“Separation of church and state!”
“Canada is a secular country!”
“We can’t let religion dictate policy!”
I’m sure we’ve all heard variations of these, if not the phrases verbatim, at various points in our lives. Indeed, the mere suggestion that a course of action may have a moral element seems to trigger knee-jerk reactions along these veins.
There’s some truth to them, though that isn’t to say those who make such proclamations do so in good faith or with any historic understanding.
Despite Canada’s history as a nation founded on Judeo-Christian values, it’s technically correct to say there’s no state-mandated religion. And nor should there be. Though secularism, which at its core is supposed to be about the preservation of religious freedom, has supplanted traditional values with a new sort of state religion – that of political correctness.
The great irony is that the relativistic western liberal insistence that all cultures and religions are equal in morality and merit has set a hierarchy that places Christianity, in particular conservative or orthodox denominations, at the bottom.
The Church of God in Aylmer, Ont., nearly faced prosecution earlier this year for hosting socially distanced drive-in services in its parking lot at a time when churches were force to shut their doors because of COVID-19.
The Crown ultimately decided to not proceed with charges, though police insisted they would have been within their rights to do so. The incident has now triggered a Charter challenge against the provincial government and the Aylmer Police Service, led by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
While Conservative members of parliament sent a letter to Ontario’s government supporting the Church of God’s right to continue its services, there was little discussion of religious freedom and freedom of assembly – both values enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms – from most lawmakers. Instead, government officials continue to lecture us on the “sacrifice” we’re expected to make and the importance of following governmental emergency orders.
Until, that is, police in the Prairies started poking around an Indigenous spiritual gathering.
RCMP officers interrupted a ceremony at Saskatchewan’s Beardy’s and Okemasis Cree Nation in May as the number of people present exceeded the provincial government’s 10-person limit on gatherings. The event’s sun dance chief said such intervention was “not going to be tolerated anymore.”
Not even two days later, federal Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller tweeted that banning “spiritual and cultural practices like sun dances and potlaches is a dark stain on Canada’s history.”
“Even in the face of a global pandemic, Canada must not and will not prohibit these important practices,” he wrote. “Any decision to cancel or postpone them must remain the decision of community leadership.”
In other words, Indigenous Canadians were suddenly exempt from following the rules set out for everyone else of every other belief system.
A spokesperson for Miller’s department told the CBC that the government “encourages First Nations leaders to consider public health guidelines.”
While the rest of us faced fines or even jail time for not sufficiently social distancing, aboriginal communities were only “encouraged” to even “consider” following the rules.
My issue, however, is not with the sun dancers, but rather with the government officials so oblivious to, or rather unconcerned with their double standards.
In fairness to the community, by all accounts the sun dancer participants were adequately distanced from one another, and organizers took temperature readings to ensure no one who entered the space had a fever.
I would be all for letting groups carry on with added precautions were it not for the fact that few other groups seem to be given such latitude.
Religious freedom, such as it is, means people have the right to pursue religious practices without the government picking favourites.
That isn’t what’s happened.
During the pandemic, city councils across the country granted permission to mosques to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer into the community, so that Muslim families lined the streets in their cars to listen and pray.
I’m not aware of a single case of police entertaining charges in these cases, as they did in Aylmer with the Church of God.
Even with an understanding of Canada’s dark history with aboriginal Canadians and the suppression of their beliefs, there is a grave concern with picking and choosing who has to follow rules that are positioned as being about saving lives.
Either the government doesn’t believe the rules, or it’s simply that political correctness trumps science.
