It's My Right as a Canadian to Be Free From Religion

[rug]

Posted: 05/20/2014 8:56 am
Doug Thomas
President, Secular Connexion Séculaire, Canada's Humanist Rights Advocacy Group

Canadian atheists are often confronted by misinformation about their right to freedom from religion. Usually, the perpetrators are religious people who claim that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not guarantee this. The most recent person to say this is the Honourable John Baird, Minister of Foreign Affairs, who happens to be responsible for the Office of Religious Freedoms.

The clauses at the centre of this misinformation are those dealing with Fundamental Freedoms:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.

Most central are 2a, including freedom of conscience and religion and 2b, including freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression. Even a layperson's understanding of those terms would indicate that freedom of thought would include the right to think that there is no god. Freedom of opinion, and expression would logically reinforce that.

Some theists argue that the preamble to the Charter recognizes the "supremacy of God" and this precludes the right to freedom from religion. However, the courts have never used the preamble as a basis of constitutional decisions and have debated its legitimacy as a basis for legal arguments. In short, there is no legal precedent for its use to promote a theist interpretation of the Charter.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/doug-thomas/religious-freedom-atheists-canada_b_5351944.html

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/43/index.do&strip=1

[Prophet 451]

1. Define "freedom from religion"

I think attempting to argue that it prevents proselytizing would be stretching it too far.

[Swede Atlanta]

2. I know nothing about the Canadian Constitution..........

but wrt the U.S. Constitution, the rights are with respect to what the federal government can and cannot do and, by incorporation through the 14th Amendment, what the states can and cannot do.

So the U.S. Constitution cannot, for example, prohibit a religious group from proselytizing. It only prohibits the U.S. government from sending you a flyer in the mail that says hey Jesus loves you go to church!

I would suspect the same is true in Canada in that a constitution is, by definition, a document that establishes the relationship between a government and the governed.

Therefore any prohibition against evangelism would need to be statutory under general police powers and not unnecessarily infringe on the basic rights.