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We live in an altered universe in which some have the power to destroy a group or individual without proof but with vile labels. Worse, they are funded by our federal government with your tax dollars.
They are the arbiters what may be expressed and what should be suppressed, and even what may be believed. Some call it cancel culture. It should be called what it is: bigotry.
A perfect example is what recently happened to the Campaign Life Coalition. Unfair doesn’t come close. Outrage is the appropriate response.
The Canadian Anti-Hate Network, or CAHN, has labelled Campaign Life a “far-right group.” CAHN received $200,000 from Public Safety Canada in April 2024. At the end of 2023, it was given a $400,000 grant from Heritage Canada.
In its booklet, “40 Ways to Fight the Far-Right,” CAHN calls Campaign Life an example of “Christian nationalist groups which believe Canada was founded on authoritarian, conservative Christianity, and should be governed accordingly today.”
Campaign Life vehemently denies the allegations. Of course, once accused it’s hard to shake off the label.
“Being blacklisted in this way is not only unfair. It’s totalitarian,” said Peter Baklinski, spokesman for Campaign Life.
In a recent Catholic Register article, Baklinski noted the CAHN allegations can have serious consequences.
“We work with government organizations to run our events. We run the National March for Life every year. If we have this label, the government has policies about not working with explicit hate groups… are we going to be denied our ability to get permits?”
In another report, CAHN noted Campaign Life has held ‘pray-ins’ and encouraged parents to keep children home to protest the raising of Pride flags at schools.
These pray-ins were mostly directed at Catholic schools. In effect, Campaign Life is being condemned for upholding Catholic teaching, undercutting the claim Canada respects freedom of religion.
What CAHN doesn’t get, or doesn’t care to understand, is that a Catholic school is to be faithful Church teaching. In the Catechism, abortion and same-sex relations are called mortal sins. What most anti-Catholic activists overlook is that the Church also teaches that the faithful must condemn the sin but love the sinner. No gay person, for example, is banned from the Church. The confessional is open to all. Even the Pope goes to confession.
CAHN uses guilt by association to make its point. Its website places Campaign Life among a list of neo-Nazis and those promoting anti-immigrant violence.
“I have pointed out for years the number of times legislators have repeated the myth that pro-lifers are violent or intimidating,” said Jeff Gunnarson, president of Campaign Life. “One might further twist that lie to call us hateful, ergo committing acts of hatred against women.”
Several emails to CAHN as of this writing have not been returned.
This kind of condemnation of Christian groups, based on false assumptions and bias, is sadly not new.
More than a decade ago, I covered a story for the National Post in which the Canadian Association of University Teachers called a group of small Christian universities unfit to give a proper education because of their religious codes of conduct
One of those schools was Trinity Western University. It was attacked again when it attempted to create a law school. The law societies of Ontario and Nova Scotia said they would never licence graduates of a TWU law school. That essentially killed TWU’s plans.
On a personal note, I was recently told by a local hospital that I would no longer be welcome as a volunteer because my values clashed with those of the institution. One of those values was my opposition to euthanasia (aka MAiD) though I was never told what the other values were.
I volunteered for roughly three years at the hospital. When I left in 2022 because of health issues, I received a note from the head of volunteers saying I had “touched the lives of many” and would be welcome back any time.
Somehow my values over the past two years have become toxic.
All this amounts to continuing erosion of our rights in the publics square. It is not enough to be upset by it. What is needed is a refusal to stand for such blatant discrimination.
The easiest and most dangerous thing we could do is shrug our shoulders. Religious freedom is fragile. It is too precious to lose, but it can be lost.
(Lewis is a Toronto writer.)
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Like many Canadians, Mark Joseph has felt an increasing unease about the number of churches, synagogues and other places of worship being vandalized and torched over the past five years.
