Canada Moves To Abolish Religious Protections For So-Called ‘Hate Speech’

Canada’s Parliament passed a hate-speech bill critics have argued attacks religious freedom June 17, stripping away a legal defense for citing one’s beliefs and leaving people exposed to potential charges.

Bill C-9 acts as a nationwide amendment to the Criminal Code and is described as being designed to tackle “hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places.” The bill will repeal parts of the criminal code recognizing a “good faith” religious exemption for statements that could otherwise be punished as hate speech in Canada. Conservative politicians in the country have slammed the legislation before and after its passage. The bill now awaits a royal assent. (RELATED: California Will Throw You In Jail For A Year If You Lie About Being Gay)

First read in September, the bill is designed to “create an offence of wilfully promoting hatred against any identifiable group by displaying certain symbols in a poublic place,” according to its summary. It includes characteristics such as religion, sexual orientation, sex, age, race and ethnicity.

However, the bill is also designed to “repeal the defence based on the expression of opinions on religious subjects or texts in relation to the offences of wilful promotion of hatred or antisemitism.”

This was done by repealing paragraphs 319(3)(b) and 319(3.1)(b) of the Criminal Code, which were established as defenses to hate-speech violations regarding the willful promotion of hatred against any identifiable group or the promotion of antisemitism, respectively. The now-repealed paragaghs covered situations in which the statement communicated was deemed a good-faith attempt to “establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.”

Today is a dark day in Canadian history.

The House has passed Bill C-9—an assault on religious freedom that removes longstanding protections for Canadians expressing sincerely held beliefs.

Conservatives fought this bill every step of the way—and we will keep fighting until… pic.twitter.com/ofTpp9fePT

— Brad Redekopp (@BradRedekopp) June 17, 2026

With those provisions scrapped, some politicians fear that reading or summarizing the Bible’s traditional teaching on sexual orientation will no longer be protected speech. Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Brad Redekopp shared a video of the bill passing Wednesday, referring to it as “a dark day in Canadian history.”

Redekopp continued, describing the bill as “an assault on religious freedom that removes longstanding protections for Canadians expressing sincerely held beliefs.”

He said Conservatives fought consistently as the bill moved to become law, adding that they “will keep fighting until religious freedom is restored.”

Conservative MP Andrew Lawton said the Liberals and Bloc Québécois voted down his motion to pull the bill, arguing they decided not to stand up for freedom of religion and expression.

Liberal-Bloc amendments to C-9 will criminalize sections of the Bible, Quran, Torah, and other sacred texts.

Conservatives will oppose this latest Liberal assault on freedom of expression and religion.

Sign here. Defend religious freedom. Keep Liberal thought police out of your… pic.twitter.com/WJXqUcMC8q

— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) December 1, 2025

“I’m grateful for the support from my Green and NDP colleagues,” Lawton continued. “The opposition to this bill has come from the political left and right, from civil liberties groups and a range of faith organizations.”

Liberal Party MP and Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, Marc Miller, asked in an October committee meeting in Canada’s House of Commons about how invoking some Old Testament scriptures saying that homosexuality is a sin could be considered “good faith.”

“In Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Romans, there are passages with clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals. I don’t understand how the concept of good faith could be invoked if someone were literally invoking a passage from, in this case, the Bible, though there are other religious texts that say the same thing,” he said.

“Clearly, there are situations in these texts where statements are hateful. They should not be used to invoke…or be a defence. There should perhaps be discretion for prosecutors to press charges,” Miller continued.

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre alleged the C-9 amendments will not only criminalize sections of the Bible but also the Quran, Torah and other sacred texts in a December post on X.

He also referred to the bill as an “assault on freedom of expression and religion” in a January post on Instagram. “The Liberal Minister says they need Bill C-9 to criminalize politically-incorrect Bible verses and other religious texts,” he wrote, not explicitly naming the official in the  post.

The bill will officially become law 30 days after such an assent.

The defense being removed by C-9 has only been invoked on handful of occassions, all unsuccessfully, according to The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. The country’s Supreme Court has found that defenses assisted in narrowing the offense’s scope and that the exemption provides protection when cases are borderline. The organization claimed Canadian courts have never ruled scripture itself was hatred.