In an article published recently in Law & Liberty titled, “A Crack in Canada’s Constitutional Bedrock” Dr. Brian Bird, a research fellow with RFI’s North America Action Team and an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia’s Peter A. Allard School of Law, highlights a worrisome trend in recent Canadian jurisprudence. Increasingly, the justices of Canada’s highest court have failed to uphold the fundamental right of religious freedom in the face of claims that certain public expressions of religious institutions violate LGBTQ rights. This legal trend weakens the existence of a healthy, democratic pluralism in Canada.  

Bird discusses two cases: Law Society of British Columbia v. Trinity Western University and White Rock Pride Society v. Star of the Sea Parish. In the first case, decided in 2018, the Canadian Supreme Court found Trinity Western University’s code of conduct, which prohibited students from engaging in sexual intimacy outside of marriage, intolerable. The Court ruled that:

[B]ar associations in Canada, in exercising their statutory mandate to govern the legal profession in the public interest, could lawfully refuse to license graduates of the law school due to the impact of the impugned clause in Trinity’s code of conduct on the LGBTQ community.

In the latter case, one currently being heard by the Canadian Supreme Court, what is at stake is whether the Star of the Sea Catholic Church will be punished for refusing to host a pride gala event contrary to its religious convictions. Bird questions:  

What if White Rock Pride owned an event hall and, like Star of  the Sea, rented it for various functions in service to the community? What if Star of the Sea did not own a hall and asked  to use White Rock Pride’s hall for a gala to promote Catholic  beliefs on marriage and family? I suspect all of us would say that White Rock Pride could refuse the rental. It would be unjust, even cruel, to require White Rock Pride to grant Star of the Sea a platform on its own turf to advance these beliefs. If that is true, why must Star of the Sea rent its hall to White Rock Pride?

Bird concludes:

There are benefits to be drawn from viewing those with whom we disagree as fellow citizens first and foremost, not as sworn  enemies. Only good can come from shifting the paradigm of culture wars to one in which we acknowledge our disagreements but begin from the standpoint that our convictions, though divergent, stem from a common desire for human flourishing. 

Read the full article: A Crack in Canada’s Constitutional Bedrock