The Christian Institute has warned that planned changes to hate speech laws in Canada could lead on to the criminalisation of quoting Scripture.
Proposed changes to the Combating Hate Act remove exemptions that prevent being convicted for making supposedly hateful statements in “good faith” based “on belief in a non secular text”.
While allegedly meant to defend Jews from antisemitism, concerns are mounting that the amendments might be used against Christians.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops have also spoken out against the planned changes, telling Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, “The proposed elimination of the ‘good faith’ religious-text defence raises significant concerns.
“This narrowly framed exemption has served for a few years as a necessary safeguard to make sure that Canadians aren’t criminally prosecuted for his or her sincere, truth-seeking expression of beliefs made without animus and grounded in long-standing religious traditions.”
The proposed changes are being recommend by the Minister of Justice Sean Fraser, and the Bloc Québécois party.
Paul Carter, writing for The Gospel Coalition Canada, warned that the removal of the “good faith” defence, while headline grabbing, might not be the major threat posed by the bill.
“The ‘good faith’ exemption has never been used successfully. The greater danger in Bill C-9 is the proposed plan to eliminate the necessity for a provincial attorney general to log off before any charges might be brought involving a purported hate crime,” he said.
“This may allow local law enforcement to take motion against residents even where there isn’t any reasonable prospect of conviction. The bill would also allow for complaints from private individuals, which could draw churches and pastors into costly and distracting legal motion, nevertheless unlikely it could be to end in significant fines or jail time.”
Hate speech laws have develop into of accelerating concern to Christians across the Western world. In one high profile case, Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen has spent the last seven years fighting charges against her referring to a tweet by which she quoted the book of Romans on the difficulty of homosexuality.
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