Law Matters John Carpay
The fascist disease of ideological coercion continues to spread in Canada’s body politic.
For a charity to receive federal government funding through the Canada Summer Jobs program, the charity must now express agreement with Canada’s state religion, including support for legal abortion, transgenderism, and LGBTQ ideology.
The Canada Summer Jobs program exists to create summer employment for students, and to make it financially attractive for non-profits and businesses to hire summer students. Agreeing or disagreeing with abortion, or with a man’s “right” to be called a woman if he thinks that he is a woman, has nothing to do with the purpose of Canada Summer Jobs. This is pure ideological coercion: telling Canadians that they must agree with certain beliefs in order to access a government program which they have paid for with their own tax dollars. This is like informing seniors that they must express agreement with “a right to legal abortion” in order to receive their Canada pension cheque.
Under Canadian law, everyone must abide by human rights legislation, whether you agree with these laws or not. But for the government to require expressing approval for these laws is another matter entirely. In a free society, every person can openly disagree with existing laws, and criticize the Constitution without fear of any penalty or other adverse consequence. In a free country, nobody has to express agreement with particular beliefs or values in order to benefit from a government program.
The withholding of summer grant money on the basis of ideology is a violation of the legal requirement that the secular state be neutral. Grant money is for all qualified applicants, and the federal government cannot legally withhold money merely because some citizens disagree with its pet theories.
Ideological coercion, the forcible suppression of opposition, and hostility to individual liberties are hallmarks of fascism. Vocabulary.com explains it aptly: “Under fascist rule, … you must support the ruling party’s views on society, politics, and culture – or else.”
The state religion which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seeks to impose on Canadians is a loose mix of materialism (“the only real and important things are those which we can see, hear, touch, smell and feel”), hedonism (“life’s purpose is to maximize physical pleasure”), relativism (“there is no truth … except for the truth that there is no truth”), scientism (“science can answer all questions, including moral questions about how we should live our lives”), emotivism (“all moral choices are mere expressions of feelings”), and a lazy atheism (“live as though God does not exist, but without bothering to assert that God does not exist”). Tolerance, inclusion, equality and diversity are the slogans used to promote this state religion.
In Ontario, the Law Society is pushing the same state religion, by requiring lawyers to express support for “diversity,” “equality,” and “inclusion” as a condition of being allowed to practice law.
In a free society, the state does not impose Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism or any other religion on its citizens. In a free society, the government also refrains from imposing materialism, hedonism, relativism, scientism, emotivism and atheism on its citizens.
In appearance, the rainbow flag bears no resemblance to the swastika used by Germany’s national socialists, or to the communists’ hammer-and-sickle, yet it is fast becoming a symbol of oppression. Justin Trudeau does not speak of a Canadian master race, nor does he urge the proletarian wage-earners to crush the capitalist bourgeoisie. But behind and underneath the slogans of “diversity,” “inclusion,” “tolerance,” and “equality,” this federal policy displays naked hostility towards the citizen’s fundamental freedoms of conscience, religion, expression and association. For the federal government to require people to attest to certain beliefs and values, in order to access a government program, is obvious coercion, no different from tactics used by the likes of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, and other tyrants.
It’s not just pro-life groups who are affected. This new policy affects every soup kitchen and every summer camp for kids, if run by people whose religion is different from Canada’s state religion.
Canada’s current culture affects everyone, including judges. A Charter challenge to this anti-freedom policy would have a strong chance of success, if the applicants are literacy programs for immigrants, homeless shelters, and other charities that a judge can readily relate to. In today’s cultural climate, a legal challenge brought by pro-life groups is less likely to succeed. If pro-life groups are the only ones to challenge this new Canada Summer Jobs policy, then chances of success in a court action are vastly reduced.
Calgary lawyer John Carpay is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (www.jccf.ca).
