Athée Canadien
Secularism
Ontario government sponsors religious tobacco
Jan 25th
No. There is no difference between tobacco sold by big corporations and tobacco prepared for religious ceremonies.
And yet, the Aboriginal Tobacco Program is sponsored by the Ontario government. Worse, it’s sponsored by Smoke Free Ontario and Cancer Care Ontario, both provincial government agencies working with the ministry of health to prevent cancer.
Since traditional aboriginal tobacco isn’t meant to be smoked in cigarettes I doubt the practice is wide spread enough to be considered a problem on its own. Yet by sponsoring bad science claims like ‘traditional tobacco is a healer’, the government is placing the public at risk. The government has no place protecting specific religious practices, much less dangerous ones and our health officials, if they have any integrity, need to stand up and do their job. Stop sponsoring religious practices, cancel this silly program, and declare all tobacco to be equally dangerous.
Don’t want a Bible in PEI? Too bad.
Jan 19th
When I was in elementary school in rural Alberta, I remember getting a form to either opt-out or opt-in (I don’t remember which) for a Gideon Bible.
As a sign of the anti-theist I was to become, I also remember joking to my friends on the school bus that if they gave me a Bible that I’d burn it.
So this story out of Prince Edward Island has an air of familiarity to it for me.
A Prince Edward Island school board says it doesn’t plan to stop handing Bibles out to students despite receiving a complaint from a parent.
Ricky Hood, superintendent for the Eastern School District, said the Gideon Society has been handing out Bibles to students for 46 years, and it doesn’t take up any instructional time, reports Charlottetown’s Guardian newspaper.
They go on to argue that there is an opt-out permission form and that they don’t actually spend any instructional time on religious topics.
The Sun Media article also mentions a similar controversy in Ontario last year and notes that premier Dalton McGuinty was unwilling to actually take a stand on the issue.
What’s interesting here isn’t that this was a bit of a loss for secularists but that the default position of those forcing religion down impressionable children’s throats is now one of defense. They have to come up with pathetic arguments like tradition and flimsy opt-out forms to justify their privilege.
It’s very clear we’re winning and it’s only a matter of time until the Gideons are out of our schools for good.
Will the Liberals become republicans?
Jan 8th
After the disastrous results in the past few federal elections, the Liberal Party of Canada is finally doing some soul searching in an attempt to figure out why they exist and what their vision for Canada will be.
A key part of this process will be the policy renewal conference to be held next weekend in Ottawa. There they will debate resolutions on whether to adopt a leadership primary system like the US presidential elections.
Of more interest to readers here though will be a resolution submitted by the Liberal’s youth wing calling for an abolition of the monarchy [pdf]:
Preach at Calgary City Hall and go directly to jail
Jan 6th
The past few weeks have been a bit of a blogging blackout from me. I finished my thesis, passed my defense, became an official Master of Science, and then buggered off to Alberta to visit family for Christmas (that’s right). Now I’m unemployed and can start to catch up on blogging.
To begin, here’s a story that was mostly missed before Christmas where a Christian evangelist was arrested by the City of Calgary for trespassing on their City Hall.
The War on Christmas
Dec 13th
Michael Coren, who hosts a panel on VisionTV that consistently features former CFI Canada National Executive Director Justin Trottier, has a piece in the Ottawa Sun (naturally) on the “War on Christmas”.
It’s typical garbage about Christian persecution, but you can get a sense of where he’s going from the intro:
I have friends who are conscientious objectors in the war on Christmas. They don’t celebrate the birth of Christ, but they’re not so neurotic that they will actively fight against it.
Then there are people like me, who joined the resistance years ago, and carry out combat actions behind enemy lines.
But I’ve hardly ever met any members of the occupation forces, those people who hate the season and want to expunge it from our calendar.
Yet while I’ve not seen the soldiers, I’ve seen their destructive work.
It’s a sad and pathetic piece about how there is “an outright blitzkrieg against” Christmas, which is not only anti-Christian, but anti-Western. Apparently only good white Christians only ever lived in Europe and North America (sorry First Nations and the many doubters of history).
A good rebuttal was written in 2007 by the ever-enlightening Dan Gardner. He notes the many religious relics of our language, but also the cultural imperialism and privilege enjoyed by Christianity. In the end he argues that we just shrug the whole thing off. He’s one heck of a militant secularist.
Generally, the “War on Christmas” is never anything more than an increasing number of people realizing that there is an increasing number of different beliefs in this country and that maybe it would be the good Canadian thing to do to recognize that pluralism. It’s more about ending the cultural dominance rather than oppressing Christianity.
Multi-Faith Secular?
Dec 12th
There are some phrases that are so oxymoronic that you know that what follows will be some vacuous attempt to violate rules of logic and common sense. At least, that’s how I felt before, and after, reading a piece on the Canadian Educator’s Association blog about “The Multi-Faith Secular” which tries to argue for “spiritually inclusive schools.”
The post is by Nadir Shirazi, who as far as I can tell has created a company to push religion back into schools and workplaces in a politically correct fashion.
He argues that since people derive meaning from religion that we need to meet them where we are and accommodate them. Depending on which side of my atheist lair I climb out of, I am either sympathetic or hostile to this view. Let’s try to continue with an open mind though.
Questions remain about the Office of Religious Freedom
Dec 5th
The CBC has obtained some information through access to information laws about the mysterious Office of Religious Freedom that the Harper Conservatives promised during the last election and established quietly.
The released preparatory interview questions show that the government expected concerns that the office would be used for partisan purposes – i.e. to win over with religious and ethnic minorities – and that it may encroach on the (unofficial) separation of church and state in Canada.
United Church lobbying
Nov 25th
The United Church has sent the prime minister a letter urging the government to rewrite the omnibus crime bill.
The United Church of Canada has urged the government “to reconsider the provisions of Bill C-10 dealing with the imposition of minimum sentences; and to separate the provisions of the omnibus bill to allow for consideration of the potential impacts of its component parts.”
While my position on the bill is irrelevant, it’s important to point out every time religious charities start lobbying because it could mean an end to their charitable status. Registered charities may devote up to 10% of its resources towards political activities so I doubt the United Church is violating any rules this time since a letter doesn’t cost much. Yet, if the Catholic Church wrote a letter urging the government to abolish gay marriage, I’d probably raise a stink so it’s only fair I give the United Church the same treatment. Once churches start devoting more resources (by hiring legal firms, equipping protestors, etc.) they may get close to the limit so they should be flagged an reported to Revenue Canada for investigation.
The real issue is, of course, why religions are automatically given charitable status. Organizations like CFI:Canada and a few humanist groups across Canada are defined as educational charities, much like a library, or under the tricky ‘benefit to the community’ section depending on their mandate. Religions can be granted charitable status simply for promoting the belief in a supreme being and hand out those lucrative tax credits income-earning Canadians crave so much.
Debating secularism at the school level
Nov 24th
The Toronto school that hosts Muslim prayers doesn’t budge. A community meeting was recently held:
The meeting of about 40 to 50 people was meant as a community discussion, but some attendees were eager to talk about an anonymously printed pamphlet titled “Segregation in Toronto Public Schools” – a reference to the practice of separating boys and girls during prayer sessions.
Gender segregation did indeed dom-inate the two-hour meeting. One middle-aged woman said she was an alumnus of Valley Park and still kept up with Muslim, Jewish and Christian friends from her school days. “I want everybody to grow up together. I want accommodation, but I want those girls up front,” she said.
An older English woman who identified herself as an unwilling veteran of countless school-imposed Lord’s Prayers agreed. “I can’t stand by and watch girls be segregated in a public environment,” she said.
I guess it’s good to see people talking about it. Unfortunately, Canada’s implied separation of church and state isn’t something that can be debated at the school level. Regardless of what parents think, hosting religious services in a public school violates our implied secular clauses, equity laws, and provincial policies which means the board has no choice but to stop the prayers. Let the kids go to their mosques on their own time and dime.
Food for thought
Nov 14th
Food writer Corey Mintz hosts a dinner party with a crew of GSA activists. Guests included activists Leanne Iskander and Casy Oraa, journalists Andrea Houston and Johnathan Goldsbie, and CCLA lawyer Noa Mendelsohn Aviv.
Once everyone has some food in their bellies, they try to explain to me how this type of discrimination is allowed in Canada, in the 21st century.
“These schools are answering to the bishops,” rasps Aviv, her voice lost to a cold. “The Ministry’s in there somewhere.” That would be the Ministry of Education, which sets policy that is supposed to be followed by all Ontario schools. “It seems fairly clear that there was an unwritten ban across the province. Unfortunately for them and fortunate enough for us, that they went so far as to ban it on paper.”
Halton Catholic District School Board chair Alice Anne LeMay went further, explaining that they would also not allow Nazi groups. She later apologized.
The provincial government took no action.“They’re abdicating their responsibility,” says an emphatic Oraa. Everything he says is emphatic. “Because they’ve created this policy, specifically the one for GSAs.”
A partial transcript of the evening is posted here. It’s a good introduction for anyone not familiar with the GSA issue and separate school funding. The only cringe-worthy omission was when Andrea mentions that the CCLA and Queer Ontario have been in the fight against Catholic school funding since ‘the beginning’ when they’ve really only been at it for the last year. Atheist groups, like CFI, have been involved for years, and independent groups like CRIPE and Education Equality Ontario have been around for decades.
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