In July 1940, the federal government of Canada banned Jehovah’s Witnesses. Overnight, it became illegal for a peaceful religious community to worship as it saw fit. As legal scholar William Kaplan later observed, the ban was not symbolic it was enforced with enthusiasm. Beatings, mob violence, police harassment, and state persecution became routine as Jehovah’s Witnesses defied the law and continued to preach.
That dark episode produced some of the most important religious freedom cases in Canadian history. In the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1953 Saumur decision, Justice Ivan Rand famously warned that “a religious incident reverberates from one end of this country to the other, and there is nothing to which the ‘body politic of the Dominion’ is more sensitive.” His words were meant as both observation and caution.
More than seventy years later, Canada appears to be sleepwalking into another such incident.
The latest flashpoint is Bill C-9, the federal government’s proposed “Combatting Hate Act.” On its face, the bill claims a noble purpose: to fight hatred and protect religious places of worship. Yet recent testimony before a parliamentary committee has revealed a far more troubling ambition one that risks criminalizing religious beliefs the government deems unacceptable.
The turning point came when Culture Minister Marc Miller addressed the committee reviewing the bill, responding to submissions by Derek Ross of the Christian Legal Fellowship. Miller cited passages from Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Romans, asserting that they express “clear hatred” toward homosexuals. He questioned how anyone could invoke “good faith” when quoting such texts and suggested that prosecutors should have discretion to press charges when religious scripture is used in this way.
“Clearly there are situations in these texts where these statements are hateful,” Miller said. “They should not be used to invoke, be a defence.”
Ross pushed back, noting that many Canadians would reject the idea that biblical passages are “categorically hateful,” and warning that if members of Parliament truly believe that parts of the Bible are hate speech, Canadians deserve to know.
Now they do.
For roughly two decades, Canada has undergone a quiet but profound legal and cultural shift away from the accommodation of religious belief. In 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada could still state with confidence, in the Marriage Reference, that freedom of religion under section 2(a) of the Charter was “broad and jealously guarded.” Since then, decisions such as Hutterian Brethren and the Trinity Western University law school case have signaled a growing willingness by courts to defer to government restrictions on religious practice.
The Canada of 2025 is not the Canada of 2004. As the saying goes, “they do things differently there.”
Religious organizations now face exclusion from Canada Summer Jobs funding if they refuse to affirm government ideology on contentious cultural issues. Religious objections to health-care mandates have been brushed aside. A 2024 Finance Committee recommendation proposed stripping charitable status from pro-life pregnancy care centres and even from the advancement of religion itself. Quebec’s Laïcité regime continues to limit the public expression of faith. And Bill C-9 threatens to widen the definition of “hate” in ways that put long-standing religious teachings squarely in the crosshairs.
The common thread is not violence or incitement already illegal but dissent from the officially approved moral narrative of the day.
History should make us uneasy about this path. Religious freedom has never been granted cheaply. On February 24, 303 A.D., Roman Emperor Diocletian issued an edict ordering the destruction of Christian churches and scriptures. Christianity was deemed subversive because it rejected the Roman gods and the emperor’s ultimate authority. Its teachings were politically incorrect. Churches were burned, clergy imprisoned, and, eventually, believers forced to publicly conform or face torture and death.
The Roman state tolerated no rival source of moral authority.
That pattern has repeated itself throughout history. Governments seek uniformity; faith insists on conscience. The result is often pressure, marginalization, and persecution sometimes subtle, sometimes brutal.
Today, the persecution of Christians is not a relic of ancient history. According to Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch report, more than 380 million Christians worldwide face high levels of persecution and discrimination. One in seven Christians globally lives under such conditions. The first targets are often familiar: places of worship, religious leaders, sacred texts. Sometimes the state leads the charge; sometimes it simply looks the other way.
Canada is not Diocletian’s Rome. But when government ministers openly describe religious scriptures as “clearly hateful” and suggest criminal liability for citing them, it signals a profound shift in how religious freedom is understood. Justice Rand’s warning about the sensitivity of religious incidents was not merely descriptive it was prophetic.
For many Christian communities, the debates around Bill C-9 feel uncomfortably familiar. They have seen this playbook before. History suggests that when the state starts deciding which beliefs are acceptable and which scriptures may be spoken aloud, the consequences rarely stop at the margins.
The question before Canadians is not whether hatred should be opposed it should. The question is whether, in the name of combating hate, we are prepared to abandon the very freedom of conscience that once defined this country.
