Mr. Speaker, when I left off before question period, I was talking about a comment that the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture made at committee. He said that books from the Holy Bible, such as Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Romans, would be considered hate language. We were just diving into Romans and found out that the author was the apostle Paul, who was raised as a Jew in the strict sect of the Pharisees. He had an encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus and became a follower of Jesus. He also wrote many of the books in the Gospel of the New Testament.
It is in that sense that we take a deeper look at Romans to see exactly what the minister might mean by “hate language”. We are going to start with what is known as the Romans road, which begins in Romans, chapter 3, verse 10, where it says, “As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, not even one...’”. A few verses later, it says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. That talks about all of us. We have all sinned, and we know that. Then Romans, chapter 5, verse 8, says, “But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” As for the posture in which Christ died, we are going to be celebrating that at Easter. It was on a cross with his arms stretched out, the posture of invitation, that he said, “Come to me. I have the answer for all your sins and your brokenness.” That is how he died.
The next one is found in Romans 10, verse 9, where it says, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” It is followed up a few verses later with the assurance that whoever calls on the name of Jesus will be saved. That does not sound like hate language to me. That sounds like God's love language.
When a Liberal member says passages from the Bible are clearly hateful, that perhaps that should not be available as a defence and that prosecutors should perhaps have discretion to press criminal charges, Canadians need to pay attention. It tells us a great deal about how the government is approaching speech, religion and criminal law. He was not talking about violent criminals. He was talking about the Holy Bible, scriptures that are inscribed and embedded into the architecture of Parliament, that have guided parliamentarians for the past 158 years. These scriptures have shaped our country and guided generations of Canadians; most Canadians still believe them today. That is why this matters so much.
Once politicians start treating protected religious expression, because they do not necessarily agree with it, as presumptively hateful, the danger is no longer theoretical. It is immediate, visible and real. If passages from the Bible can be spoken of this way by people shaping criminal law, then this bill reaches into sermons, teaching, public witness and the ordinary expression of religious belief. That is the deeper and greater problem with Bill C-9. It reflects a mindset that treats long-standing religious belief as something criminal. If the Prime Minister disagrees with that mindset, he should stand in this House and clearly condemn the comments from his minister. This would send a clear message to Canadians that he will protect the charter rights of freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of religion and that he will vote against this amendment.
Canadians should never have to fear prosecution for quoting the Bible, teaching its doctrine or discussing scriptures in good faith. The Liberal-Bloc amendment in Bill C-9 would remove the current defence for good-faith religious opinion and opinion based on religious text as hate propaganda. This is not some abstract concern. Christians see exactly what it means. It means the government is willing to look at our faith and our biblical scriptures through the lens of criminality. That is a line we must never cross. Broad speech laws rarely remain limited to the extreme cases used to justify them. They begin there and expand outward into lawful disagreement or contentious public matters.
Once the government is given broader power to regulate expression, that power seldom stays confined to real threats, violence or criminal incitement. It starts to extend into ordinary democratic discussion in which Canadians are speaking in good faith about real issues. Canadians should never have to wonder whether taking a clear position on a major public issue could place them under legal suspicion. A free society does not build confidence in the law that way. Parliament should punish actual crimes and protect space for lawful debate on the questions that will determine this country's direction. This is why the bill presents such a clear and serious danger. It goes beyond stopping violent acts. It opens the door for what is lawful expression, religious belief and principled disagreement today to be criminalized. The House should not permit that.
Conservatives are not defending violence, threats, intimidation or genocide. Those acts are already crimes. The Criminal Code already bans advocating genocide; it already bans public incitement of hatred likely to lead to a breach of the public peace, and it already bans wilful promotion of hatred. The question before us is not whether real criminal hate should be punished. It already can and should be. The question is whether the Liberal government is using real criminal hatred as a reason to widen the law into speech, belief, emotion and motive.
This is what Bill C-9 would do. It would remove safeguards and expand the reach of hate-related offences beyond the law we already have. We have seen, in the U.K. and Australia, that dissenting voices are already being prosecuted.
Once governments give themselves broad power over speech and expression, they tend to keep using it. When governments get used to treating speech as a problem to manage, the law starts to move in the wrong direction, and that is why Canadians should pay attention not only to what Bill C-9 says but to where it points.
Religious Canadians are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the continued charter right to live in freedom according to their beliefs without being criminalized by their own government. They are asking to read their scriptures, teach their children, speak plainly in public and worship without fearing their long-held religious convictions.
To wrap up, this should not be controversial. It should be the minimum standard in a free country. Conservatives believe that public safety matters. We also believe that Canadians should be free to live in their faith and speak plainly without being treated as criminals for holding traditional beliefs, and that is why Bill C-9 is wrong.
