"We can't leave this to too few people," he said.
The number one issue for the CCBI must be euthanasia, said current executive director Moira McQueen. While the issue is getting plenty of attention in the media, McQueen doesn't believe the popular debate is necessarily the place where her institute should be. Simplistic and sometimes ad hominem arguments in the media don't necessarily advance our understanding of the issues, she said.
"I don't think it goes deep enough," said McQueen.
Below the surface and not getting much media attention is another issue McQueen thinks needs more attention.
"Freedom of conscience (for medical professionals) is much bigger than people think," she said.
Constitutional lawyer Iain Benson delivered the lecture on diversity, accommodation and the law.
- Photo by Michael Swan
Benson outlined legal thinking around religious freedom — including the right of religious institutions and communities to be full contributors to society. Benson dismissed the idea that public funding means religious hospitals, schools and social service agencies have to offer precisely the same services or conform to the same employment practices as non-religious institutions.
"We are not the United States of America. Canada does not have the same separation of church and state as the American model," he said. "What Canada has is more subtle."
To maintain meaningful multiculturalism, Canada has to protect the ability of religious bodies to embody and promote competing ideas about sexuality, marriage, medical ethics and the rights of the individual, said Benson. Using human rights complaints to suppress or bully religious bodies that call homosexuality a sin or restrict the meaning of marriage to heterosexual union destroys diversity, he said.
At the same time, freedom of speech can't be freedom to hold people in contempt, said the legal scholar.
"Homophobia has power in public language because there's truth in it," he said.
Ontario Human Rights Commission senior policy analyst Remi Warner was there to take in Benson's criticism, including his suggestion that human rights commissions be given a much narrower focus that does not include complaints against religious bodies.
"I heard the importance of recognizing the diversity of views in the public sphere," Warner said.
Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins congratulated the CCBI on its accomplishments over the last 10 years and urged it to do more in the face of more headlines about euthanasia.
"This is where our engagement with the culture happens," he said.