Canada is repealing its anti-blasphemy law
June 7, 2017 by Paul McKeever
Canada’s federal and provincial legislatures have passed motions condemning “Islamophobia” and calling for studies and recommendations to oppose speech that does not revere religious beliefs or practices, but Canada’s Justice Minister yesterday introduced a bill that will – if passed into law – repeal Canada’s law against “blasphemous libel”.
Section 296 of Canada’s Criminal Code R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46 currently states:
Blasphemous Libel
Offence
296 (1) Every one who publishes a blasphemous libel is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
Question of fact
(2) It is a question of fact whether or not any matter that is published is a blasphemous libel.
Saving
(3) No person shall be convicted of an offence under this section for expressing in good faith and in decent language, or attempting to establish by argument used in good faith and conveyed in decent language, an opinion on a religious subject.
However, section 30 of Bill C-51, which was introduced by federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould (Member of Parliament for the electoral district of Vancouver Granville) on June 6, 2017, reads:
30 Section 296 of the Act and the heading before it are repealed.
The repeal of section 296 is very small and unheralded section of a much larger Bill C-51, that will, among other things, remove from the Criminal Code sections already found by Canada’s Supreme Court of Canada to be unconstitutional. However, the constitutionality of section 296 has not yet been tested in court.
Coming as it does in an era when progressives, theocrats and others are demanding unearned, automatic, and legally-enforced respect and reverence for whatever beliefs, gods, cultural practices, or opinions they may have (see for example Canada’s recent federal “anti-Islamophobia” motion M103; its recognition and protection of “gender” in Bill C-16; and the Province of Ontario’s own provincial Islamophobia motion, which I have opposed as leader of the Freedom Party of Ontario), the repeal of Canada’s law against blasphemous libel is a ray of hope to those concerned about the survival of their freedom to think and to speak their mind.
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