Looking out for religious rights
In the pantheon of unloved Conservative things, the Office of Religious Freedom seems to rank somewhere below the proposed memorial to the victims of communism in Ottawa.
But while the new Liberal government is circling the communism memorial in a predatory fashion, the fate of the Office of Religious Freedom remains up in the air. The tenure of its “ambassador,” Andrew Bennett, was to expire today, but this week Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion extended his tenure until the end of March.
Both these Conservative things have been targeted with the same dreary brand of 140- character criticism. Tweeters have demanded to know, “why not a memorial to the victims of capitalism?” — the very simple answer to which is that, unlike with the communism memorial, no one has proposed one, except in jest.
Tweeters have demanded to know why the Office of Religious Freedom’s mandate is only outward- looking: Why should it worry about Yazidis under fire in Iraq, say, and not niqabis “under fire” in Quebec?
The common thread is the belief that most everything the Conservatives did or supported stemmed not from principle but from a lust for votes — mostly eastern European diaspora votes in one case, and those of any given religious group with imperilled brethren overseas in the other ( though probably mostly Christians, tweeters mostly believed).
This sort of gaucherie drove non- Conservatives around the bend. There’s a wrong way to pander to immigrant votes and a right way, which is also known as the Liberal way. As such, it’s not surprising most considered Bennett’s days numbered — despite the protests of various faith groups.
The government is determining “how best to pre- serve and protect all human rights, including the vital freedom of religion or belief,” Dion said. But he went well beyond that, praising Bennett’s “remarkable ingenuity, sensitivity and competency over the past three years.”
One of the Liberals’ moral hazards in their early days of governance is undoing things simply because Stephen Harper did them. In this case, Dion is right to resist the urge. This is not to say the office is perfect as it is, but it would be exceedingly odd for a government trumpeting Canada’s supposed re- engagement with the world to abandon an office with such a basic civil libertarian mandate. If the world needs more Canada, as a certain insufferable Irishman once opined, then surely the world needs more of Canada’s religious liberty.
We’re not perfect by any means, mind you. And while Bennett’s lack of a domestic mandate hardly impugns his foreign one, the dreary tweeters were on to something when they suggested — albeit sarcastically — someone in Bennett’s position might have something useful to say about Canadian affairs.
He might have had something impartial to say about women wearing niqabs at citizenship ceremonies, for example. He might have had something to say about the Parti Québécois’ values char- ter, and the Quebec Liberals’ legislation that would ban the giving and receiving of public services with a covered face.
He might have something to say about Trinity Western University’s desire to award law degrees and have them recognized by Canadian law societies — the courts take an age, after all, and on this issue much of the legal profession seems far more interested in activism than in law. He might have something to say about Ontario’s curious practice of funding Roman Catholic schools but not those of other religions. And since Ontario is entitled to do that under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, he might also have something to say about the province’s efforts to compel Catholic schools to teach things that go against their faith.
If all that raises myriad, likely insurmountable jurisdictional issues — and it does — it certainly doesn’t discredit the idea of someone watching out specifically for religious rights, at a time when traditional and conservative religious beliefs are falling ever further behind the political mainstream. We have an official languages commissioner; we have ethics and integrity commissioners; we have budgetary watchdogs.
These are deeply imperfect analogies. But recent history proves that far too few Canadian politicians can be trusted to uphold religious rights when it strikes them as unpleasant to do so, or when it’s advantageous to argue against them while claiming they aren’t. Canada remains a beacon for religious freedom. Ensuring that doesn’t change — unless we decide we want it to — is a worthy goal. So is promoting the Canadian experience, imperfect as it is, abroad.
COULD SAY SOMETHING ABOUT NIQABS OR VALUES CHARTERS.