PROTESTANTS UPSET WITH CATHOLIC CANADA
Ohio bill calls for Canada to be put on religious-freedom watchlist over COVID restrictionsTom Blackwell - Yesterday- National Post
About 100 people rallied outside the Edmonton law courts building on Monday May 3, 2021, during court proceedings against GraceLife Church pastor James Coates.
State lawmakers in Ohio have managed to pull Canada into America’s heated culture wars, urging the U.S. government to put this country on a religious-freedom watchlis t — largely because of pandemic-related restrictions.
If the federal agency that oversees the list followed the advice in a resolution passed by the Ohio house of representatives, Canada would join a group of 12 nations from Azerbaijan to Cuba judged guilty of “severe” violations of religious liberties.
The motion cites cases where church leaders like Alberta’s James Coates were charged and/or jailed temporarily for repeatedly flouting public-health rules that affected services at the height of the pandemic.
Those measures, which paralleled restrictions placed on other, non-religious venues, make Canada akin to one of the most repressive countries in the world when it comes to religious practice, declared a Republican representative who co-sponsored the motion.
State lawmakers in Ohio have managed to pull Canada into America’s heated culture wars, urging the U.S. government to put this country on a religious-freedom watchlis t — largely because of pandemic-related restrictions.
If the federal agency that oversees the list followed the advice in a resolution passed by the Ohio house of representatives, Canada would join a group of 12 nations from Azerbaijan to Cuba judged guilty of “severe” violations of religious liberties.
The motion cites cases where church leaders like Alberta’s James Coates were charged and/or jailed temporarily for repeatedly flouting public-health rules that affected services at the height of the pandemic.
Those measures, which paralleled restrictions placed on other, non-religious venues, make Canada akin to one of the most repressive countries in the world when it comes to religious practice, declared a Republican representative who co-sponsored the motion.
“While Ohio has stood up for religious freedom and protected the right to attend religious services, it is clear Canada has not done the same,” said Rep. Reggie Stoltzfus, according to the Statehouse News Bureau .
Canada’s actions are “very similar to what we see in Communist-controlled China,” he said.
The bill’s co-sponsor, Republican Tim Ginter, could not be reached for comment.
But a Democratic member of the state’s House of Representatives who voted against the resolution called it a slight against a long-time ally — and part of an increasingly hard-right conservative agenda that’s making Ohio “the Mississippi of the mid-West.”
The same day the motion passed just over a week ago, the house approved a bill allowing school boards to arm teachers. Ohio legislators have also recently removed a training requirement for people who carry concealed guns and barred transgender girls from high school sports.
“These culture wars are starting to take over,” Rep. Daniel Troy said in an interview. “A lot of this is just folks playing to their base. They throw out this red meat … I thought ‘My God, this is a horrible message to send a very good, polite neighbour.’”
In the house, he warned humorously that the measure — passed along party lines in the Republican-controlled chamber — risked reigniting the War of 1812.
Meanwhile, courts in Canada have ruled that the restrictions, also applied for public health reasons to restaurants, bars, movie theatres and other places where people gather in numbers, did not contravene the religious freedom guarantee in the Charter of Rights.
The resolution suggested Canada had not followed the “civilized” practice of protecting places of worship from any form of government interference.
It cited the arrest of Coates, who was put behind bars for 35 days after repeatedly ignoring orders from public-health agencies to follow lockdown rules that required parishioners at his GraceLife church and others to wear masks and limit attendance.
It also mentioned Artur and David Pawlowski and Tobias Tissen, three other pastors who had been arrested for similar alleged infractions.
Although churches and other places of worship in Ohio did at times voluntarily impose restrictions to help combat COVID-19, the state never forced such measures on them.
© Ed Kaiser/
A women chanting as a crowd of about 400 gathered outside GraceLife Church on the first Sunday after the closure west of the Edmonton city limits, April 11, 2021.
The pandemic also took a much higher toll in Ohio. It has suffered three times the number of deaths per 100,000 population from the virus — 331 compared to 111 for Canada.
While most of the document dealt with pandemic restrictions, it also cited the federal government’s new l aw banning conversion therapy of gay or transgender people. It alleged the legislation includes “a prison sentence of up to five years for merely expressing a biblical view of marriage.”
The law bars any “practice, treatment or service” designed to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, but makes no reference to marriage or the bible or to expressing views about them.
The resolution was addressed to the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom . It calls out problematic countries, with the worst offenders — those where there are “very severe” violations — included under the heading of “particular concern.”
The watchlist is a further group of merely “severe” violators. They generally include nations whose governments have directly or indirectly subjugated minority religious groups.
Algeria, one of the 12 on the list, has escalated repression of its evangelical protestant community with church closures and raids, says the commission’s 2022 report. Cuban authorities employ “persistent harassment and intimidation” against Catholic priests and other religious leaders.
A commission spokesman could not be reached for comment on the Ohio resolution.
Some churches in Canada have challenged public-health measures as violations of the Charter’s guarantee to “freedom of conscience and religion,” and at least two rulings on their constitutionality are still pending.
But at least one case has already been resolved, with Manitoba Justice Glenn Joyal saying the restrictions on religious freedom were “rational, reasoned and defensible in the circumstances of an undeniable public health crisis” and thus justified under section one of the Charter. The head of a non-profit group funding such challenges admitted earlier that he had a private investigator follow Joyal.
A judge in the Coates case ruled last year that a ticket the pastor received for repeatedly violating public-health laws did not violate the Charter’s religious-freedom section, saying, “Individual rights and freedoms are not absolute.”
The pandemic also took a much higher toll in Ohio. It has suffered three times the number of deaths per 100,000 population from the virus — 331 compared to 111 for Canada.
While most of the document dealt with pandemic restrictions, it also cited the federal government’s new l aw banning conversion therapy of gay or transgender people. It alleged the legislation includes “a prison sentence of up to five years for merely expressing a biblical view of marriage.”
The law bars any “practice, treatment or service” designed to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, but makes no reference to marriage or the bible or to expressing views about them.
The resolution was addressed to the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom . It calls out problematic countries, with the worst offenders — those where there are “very severe” violations — included under the heading of “particular concern.”
The watchlist is a further group of merely “severe” violators. They generally include nations whose governments have directly or indirectly subjugated minority religious groups.
Algeria, one of the 12 on the list, has escalated repression of its evangelical protestant community with church closures and raids, says the commission’s 2022 report. Cuban authorities employ “persistent harassment and intimidation” against Catholic priests and other religious leaders.
A commission spokesman could not be reached for comment on the Ohio resolution.
Some churches in Canada have challenged public-health measures as violations of the Charter’s guarantee to “freedom of conscience and religion,” and at least two rulings on their constitutionality are still pending.
But at least one case has already been resolved, with Manitoba Justice Glenn Joyal saying the restrictions on religious freedom were “rational, reasoned and defensible in the circumstances of an undeniable public health crisis” and thus justified under section one of the Charter. The head of a non-profit group funding such challenges admitted earlier that he had a private investigator follow Joyal.
A judge in the Coates case ruled last year that a ticket the pastor received for repeatedly violating public-health laws did not violate the Charter’s religious-freedom section, saying, “Individual rights and freedoms are not absolute.”
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