and, based on my case law search, has never succeeded. Courts have also rejected attempts to cloak hateful speech in religious [example].
In the case of Regina v. Harding, she notes:
...the Court of Appeal for Ontario affirmed a lower court's finding that the defence does not shield speech that wilfully promotes hatred merely because it is embedded with religious language, because then “religious opinion could be used with impunity as a Trojan horse to carry the intended message of hate forbidden by Sec. 319.”
Religious expression is messy, symbolic and deeply human. It concerns the nature of justice, suffering, good and evil—the most intimate dimensions of identity and conscience. These are precisely the areas where the criminal law must not tread. We do not want the government parsing religious texts, or religious speech, especially given that most of our political leaders are absolutely ignorant of religion, including, in some cases, their own religion.
Mr. Lawton got into this.
For example, in a shocking display at the justice committee, Liberal committee chair Marc Miller claimed to Derek Ross, executive director of the Christian Legal Fellowship, that portions of the Bible are “hateful.” Miller then doubled down on X, writing, “I say this, in particular because I am a Christian,” which is in itself mind-boggling.
It's dangerous for politicians to believe they can use statutes to sanitize scripture they don’t even properly understand. Criminal law is the state’s most violent instrument.
Let that sink in.
It should not be swung at the human soul.
The Bible is the most banned book in history, precisely because it is powerful and points to an authority beyond the reach of government. A government that fears religious speech is not fighting extremism—it's fighting competition.
What better way is there to summarize the actions of this Liberal government over the last long 10 years?
The proposed amendment to Bill C-9 would take Canada down a dark path. We should never have criminalized belief in the first place. Strip away the religious defence, and Canada will not be—
