The Canadian Catholic community finally had its voice heard May 28 during the fourth and final Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights meeting on Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act.

Canadian Catholic Civil Rights League (CCRL) president and general counsel Phil Horgan appeared via video link to encourage senators not to remove the good faith religious speech defence from Section 319 (3)(b) of the Criminal Code.

Ever since the Liberals in the House of Commons agreed to this late-breaking Bloc Québécois amendment in December, the legislation’s primary provisions — criminalizing intimidation and obstruction outside of establishments used by faith-based groups and banning the deliberate flaunting of certain terrorism or hate symbols in public — have been overshadowed.

Advertisement

An unparalleled coalition of faith communities, labour organizations, civil society groups and legal experts have mobilized against this element of Bill C-9, but it passed the lower chamber with this contentious revision intact on March 25.

Horgan’s brief presentation significantly alluded to the 1990 Supreme Court case R. v. Keegstra (1990), oft-cited by parliamentarians and expert witnesses engaged in the Combatting Hate Act journey that originated with its tabling nearly nine months ago on Sept. 19, 2025.

This case concerned Alberta high school teacher James Keegstra, who was charged under Section 319(2) of the Criminal Code with willfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group for communicating anti-Semitic statements to his students. The court ultimately ruled 4-3 that the Criminal Code charge was constitutional on both freedom of expression and reverse onus grounds.  

Notably, Justice Robert George Brian Dickson’s definition of hatred in the decision — “hatred connotes emotion of an intense and extreme nature that is clearly associated with vilification and detestation” — is mentioned in the original Department of Justice press release about C-9.

Horgan suggested that “the removal of the religious text defence would no longer expressly protect good faith religious expression as a distinct category. The risk of ignoring our history invites the risk of drifting into constitutional error.”

He said “the maintenance of the charge with those defences has been understood as meeting constitutional scrutiny,” and that repealing Section 319(3)(b) “removes the balance that was approved by the Supreme Court in Keegstra.”

Advertisement

Independent Senator Dawn Arnold asked generally for “tangible examples” of where “hate crime charges could be realistically laid for expression of religious beliefs.”

Horgan noted in his response that the bill creates a problematic environment even before a charge could be laid “because of the chilling effect that the language has.” Concerns over this potential chilling effect have been raised in published correspondences by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and Cardinal Frank Leo of Toronto.  

“Many priests, certainly in my acquaintance, have raised the concern ‘well if this passes, Phil, is it a situation where I could be subject to a charge for preaching and/or engaging in catechism classes where I preach traditional Christian or Catholic sexual morality and a trans activist or someone takes offense?’ We can’t predict. You don’t know the unintended consequences of the bill,” said Horgan.

Julia Beazley, the director for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s Centre for Faith and Public Life, also engaged with Arnold’s query.

“We are concerned about the trends in public discourse where simply holding and expressing minority religious beliefs on different topics are often characterized as hateful in and of itself,” said Beazley.

Horgan also replied to Conservative Senator Salma Ataullahjan’s question about the risk of “over-criminalizing interruptions, demonstrations and organized activities in public spaces.”

“Yes, there is a great concern," Horgan replied. "Think of that demonstration. Will we charge 250 people individually? How would we go about bringing that prosecution or investigation forward? Will we be in a situation where use of public facilities is now verboten territory to engage in protests of any kind. I think it is a hallmark of democracy that protests are part of the system.

“I think we have a thicker skin in Canada than to effectively say ‘well you religious folks are the problem, and therefore we need to get rid of the religious interpretive text defence.’ ”

Advertisement

Other witnesses who presented on May 28 include Deina Warren, the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities’ director of legal affairs, United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Nazila Ghanea and Joseph Wesley Richards II, the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Canada’s vice-president and general counsel. This was the meeting featuring the most dissenting perspectives against the Combatting Hate Act.

Clause-by-clause consideration of Bill C-9 begins today at 4 p.m. ET.