Canada Is About to Criminalize Christianity and Conservatives Are Letting It Happen

Canada is about to cross a line that should alarm anyone who still believes words matter and freedom means something. Bill C-9, dressed up as the “Combatting Hate Act,” sailed through the House of Commons in March and cleared the Senate last week. Now it’s headed back for final approval, and nobody expects resistance. That’s the scary part.

On the surface, the bill targets Nazi symbols and ups penalties for intimidating people near churches or safe spaces. Sounds reasonable enough. But buried in there like a landmine is a provision that strips away Canada’s religious exemption for hate speech. That means you can now be prosecuted for expressing religious opinions, even if you’re literally reading from scripture, if prosecutors decide your intent was to “incite hatred.”

Let’s be clear about what we’re watching. This isn’t about stopping actual violence or protecting vulnerable people. Canada already has laws for that. This is about silencing dissent on LGBT ideology, same-sex marriage, and any traditional Christian teaching that conflicts with progressive orthodoxy. The Liberal government cut a deal with the Bloc Quebecois, a secular nationalist party, to make sure religious Canadians lost this protection. Think about that alliance for a second.

Josh Dehaas from the Canadian Constitution Foundation warned that certain scripture passages could now lead to criminal charges depending on context. Where you read them. When you read them. What other words you use around them. The Crown would need to believe your intention was hateful, sure, but who decides intention? Prosecutors with their own ideological commitments, that’s who.

The Canadian Supreme Court created a test for hate speech by identifying “hallmarks of hatred.” Calling a group a powerful menace. Accusing them of secret conspiracies. Labeling people subhuman or blaming them for society’s problems. These hallmarks sound targeted at genuinely vile rhetoric, the kind that precedes pogroms and genocide. But here’s the problem with vague standards applied to religious expression. When a pastor says marriage is between one man and one woman, will prosecutors argue he’s calling LGBT activists a menace to traditional values? When a priest reads Romans 1, will they say he’s blaming a group for moral decay?

You know what’s really happening here? Canada is creating a secular blasphemy law. For centuries, you could be punished for offending religious sensibilities. Now the new religion is progressive ideology, and the new heresy is traditional Christianity. The mechanism hasn’t changed, just the protected class.

There’s one safeguard built in. Provincial attorneys must approve charges, so local police can’t weaponize this on their own. That’s something, I guess. But it’s cold comfort when you’re counting on government lawyers to protect religious liberty from government overreach. Dr. John Petrakis from Hillsdale College told The Daily Wire that the Canadian Supreme Court would likely uphold the law if challenged. Translation: there’s no cavalry coming.

Americans need to pay attention because what happens in Canada doesn’t stay in Canada. Progressives here are watching this experiment closely. They’ve already tried to implement similar speech codes on college campuses, in corporate HR departments, and through social media platforms. The only thing stopping them from codifying it into federal law is the First Amendment, and they’re plenty creative about finding workarounds.

This is what limited government means in practice. When you give the state power to regulate speech, even speech you find offensive, you hand them a weapon they’ll eventually turn on you. Conservatives used to understand this instinctively. Now too many are willing to use state power against their enemies, forgetting that power changes hands.

Canada’s Christians are about to learn a hard lesson about what happens when religious liberty becomes a privilege the government grants rather than a right it protects. They’ll learn that hate speech laws always expand to cover more speech, not less. They’ll discover that good intentions pave a very specific kind of road.

And maybe, just maybe, Americans will learn something too before we follow them down that same path.

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