by Jonathon Van Maren, The Bridgehead
With the passage of Bill C-9 at Third Reading in Parliament on Wednesday, religious freedom in Canada feels incredibly fragile.
Since the Liberal Party took power under Justin Trudeau in 2015, progressive politicians and their LGBT allies have more or less free reign to implement their agenda, and they have taken full advantage of it. Conservatives tend to steward the status quo; revolutionaries run with the ball when they get it. Over the past decade, they have covered a lot of ground.
Before we get to Bill C-9, which is now heading to the Senate – which is stacked with Trudeau-appointed, anti-Christian extremists such as Kristopher Wells – let’s back up for a moment and summarize what has unfolded over the past several years:
- In 2014, Justin Trudeau stated that all Liberal MPs must vote pro-abortion in order to remain part of caucus and cannot vote their conscience. This was a radical change in policy and ensured that the party that has governed Canada for about 70 percent of the last century must support the killing of preborn children in the womb, throughout all nine months of pregnancy. Mark Carney, despite his alleged Catholicism, has not rescinded this policy.
- In a move that seems even more ominous in retrospect, Trudeau closed the Office of Religious Freedom – set up by his predecessor Stephen Harper – in 2016.
- In 2018, the Trudeau government introduced an “abortion attestation,” requiring that those applying for the Canada Summer Jobs program indicate their support for both abortion and the LGBT agenda. After a massive backlash from religious leaders of all kinds, the government walked it back the following year prior to the 2019 election – sort of. Instead, each application is vetted internally, presumably through the same ideological framework.
- In 2016 and again in 2021, the Trudeau government passed expansive euthanasia laws. Shortly thereafter, the war on pro-life and faith-based medical institutions began. Canada is on track to reach 100,000 euthanasia deaths by this summer. Christian medical institutions are currently in court fighting for their right to opt out of killing patients by lethal injection. While Canada has become an international cautionary tale, suicide activists continue to push for expansion.
- In 2021, the Trudeau government – with Conservative support – passed the “conversion therapy ban,” a bill so far-reaching that it could criminalize some conversations between parents and children and pastors and parishioners. The chilling effect of this legislation has been enormous, as has its immediate effect of banning talk therapy for those struggling with identity confusion. Many pastors simply do not know what they can or cannot legally say from the pulpit or in personal meetings.
- When now-debunked press reports of a mass grave at a former residential school were published in 2021, a large-scale attack on churches began. Over the past five years, over 120 churches have been attacked, vandalized, or burned to the ground. Trudeau responded to these attacks by announcing new measures against Islamophobia and referred to the violence as unacceptable but “fully understandable.”
That’s not even to mention a nonstop conveyor belt of judicial rulings delivered from benches stacked by the Liberal government curtailing religious freedom; the Trudeau government’s freezing of bank accounts and declaration of the Emergency Measures Act (now declared unconstitutional by two courts); lower-level attacks on Canadians such as the $750,000 HRT ruling against former school trustee Barry Neufeld; the colonization of the public school system by LGBT ideologues; and the Standing Committee on Finance’s recommendation that tax-exempt status for religious institutions be removed.