OK, good evening. We can get started now at the always late clock, has struck 7 o'clock. Apparently, these are all set slow, so none of us are late friends. It's my pleasure to introduce Diana Guim. This is a unique Diana, and I've been calling since 1996 here at Dow, although Diana predated that she joined the law faculty here in 1992 after having done a undergraduate degree in the Queens and then an L.O.M. in Osgoode, and then having worked as a legal counsel and a legal researcher in the variety of jurisdictions in Canada. That is a lot of interesting work in different areas of the law, but of most significance for this session today, I thought I'd just flag a couple of things. First off, she teaches law and religion here in the law school. And she's also written three books already. It's working on law and more on law and religion, so legal guides for religious institutions and other variants relating to that. Providing really helpful information and guidance including the structure to religious organizations to understand the law. She's also written a number of articles on relationships between the law and religion, so specifically, for instance, religious-based reasoning by judges and also religious discourse. It's called religious discourse in the public square, so religion in the public discourse. And Diane also, importantly, lives for intellectual commitments. And so you will find her volunteering at the Brunswick Street Breakfast Program and the Out of the Cold Emergency Coleman Shelter. So with that very brief introduction, I'm going to go over to Diane for what I am sure is going to be an aging and challenging and interesting conversation I'm exploring religious freedom in Canada at the intersection of law and religion. Thank you, John. First of all, I just have to say I'm absolutely thrilled to see that this many people would come out on a February night to talk about law and religion. I think it's such an interesting topic and I hope that you do too. I will talk for a little while, but certainly leave time at the end for questions and conversation as I'm very interested to hear what you think about some of the topics that I'm going to be raising. Jocelyn mentioned that I teach a law and religion course here at Dalhousie. I served that course about five years ago because I felt that there were so many interesting issues that fell under that heading of law and religion, of how law and religion affect each other. Certainly speaking for myself, law and theology are two ways of thinking about the world that interests me greatly. And I would suggest to you that also perhaps law and religion have certain similarities, that both of them speak to us about how we live in community with each other and what obligations and duties that we have toward each other. I would also suggest to you that perhaps that their best and finest law and religion can do similar wonderful things and that their worst law and religion can do terrible things. But I'm very, very interested in the intersection between the two. What is and what should be the relationship between law and religion in a secular, democratic, multi-faith society such as Canada. So what are the ways in which the law protects religion in Canada and what are the ways in which the law constrains religion in Canada? In the interest of time, I'm going to focus on section 2A of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guarantees freedom of conscience and religion. But certainly as I said at the end, I'll leave time for questions and comments and if there's any other aspects about the interaction between law and religion that you would like to speak about, please raise them. So as I mentioned, section 2A of the Charter speaks of the freedom of conscience and religion. And these are, in fact, the very first rights specified in the Charter. And some have suggested that this is no accident. That in fact, freedom of religion can be seen as the grandfather or perhaps the grandmother of all other human rights and protections. Thus it's suggested that in, or at least some would suggest, others would disagree, of course, it is suggested by some, at least in the Western tradition, the growing realization that as the Supreme Court of Canada said in the first freedom of religion case under the Charter that this decided, the court spoke of the growing perception that belief is not amenable to compulsion. That that growing perception was actually a precursor to the really quite radical notion that the power of the king or the power of the state should not be all-encompassing. And while I am going to focus on the Charter, which of course, as you all know, became part of our Constitution in 1982, it would be wrong to assume that freedom of religion played no role in Canadian law before 1982. Certainly the recognition given to the freedom of worship and civil rights to Catholics after the fall of New France in 1759 was fairly noteworthy at the time. And there's case law too, well before the Charter that speaks about freedom of religion. And this sentiment is perhaps particularly strongly articulated in a series of cases coming out of Quebec in the 1950s where you see the very Catholic majority Catholic government attempting to place real restrictions on Jehovah's Witnesses. And a number of times this was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada and the Supreme Court of Canada where Catholic judges made some quite ringing observations on freedom of religion. So I'll just quote you from one. This is a case from 1955 where police had sort of run into a house or come into a house where there was a group of Jehovah's Witnesses holding a worship ceremony, dispersed everyone, told everyone to go home, seized Bibles, seized Timbuk, seized religious pamphlets. And this was challenged as having no legal authority this action on the part of the police went to the Supreme Court of Canada the Supreme Court of Canada agreed and said, and here I'm quoting Lucy from the French, but this is basically what they said in our country there exists no state religion. Anyone is entitled to adhere to any belief that they wish. All religions are on an equal footing. The same for Catholics as Protestants, Jews or other adherents of diverse denominations all have the entire liberty to think as they wish. The conscience of each is the business of each person and no one else's business. It would be terrible to think that a majority could impose its religious views on a minority. It is a profound error to believe that one serves one's country or one's religion to refuse to a minority the same rights that we claim for ourselves. 1955. And another Supreme Court of Canada also dealing with altercations between the government in Quebec and the Jehovah's Witnesses from around the same era spoke of freedom of religion as a fundamental right and said that freedom of religion together with freedom of expression and freedom of association are the necessary preconditions for community life together under a legal order. And besides the case law there's also the Bill of Rights which of course came into being in 1960 which refers to God the supremacy of God in its preamble and also talks about freedom of religion. Well wonderful is all this sounds there of course were as any of you would know who looked into this distinct limitations. Certainly with the Bill of Rights the Bill of Rights on all fronts did next to nothing. There were a couple of cases where the Bill of Rights actually did something significant other than that, let's be real it was totally useless. Even the common law the judge made law, the judge developed law that I was quoting from a moment ago was wonderful and ringing endorsements of freedom of religion that could always be trumped by legislation. And so while the court in the case that I quoted for you says all religions are an equal footing in that era pre-charter, if a government decided to pass legislation that placed some religions on a lower footing well that was that, that was the end of the story the legislation carried the day. And so of course it's that that makes the protection of religion in the constitution, in the charter so significant to be able to speak of rights and freedoms in the charter as entrenched and protected because just as legislation just as statutes passed by government will trump the common law developed by the judges so too can the constitution trump legislation. This of course doesn't mean and we'll talk more about this in a minute this doesn't for a minute mean that the rights and freedoms in the charter are absolute they aren't but constitutional protection does mean that legislation can be challenged successfully. So I want to talk about those challenges and how the courts have responded to challenges to legislation and government policy under section 2A. I would just sort of on the side note that the preamble also speaks of God talks about Canada being founded upon the principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law that's the preamble to the charter probably imagine the discussion about whether or not to include God in the preamble was at times a bit heated and apparently in one of these conversations Trudeau a committed Catholic remarked quote I don't think God gives a damn whether he's in the constitution or not but God made it in there however the preamble has not played any particular role in interpreting the rights and freedoms that has not been seen as expanding freedom of religion and has in fact been described as a dead letter in fact really having no impact on much of anything. Before we go on a couple of things to note about the charter first of all it only applies to government activity and as I mentioned before the rights and freedoms set out in it are not absolute and of course this is because of section one of the charter which states the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only such reasonable limits and freedoms reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society so someone goes to court and challenges a piece of legislation or a government policy saying this violates my freedom of religion it's quite possible the government may argue well okay even if it does violate your freedom of religion it should still be upheld because it is a reasonable limit that can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society so what in general terms do we mean by freedom of religion how has this phrase been interpreted by judges and I would suggest to you that when judges say here's what we think about freedom of religion where particularly the Supreme Court of Canada says here's what freedom of religion should mean is beautiful and broad and sweeping phrases when they get down to the nitty-gritty of actually looking at particular cases I think you could argue that sometimes they come down to slightly narrower decisions but certainly there are lovely and eloquent and sweeping phrases in what the Supreme Court of Canada has to tell us so I'm going to start with a quotation from a case called Big M Drug Mart decided by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1985 and in fact the first decision of the Supreme Court of Canada under Section 2A of the Charter and this was a case in which the court struck down Sunday closing legislation and the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Dixon said and this is kind of one of those quotable quotes like anybody who's writing or talking about freedom of religion kind of goes to this as a good quotable quote and it is, it truly is a quotable quote so I'll quote it to you a truly free society is one which can accommodate a wide variety of beliefs diversity of tastes and pursuits customs and code of conduct a free society is one which aims at equality with respect to the enjoyment of fundamental freedoms freedom must surely be founded in respect to the inherent dignity and rights of the human person the essence of the concept of freedom of religion is the right to entertain such religious beliefs as a person chooses the right to declare religious beliefs openly and without fear of hindrance or reprisal and the right to manifest religious belief by worship and practice or by teaching and dissemination but the concept means more than that and so the court goes on to tell us that freedom of religion must be interpreted broadly and that it encompasses protection against both direct and indirect state coercion so of course direct state coercion would be something like you must worship in this way you must believe in this way you must follow these religious practices whatever in terms of indirect coercion it was in this big M drug mart case that the court explicitly rejected the argument that Sunday closing legislation doesn't really affect the freedom of religion of those who hold a holy day other than Sunday they may have a financial impact on them but doesn't really affect the freedom of religion went to the argument that the court rejected and said that kind of argument doesn't recognize that the Charter also protects against indirect coercion and certainly in keeping with the idea that religion and freedom of religion should be interpreted very broadly some years later in 2004 in a case called amsalem we see the Supreme Court of Canada again reiterating the need to give freedom of religion a very broad meaning and saying we must do so in order to enhance personal autonomy and avoid the state becoming involved in judging the merits of religious doctrine and so talks about the right to undertake and practice beliefs any beliefs having a nexus with religion that one sincerely believes they are called upon to follow irrespective of whether that particular belief or practice is required by official religious dogma or is in conformity with the position of religious officials in other words if I wanted to go in and argue that something violated my freedom of religion I would have to persuade the court of the sincerity of my religious beliefs but according to this if I were the only person on the face of the earth that believed that this is what religion called me to do that should be sufficient I wouldn't have to call in a minister or a priest or a rabbi or whomever or call in you know a number of other people to show look you know we believe in that too so very very broad statement about freedom of religion coming out of that case we've also been told that freedom of religion requires that the state must be neutral both as among different religions and also as between religion and non-religion and that the Charter protects both freedom of religion and freedom from religion so I thought I'd give you a little sampling of the kinds of cases that have come up under section 2a and then after that talk about some of the challenges that have arisen so and these are not all the freedom of religion cases out there and I'll give you a little bit of a sense of the kinds of claims that have been made and I've divided them up into three categories and the first category are those cases where the court has said nope no freedom of religion violation here at all don't even need to go on and think about whether or not it could be justified under section 1 because there's no freedom of religion violation at all so starting with a very recent case from the Supreme Court of Canada and one which I'll be talking about a bit more later the court held that it is not a violation of freedom of religion for a school board to introduce a mandatory program for school children on ethics and religious culture and to refuse to exempt from that program children whose parents object to it and we'll come back to that one the lower level case that tells us that a criminal prohibition on carrying a concealed weapon does not violate the freedom of religion of an individual who claimed that he was carrying a knife as part of the Wiccan religion the requirement under the Income Tax Act to file income tax returns and pay income taxes does not violate the freedom of religion of individuals who object for religious reasons to certain aspects of government policy allowing Sikh members of the RCMP to wear turbans with their uniforms does not violate the freedom of religion of non-Sikh Canadians because of security reasons denying incense and beads to a prisoner on remand does not infringe his freedom of religion legislation making the wearing a Sikh belt mandatory does not affect freedom of religion and finally the military requirement on occasion to sing God Save the Queen does not violate freedom of religion a sense of the kinds of cases that have been brought the next category is where the court said do you know what you're right that legislation or that policy does violate freedom of religion but it can be upheld because it is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society so Sunday closing legislation that was found not to have a religious purpose but to have a secular purpose of providing a common day of rest was upheld as you know probably because it has been in the news in the last year or so the criminal code prohibition on polygamy has been upheld some cases around ordering medical treatment for children over the religious objections of their parents kind of gone a number of different ways in how they characterize this but some of them have said yes it may be a violation of the parents rights but nonetheless justified and legislation requiring anyone who operates a motorcycle to wear a helmet was held to violate the freedom of religion and the court held that violation could not be justified under section one so my third category are cases where the legislation or policy challenged was found to violate freedom of religion and the court held that that violation could not be justified under section one and therefore the legislation or at least the portion being focused on or the policy would need to be struck down for being inconsistent with the charter so Sunday closing legislation whose purpose was to impose a Christian Sabbath was a violation and unjustifiable religious teaching in public schools aimed at religious indoctrination in particular faith struck down a complete prohibition by a school board on a student wearing a kurpan the ceremonial dagger of the Sikh religion struck down requiring a member of the Canadian Armed Forces who is not a believer to remove his or her headgear during prayers on a military base violates freedom of religion and cannot be justified a restriction on door to door soliciting and distribution of pamphlets linked to religious purpose violates freedom of religion and cannot be justified and my own personal favorite a municipal bylaw prohibiting residents from keeping horses in residential areas within a particular hamlet in Ontario violated the freedom of religion of those Amish who felt the religion forbade them to have a car and who used a horse to get around and the court said that violates your freedom of religion and that violates your horse so that's just a little sampling of the kinds of cases that have been brought under section 2a and the kinds of responses that you have from the court all the way from saying your freedom of religion isn't violated at all by saying it is violated but that's justifiable to saying it is violated and that's not justifiable and therefore the legislation or policy must be struck down a little bit about some of the challenges that arise out of section 2a and interpretations of it in cases that have arisen and I do with my eye in the clock because I want to make sure that we do leave plenty of time for discussion before I go on to talk about the challenges I don't want to paint an overly bleak picture I do want to say that I think there's real promise and benefit in having freedom of religion entrenched that it certainly provides protection significantly beyond that available at the common law I think that in theory at least provides the possibility of protection for beliefs that are somewhat outside the social norm of the time and above all I think it requires courts and legislatures and perhaps even the public to think about what it is that we want to protect the name of freedom of religion and why we want to protect that and I think that's a very useful thing to think about in terms of what kind of a society do we want to create but I want to go on and talk about two major challenges in interpreting section 2a not the only two out there but two the first is how to resolve tensions between freedom of religion and the second is to look at the situation where a law is quite possibly generally reasonable doesn't trouble most people but is seen to have a negative effect on certain individuals who are identifiable by religion and in that context should a court take an all or nothing position saying either the law stands for all or falls for all or should there be the possibility of upholding the law generally but providing some kind of accommodation for those whose freedom of religion is affected so those are the two tensions or difficulties or questions that I want to talk about recognizing there may be others that you will want to talk about when we get to the chatting stage so the first one that I talked about was how to resolve tensions between freedom of religion and other charter rights and freedoms and I would say to you that this is a fundamental issue particularly given that the Supreme Court of Canada has told us that there is no hierarchy of rights amongst charter rights and freedoms so how should courts respond when you see or when allegedly or somebody feels that religion is coming up against some other equally protected equally constitutionally entrenched right or freedom what do we do then and I want to talk about this under two headings first of all the possibility of freedom of religion being seen as being in conflict with multiculturalism and then the tension between freedom of religion and equality rights now those are not the only tensions we could think of within the charter but those are ones on which there is some case law to kind of talk about how do we balance and how do we weigh particularly given that as I said a moment ago we have been told there is no hierarchy of rights so thinking about this conflict between religion and multiculturalism takes me back to the Quebec school board case that I mentioned and then I said I was going to come back to and this is a 2012 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada and here as I said you have a school board in Quebec which introduced a mandatory program for school children on ethics and religious culture and its purpose was to provide moral education and to allow religion to be studied from a cultural perspective and exemptions were not available to those children whose parents were rejected to the course on religious grounds so not surprisingly there was a challenge you have parents who challenged this and said we don't want our children in that program it's our duty said the parents not the duty of the school, our duty to educate our children about religion and that program is going to impede us in educating our children about religion because it's going to introduce moral relativism that all religions and philosophies are of equal value and by golly that's not what we believe the Supreme Court of Canada accepted that the parents were sincere in their religious beliefs but felt beheld that they had not shown that their ability to pass on their Christian faith, they were Catholic to pass on their Christian faith was infringed by having their kids in this program and the court said to hold otherwise would be quote a rejection of the multicultural reality of Canadian society and would ignore the Quebec government's obligation with regard to public education now I have a bit of a problem with that I don't actually have a problem with the course like if I've been in Quebec I'd be sending my kids to that course so happily but I have a little bit of a problem with the court's reasoning here the court told us in an earlier case the Anselm case that we must interpret freedom of religion broadly in order to avoid the possibility of the court passing judgment on the merit of various religious doctrines now there may be times when the court will uphold an infringement of the creation of freedom of religion will uphold a curtailment of religious freedom because in the eyes of the court that is demonstrably justified perhaps because the religious beliefs and practices profess to cause harm to others or perhaps because striking down the legislation would impede some beneficial government program but arguably the court should not be rejecting freedom of religion claims at the 2A stage remember there's still time to do balancing in section 1 arguably the court should not be rejecting freedom of religion claims at the section 2A stage simply because it thinks that this is bad religion now of course the court doesn't say that's what they're doing in this case but I would suggest to you that there really does seem to be an air in the court's reasoning along the lines of well how could any sensible religion object to children learning about general ethics and other religions you know, you say that you want to teach your children that there's just one true faith, yours not so sure that that's the kind of religious belief that we want to protect now of course they don't come out and say that but it does seem to be rather implicit in some of the comments the court simply says that to find that this school policy that made attending this program mandatory to find that it would be a violation of freedom of religion would be as I said a moment ago a rejection of the multi-cultural reality of Canadian society and would ignore the Quebec government's obligation with regard to public education I would suggest that once the Supreme Court of Canada found that the parents were sincere in their belief that they were obligated to teach their children about Catholicism and obligated to protect their children from the confusion of exposure to other faiths that would be sufficient to ground a freedom of religion claim in other words to say yes there is a violation let's now move on to section one and see whether or not that violation is justified at that stage the obligation would have lain on the government to show why a limitation was justified and that would have been the government's opportunity to argue that this was neutrality and multiculturalism justified this limitation I suggest to you that it's hard to see how granting an exemption would necessarily make to those kids whose parents objected would necessarily make the state less than neutral now it might be that there are stronger arguments based on multiculturalism perhaps the government would have been able to show that allowing children to be exempted from this program would lead to fostering enclaves of disrespect for the multicultural and multi-faith nature of Canada that could have been proven that might have been a mighty good reason for saying let us uphold the mandatory nature of the program and let us say that this violation of freedom of religion has been justified but I would have liked to see the government put to the proof of having to show that that would in effect be the outcome here instead of just saying what are you on about how can you claim this is going to harm your ability to teach your kids what it is that you want to teach given that the court is not supposed to be judging whether or not the doctrine that these parents want to teach their children is a doctrine that they agree with or that you or I would agree with so in other words the outcome might have been the same I don't know but it seems to me that it would have been useful to have had a fuller discussion and that it would have been less dismissive of the parents claim but we have done that balancing and that weighing at the section one stage rather than just blithely assuring the parents that their ability to pass on the religious faith that their children had not despite their fears being harmed perhaps even more difficult issues arise in the context where we have conflict between freedom of religion and equality rights and these cases I would say that you are about as difficult as you can get fundamental and important freedoms clashing or potentially clashing with each other and so I'm just going to give you a number of examples from the cases one of these comes from Saskatchewan or you have marriage commissioners these are people who are appointed by government to perform secular non-religious marriages and so after same-sex marriage in Canada you have a number of marriage commissioners who say no I don't want to be performing any such marriages that would be against my freedom of religion and the Saskatchewan government says oh ok yeah no problem we'll just pass some legislation exempting you exempting anybody any marriage commissioner from performing any marriage that would be in violation of their own religious views it really was that broad for any reason so you know you wake up tomorrow and you decide that you're opposed to interracial marriages or you wake up the next day and you decide that you're opposed to marriages between people of two different religions this exemption in the proposed Saskatchewan legislation got struck down would have said that's just tickety boo you just look that couple in the eye and tell them you're not going to marry them and not surprisingly this was challenged and the Supreme Court of Canada held this kind of an outright exemption where a marriage commissioner could just look at somebody and go nope based on my religious views I'm not going to marry you could not be upheld because it would be such an infringement of equality rights now it's important to note though that the court didn't make complete sweeping absolutist statements here it did suggest that it might be able to come up with some kind of a scheme where marriage commissioners could have somewhat more choice but in ways that were less devastating the couple that turns up and gets turned away but certainly the blanket exemption the Saskatchewan government was proposing was seen as too much of a violation of equality rights as many again I mentioned this earlier the criminal ban on polygamy was recognized and accepted by the Supreme Court of British Columbia as violating the freedom of religion of those groups and communities who believe that polygamy is what God calls them to how God calls them to live but held that the restriction of the prohibition on polygamy was justified because of the need to protect vulnerable groups particularly women and children within the community and certainly within the focus on women there was a focus on equality rights again a slightly different take on equality rights but again a case that has certainly garnered some media attention a case in which the complainant in a sexual assault trial would be able to testify while wearing her niqab face covering and went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada to say can she, can't she sometimes and here the argument was that the accused was saying we're not going to get as good a shot at a fair trial as would everybody else if she is allowed to testify wearing her niqab and the court blip in various ways but the majority said and perhaps a truly Canadian fashion well it depends it depends on the context sometimes she'll have to take it off and sometimes she won't have to take it off but it depends and that was sort of what the four in the middle said two said by golly yes she should have to take it off anytime and one said she should never have to take it off and then you had kind of these four in the middle there are also important questions around how courts should interpret hate speech provisions particularly in the context of limiting religiously motivated expression which is targeting particularly vulnerable individuals or communities how do we work that conflict between freedom of religion and freedom of expression but equality rights for those individuals and communities so that's the first challenge that I wanted to raise for you with no simple answers but at least think about it how should courts respond when you have this clash between freedom of religion and another constitutionally protected freedom of right the second challenge which I'll talk about a bit more briefly is when it's found that legislation infringes the freedom of religion of some particular group within society everyone else is probably kind of okay with it but it infringes the freedom of religion of some particular group should the court say either the legislation stands for all or the legislation falls for all or should there be some possibility of accommodation keeping the legislation but accommodation for those who feel who are affected bias who's freedom of religion is affected and this came before the Supreme Court of Canada in a fairly recent decision dealing with a Hutterite community in Alberta who challenged provincial legislation which said if you want to have a driver's license you're going to have to have a driver's license with your picture on it and this community believed that having one's picture taken violates the second commandment which says thou shalt not make for yourself an image in the form of anything and heaven above or the earth beneath or the waters below and in their view having a picture of themselves taken and put on their driver's license would be in contravention of this commandment so the Supreme Court of Canada acknowledged that this legislation violated the freedom of religion of the Hutterites and the justification offered by the government was that they were really trying to crack down an identity theft and that having a driver's license with pictures on it was not the only component but a significant component on this sort of effort to crack down on identity theft and the majority said there was a dissent but the majority said that is demonstrably justified that limits on the freedom of religion is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society therefore the legislation stands and no there will not be sort of accommodation for this Hutterite community or for others who would feel their religion did not allow the taking of their picture the majority said look the legislation is constitutionally valid therefore it's constitutionally valid for everyone one might argue this could be seen as being somewhat at odds with an earlier case where the constitutional validity of a school board policy that prohibited all weapons on school grounds and which was interpreted therefore to include the Krapan that was struck down and quite clearly one of the reasons that it was struck down was that it was so absolute so not surprisingly I recognize that there was a good rationale between trying to ban weapons on the school grounds but said that the policy should be able to accommodate those whose religion was affected in particular here the parents of the child bent over backwards and said they'll wrap the Krapan in cloth and sew it into his clothing and so on the idea that he could whip that out in a school fight causing any trouble just really wasn't on the books at all but the school board policy was just absolute and the court said a total prohibition against wearing a Krapan to school undermines the value of this religious symbol and sends students the message that some religious practices do not merit the same protection as others on the other hand accommodating this student and allowing him to wear his Krapan under certain conditions which was of course for parents being very willing to sew it into his clothing demonstrates the importance that our society attaches to protecting freedom of religion and showing respect for its minorities now one could say but those two cases are different one dealt with the policy the policy of the school board and the other dealt with a statute a provincial statute around around licenses and certainly there could be significant difficulty to having accommodation in the face of legislation you could end up in a very patchwork set of rights and so on but I guess my concern in this case was that it felt that the majority dismissed the possibility of accommodation mighty briskly and again I think I would at least have liked to have seen a more fulsome discussion about if providing accommodation for those whose freedom of religion is violated by legislation if that won't work it would be nice to tell us more fulsomely why that wouldn't work and to assure us that you have thought through the various possibilities so again I would see that as another issue that needs to be thought through more fully so in closing and we will have time for conversation in closing I would suggest to you first of all despite some of my criticisms here we do in Canada have a reasonably robust sense of freedom of religion I would suspect that in many countries around the world the freedom of religion that we enjoy here in Canada would be the envy of many the very fact that it is protected in our charter suggests that it has significant weight but of course how it's interpreted also will tell us how much weight and how broad and how deeper commitment is to religious freedom and I would suggest that for religious freedom to have any real meaning we do have to be willing to protect certain beliefs and practices that don't fit with prevailing norms because after all if your beliefs and practices fit with prevailing norms you don't really need constitutional protection that is not to say that freedom of religion should be placed at the top of a hierarchy that is not to say that freedom of religion should never be violated and that could never be justified under section one absolutely there are times I believe when freedom of religion needs to be tamped down in order to protect other profoundly valuable rights and freedoms and values in our society but I do think that we need to think long and hard about how to strike that balance and I do think I guess I want to go back to that theme that sometimes protection may need to be given to things that are seen as weird or strange or out there problematic or whatever by the majority and I certainly know for myself that there are times when I look at cases and I think morally and theologically I love the outcome but I think the legal reasoning is really quite suspect and I think we do have to be careful how we go about thinking about any of the rights and freedoms in the Charter including freedom of religion and thinking about how do we give them how do we give that freedom or that right significant weight while also recognizing there will be tough cases where something equally important will be clashing with it and there is no easy answer so I think I'll stop there and as I said I want to talk about the Charter if you want to talk about other things human rights cases and so on I'm happy to whatever you would like to chat about under the heading of law and religion I'm happy to chat so I'll open it up for questions yeah one of the questions that the court has to ask is about the sincerity and the religious belief and I was wondering if you thought that the court should be making an inquiry into the sincerity of the belief and so how should they that's a really good question and that certainly came up the first time we've seen this real emphasis from the court, this really explicit emphasis from the court around the sincerity is in the excellent case where the court says look other people share your religious views or not it doesn't matter if you can bring in some religious leaders to support your views what matters is that you are sincere but then it goes on and says you shouldn't inquire into that too closely because there's obvious problems there on the one hand I think you can see the relevance of sincerity that somebody just said you don't really like that law think I'll just claim some freedom or religion is obviously not somewhere that you want to go on the other hand probing into sincerity think we have done a little bit heavy heavily handedly can be a problem certainly in the case that we're talking about here at the first level when the woman first makes this claim and the judge is trying to determine whether or not she has some fear there's sort of this line of question about have you ever taken it off oh took it off took it off to heaven I think it was actually a picture taken for a license how do I think about oh you can't be all that sincere hanging out well well that seems incredibly intrusive and simplistic take on what it means to be sincere about one's religion and a very sort of uncontextual take on what it means and so I think that there is quite rightly a concern about how do you on the one hand say let's make sure this is real plain but on the other hand not say well that's certainly not the way I'd act if I was sincere in my views I guess you can't be sincere in your views there's so much worry there about judgment perhaps particularly judgment when somebody from one religion tries to assess sincerity of somebody from another religion which frankly they probably aren't particularly familiar with so there are some real dangers there on the other hand I know I can see why that the court does talk about that relevant aspects yeah a couple things it may surprise you but a few years ago I wrote an op-ed for the Kate Bretton post in favor of Sunday closing laws I mean it doesn't surprise me even though I might not benefit from that although I have to have a Sabbath day for that but I did it because of two reasons because in my past I remember as a kid when it was kind of nice when things were kind of shut down it was like come to a place where I lived in a place where I saw it eroded over the years and Sunday comes a hub-up day just got the other day of the week and that and also living in Jerusalem for many years there it's just nice to see Saturday there being the day where the place is like that and so I was defending it on a public welfare sort of thing if I was to make an argument that we can have one day of the week where we don't have to do that but it seems like I don't know if the churches are even doing that anymore the one place having some success with oddly enough I think is a secular realm in Europe I think the European Union there has people resisting there's been pushed to do Sunday shopping there but the European Union, not because it's a holy or pious thing to say is a traditional day it doesn't have work in it they're more effective in holding that Sunday closing day than I think the rest of North America yeah so could there be wasn't there something in the old law about the Lord's Day or something like this that could be arm care whether the Jews have to could Jews work on Sunday if they declare it Saturday their Lord's Day or something I don't know well interesting the first two cases that came down from the Supreme Court of Canada on freedom of religion both involved challenges to legislation Sunday closing legislation in the first case the court struck down the legislation in the second case the court upheld it and if that's all you knew you might have to look and think like did you forget what you did last year but that isn't the case the court held it in the first case with the legislation which had the rather telltale name of the Lord's Day Act that that was actually intended to sort of inculcate Christian faith and a Christian self and that therefore has been passed for a religious purpose and in that case the court made the quite striking statement I think that if a piece of legislation is passed for a religious purpose that is it game over the legislation is invalid you cannot go on a section one and try to justify it because there is no justification in a country such as Canada for legislation which is passed for a religious purpose on the other hand if a legislation is passed for a secular purpose what happens to have a particular impact on certain people because of religion which was the case which was the business retail holiday act or whatever it was called in the second case it was passed for a secular reason exactly the reason that you suggested isn't it nice to have a day when most people can stay at home but had an impact on those who celebrated another Sabbath that because a secular purpose could go on and be discussed at section one to see if there was or was not justification and the court held there that there was justification and not held the legislation was there ever a corollary the lords act whatever it was that said a religion has a very well founded definite other day than Sunday such as the Jews could opt out and they could close their store on Saturday Peter Deli opened on Sunday was there something like that? in the Ontario legislation that was the focus of the second case there actually was an exemption or exception in there that said and you had to meet all three criteria if you've only got you had to it couldn't be a big story you had to only somebody square feet whatever that was and only somebody employees and you had to have had your store closed for full 24 hours within a certain period before Sunday so you closed on Saturday whatever the number of employees was and you didn't have over the square footage then you actually could open on Sunday and so the majority of the court started to bag into account too in saying look they're trying to be reasonable and there's a secular purpose here and let's uphold it Justice Wilson said even that's problematic it's still too limited that's not good and interestingly not long after the case after having probably spent a period of time on money in court arguing to uphold the legislation my understanding is that Ontario changed it can actually was one of the forerunners of opening up for Sunday and stopping is there any overlap in the case law of the relationship between religion and conscience which are the two terms that are contained within that charter there's really very little on that yet certainly I think it's fair to say that historically conscience and religion would have been seen as completely intertwined in other words in an era when we assumed that everybody had some separate religious beliefs how different they might be we would have assumed that one's conscience was shaped by those religious beliefs and even in 1985 not that long ago in the Big M drug case there is a quote by Chief Justice Dixon he doesn't really make any distinction he just says conscience and religion conscience and religion allows you to act in accordance with your conscience conscience and religion he doesn't really make any particular distinction between them now perhaps even in 1985 certainly in today's world I think we would have recognition that some have strongly held and profoundly important conscientious beliefs conscientious objections that would be based on a secular worldview of a secular stats of comprehensive beliefs and values not a religious one and therefore I don't think we would try to argue today that the two are just nifty little synonyms for each other on the other hand there's not really much there in the case law to tell us how we should think about them differently there's certainly some writing on it some of you can suggest it that conscience is a sufficiently broad term that really it could encompass religion but we don't really need religion as another term because if we said conscience is simply what you profoundly believe you are called to do or not do then what does it matter whether that's from religious or a secular basis and therefore conscience could include both others have argued that conscience has a particularly individualistic aspect to it and that at least sometimes freedom of religion may have a more community or collective aspect to it which would be lost if we didn't keep the two terms separately but that's a fascinating area but not one that's sorted out or separate it related to that would political beliefs be in the realm of conscience if you hold a belief that's one of the major parties holds I can't hear these hellish beliefs in the fringe but is that projected under the constitutional I mean certainly often I think what you see a political expression protected under the freedom of expression but in our degree one could have an intersection between conscience and conscience and political belief let's keep religion out of it let's say for secular reasons for non-religious reasons you were a pacifist would you start out with the pacifist party you know and I could have political overtones but also overtones of conscience but certainly there was expression or association those are also freedoms that are protected in which area which could be very relevant to political commentary this is too soon to ask but how do you see a relationship between this religion and the fascist system of law and the new commission just over yesterday I really thought what's the timing thank you for doing that who knows who knows what that's going to be this is the idea of this office of religious freedom the federal level is going to tie in with our foreign affairs and it really previews up there's those who say what a horrible idea this is simply an effort by that harbour government to take christianity conservative christianity and thrust it down the throats of those who would like to be free of it there are those who say what a great idea or it could be a great idea surely in our foreign affairs we want to speak out strongly about the protection of human rights one subset of human rights would be religious freedom the freedoms of any religious minority not just christianity and there's this practical third view that just goes oh no another stickhole in which our taxpayer dollars will disappear and I don't know I guess I'll have to wait for found being disappointed and disturbed if it was first that's a trusting religion down the throats of those who don't wish for it I suppose I harbour some perhaps it could do some good if it really did take into account religious minorities of different kinds because I think I would say that if you wanted to look at a society that really does protect rights for individuals and particularly rights for minorities there are a few groups that I would see as the communities in the mine shaft and while religious minorities are not the only one of those I would see them as one of those certainly not the only one and therefore a concern persecution on the basis of religion would seem a relevant thing but who knows what anything is going to come of that in five years time in terms of I just remembered recently in last November there was this case in Toronto where a woman was recused haircuts at the barbershop because of based on his religious beliefs that he doesn't give haircuts to women although she asked for something that he normally gives to men a business in America so she argued that this is discriminating against her right to not be discriminated against based on sex given a service that is normally given to public so I don't know what happened later but I want to know what I must admit I wasn't wildly setting towards that hate and I really do think two things first of all of course themselves have said that the discrimination, the harm, the violation in this case we would be talking about the church but about the human rights legislation it doesn't make the visual law the government is still making the same principles with the relevant in the context of freedom of religion a matter of fact you also relevant here in the human rights context but it must be more the trivia word you know what I bet you there's a lot of other places that have caught her hair and they should go there and secondly I think we have to look at it in context I'm all for gender equality I think there are areas in which women have been disadvantaged I think there are areas in which women are still disadvantaged but I don't think getting a haircut is one of them and I think that that would be relevant to think about in trying to figure out how you weigh up the rights and wrongs there are enough true rights and wrongs in the society to lose sleep over without losing sleep over the fact that she might have had to go ten feet down the road and get her hair cut somewhere else and frankly you know you almost don't think was she looking for a cause to be perturbed about that particular you know so I have to admit that I didn't but would you recommend on that change if for example this service was a unique service that only could have been offered at that hair salon yeah maybe I mean it ended up really really a unique service that really mattered and of course your response to that in a way to triallocate oh for sure absolutely at some point if you have something that's only if I'm dying on the street I only treat men I think we would all think that was hugely problematic and of course there's a vast array of scenarios between me dying on the street and me not getting the hair cut that I want but I guess I would always come back to what is the weight of the concern here and what is the context I'm standing in my practice people wanted to draft wills to you know in accordance with Sharia law which I have difficulty with the virtual legislation and I'm just wondering in this case it's going to hit the the big way the big way in which that it's hit the law hit the media and shapes the law is in Ontario around the issue of what law can be used in arbitration so let me say I know very little about Sharia law it will be appalling to me to hold myself forward as any kind of an expert so I'm not going to but just to recount through a little bit you may well be familiar with but for anybody who isn't what happens in Ontario some years ago there was an announcement by somebody who was going to set up I can't remember the name of it but some sort of institute for Sharia law was in various private and particularly family law matters so you had an issue with your spouse or your brother or your kid or whomever and didn't want to go to the courts that you could go to arbitration and have somebody arbitrate the importance of Sharia law and whoa this hit the headlines and you know all kinds of groups on both sides arguing for it and so on the agreement appointed Marion Boyd a former attorney general to do a report on what she did and she recommended that she wasn't recommending any change she was actually recommending the status quo because up until then you know if two people want to get together an arbitrator matter and appoint someone to be an arbitrator and agree to abide by that arbitration you can use secular law you can use religious law and presumably you can use anything pretty well so she said yes we certainly should accommodate family arbitrations done in accordance with religious law and specifically the focus here Sharia law the concern was that vulnerable individuals and particularly women might feel pressured into this form of arbitration and so she had a variety of recommendations around process and procedure for protection or with attempted protection with regard to that she writes the report and the government just goes no for banning it and so now there is a section in the arbitration act of Ontario which says basically any other kind of arbitration non-family arbitration you go for commercial arbitration you can do in accordance with religious law if you wish but not family arbitration now of course people spoke with that as a ban on family arbitration based on religious law it's not going to be a ban I mean two people get together in the living room and it's not going to be something arbitrated in accordance with religious law it's not like the police are going to break down the door the limit on it was if you have a come to agreement in accordance with religious law and then one party says I don't want to do that I don't want to look up to that normally you would expect to be able to go to court and have the court enforce the arbitration agreement but what this amendment to the arbitration act in Ontario said is that in family law matters if the arbitration decision is to be enforced in the court it must have been decided in accordance with Canadian law so and there's been significant debate since then as to whether that was a good way to go or not for a variety of reasons I mean first of all I think that my understanding is that it cast rather a call on other forms of religious arbitration that would be clicking along quite nicely but no one being particularly perturbed at all but as a lawyer are you going to keep sending your clients to this religious arbitration if you have to say but you know what when he wants the back out of the court so there's just some spillover of that and also arguments around first of all do we really think that this is going to stop arbitration or is it just going to make it sort of more underground and further if there is always that concern about voluntariness but if you could have protections around voluntariness if two adults aside that they want to have the private dispute between the two of them are arbitrated in accordance with a particular set of rules which each of them gives allegiance to is there any reason for telling them they can't simply because that might not be the set of rules that I would give or you would give allegiance to so it would be a fairer discussion on that and that's the way Ontario's government went no I have not read that but the grammar about the situation seems to me if it serves us all and some of our earliest immigrants I'm not serving you or something because you're black he's in Montreal anywhere things that we're willing to carve out I mean any of you who are immigrants who are already involved licensed to discriminate and I'm making the sense that this haircut thing has some sort of gender component involved oh yeah it would have happened so I mean what's the difference if you impact is acidity or on the person's dignity and maybe that's where I come down to because I don't think it was as much of an impact on her dignity but frankly I do think that to be black in Montreal in 1922 or whatever that case was and to be told that you can't get a drink in a public bar is a profoundly different thing than to tell some woman in Toronto today that you're going to walk down and speak and get her haircut somewhere else I don't see that as being so entirely different because I'm reading this case of the situation where somebody is obviously there's something visible about the person that does not want to go near the planning public service I mean I don't see this that far I guess it would have to depend too on how we interpreted the religious motivation of the individual if the religious motivation of the individual is to go oh dear god you're a woman you're a second class citizen how appalling I'm about nothing to do with you get out of my shop you're defining my shop to be gone I would be a heck of a lot more horrified than I'd be you know then if it was because she was gay that I would be much more upset much more upset oh so I figured if it was around sexual orientation I have huge different views simply because I think that you have to look at the context and you have to look at the vulnerability of the community and I do not see women seeking haircut in Toronto a particularly vulnerable community I would take a completely different take on if we introduce sexual orientation because I would see it as much more of a slap in the face much more yeah but I think so I wouldn't see that I might well see that certainly if you brought sexual orientation into it but I would also want to in my example where I didn't was assuming that wasn't perfect I would want to say well what is the motivation if it is you're a woman and you're defining the place to get out it's not automatic if it is my beliefs around modesty or around appropriate interaction between the genders is such that I am actually constrained from having physical contact with you much as I respect you as a human being that has to be a different thing right I think it does and therefore I would want to look both at the motivation but also at the community and as soon as sexual orientation comes in I am going to take a very different read of that yeah and I guess it's sort of you know how much of a how much of a slap in the face is this do you think in that case that it's fair to say that discrimination I guess for something like sexual orientation is sort of a more open wound is sort of a fresher thing to discriminate against than gender I think it wouldn't be I don't think that people would be as quickly to be offended about being a woman if someone says no I can't serve you because you're a woman you'd be like a hell as opposed to someone saying I can't serve you because you're gay I think that there's the roots are deeper in one than they are in the other one is more established gender equality is more established in today's age than it is the sexual orientation established I would look at the context I would look at the vulnerability of the group I would look at the newness of our willingness to recognize rights and even within one of those categories I still want to look more at the context so if this was anything that kind of had shadings of violence toward women or sexual assault or whatever those are areas in which frankly I don't think our society has moved but I don't think we've moved anywhere near far enough and so I might have the same sort of hackles rising on the back of my neck reaction that I would have to you know the christian york case if you're black I'm not going to serve you or you're gay I'm not going to serve you or whatever and so I recognize that subjective I recognize different people will have different takes on that I realize there's no easy test for it but I also think we've got to think about those hard questions rather than just taking absolutely just saying this one way or another if you flip it around if I walk into a hair dressing establishment and say I'd like to get a haircut and they say we don't cut male hair what have I got to complain about and I mean there's a couple of arguments there's a couple responses that might be made one might simply be gee we only cut long hair we don't know what to do with your short hair one of the things today's world they probably have cut some of your hair that's just as short as yours right the other argument is perhaps that would be less of an affront to your dignity because frankly as a man you probably haven't the argument would go being affronted on the grounds of gender as frequently as perhaps a woman has been affronted on the grounds of gender and I do think that sometimes that is relevant to think about not always but sometimes there's a discussion about not being able to remember the name of the golf club where Tiger Woods is didn't let women in and so on people discussing it instead of saying well I'm sure this golf club somewhere they don't let men in and I think he had the service of hitting the golf club but nobody really wants to get into anything that's very much of this down the doors to get into these all women golf clubs and you know I think you do have to try to calibrate things a little bit that said I'm never a proponent of all or nothing I'm not a proponent of the idea of well you're a man, nothing could possibly affront you and I'm a woman, anything could possibly affront me and I'm certainly not a proponent of that view I would just say we always have to look at this in context this is an example before that I'm not going to identify the community but one of the things I deal with a few years ago I had a rabbi there who did not allow women on the board of the synagogue and so it was all run by men he said that's fair that's the way it is they had a sisterhood over there I don't have a vote in the sisterhood they did their own thing without me and so that's the way it is he didn't apologize for it at all should they have challenged him or what again I guess I'd say there's a huge difference between what you might do within the religious community I want the state to be able to do right internally they do more or less whatever they want with other violation my take on that would be if I were in that community I would be challenging very significantly but internally it hasn't challenged successfully the idea of the state swooping in and trying to change that within a religious institution to me would be really really crossing the lines of what the state should be able to do I mean there would be no problems with that sure how does the state define a religion you mean God so we spoke about it in the Constitution that these were God and you were a religion and that was how it was done in the Charter so is there a separation between the God and the religion and that certainly was one of the criticisms of putting God in the piano there were many criticisms but one of the criticisms between God and the piano was that that had changed an overtones and didn't but really the preamble did you remove one of the words and carry on in effect of course that's the effect also of course I mean they just sort of said that the preamble the dead letter ignored pretend it's not there and let's just go on and focus on sections 2A so there is a decision between a secular way of doing things and a religious way well I think certainly religion if you get back to the comment that section 2A protects conscience and religion I think there is some kind of a sense that although none of us can actually articulate it perhaps we have an idea that religion is different there is some way we might recognize than say a secular a secular or a secular so we're just trying to balance it but even within the definition of I'm just wondering the way you started this off religion has been defined very broadly and so certainly any of the sort of royal religion but even the case say the witchcraft sorcery and conjuration are religion protected other sections but that was actually your sincerity what is sincerity is there a difference between sincerity and sanity in the case like that the focus is about sincerity that was a serious question well the courts have said we are and again in this answering case the courts said we can inquire into whether the person challenging the legislation is sincere although we shouldn't inquire too closely but we should not be trying to determine whether certain religious doctrines are right or wrong because I suspect that to give any religious doctrine you can think of even though some of us may hold very close to our heart there's somebody else out there who is going to think that sounds like pure idiocy right and therefore it is not the role of a court ooh that's nice of you like that though doctrine and all that doctrine is problematic and obviously if you hold beliefs that harm others then that may be a mighty justifiable reason under section one why the government will limit you not necessarily in your beliefs you go home and think whatever you want but in your actions based on those beliefs so there really is the possibility there should be the possibility of limiting freedom of action based on religion because of harm to others but I would go back to saying that should be the test but the courts apply not just ooh is that a little bit weird or ooh I don't believe that I wonder if there is any precedent on state laws challenging church laws and I think in terms of women in the Catholic church for instance women not being ordained is there any so other words challenge for that I would say that's a huge intrusion and a huge inappropriate intrusion of the state if the state were to try to tell the Catholic church that it should ordain women and again I guess this is one of those situations where I actually think freedom of religion has a whole belief that I do not share I'm a member of the church I am a fallen firm believer of having women in the fullest but I would see it as an utter violation of freedom of religion as a state that I would actually step in and tell a religion that it had to change such a fundamental part of its belief I would not support Excuse me, but what do you think that it is possible for religion to be able to do that issues of state which is seen as an religion can promote secular values under the power of this religion and all of our societies So you are talking about what roles should or could religious voices have in trying to affect society or the law I think that there are religious issues at the stage there are many religions in the world that we care about we have only one character as soon as there is freedom of your religion there is freedom of mind I am important I don't want to sit with all respect to I don't want to sit nearby the person I don't want to drive on the road where there is somebody with no picture on his or her I don't know and drive as license As soon as the values and freedoms and rights of the state are in this big position about the rights of freedom of religion we have this challenge every day and we will discuss it for later There are huge issues and huge difficulties there about where you draw the line and I guess I would also come back to harm although recognizing that it is a subjective view and that people have very different tastes of what we call harm and so for instance on the on her hand I probably wouldn't become sitting next to somebody assuming that they were a ceremonial part of their dress now obviously if they are harassing or violently that would be a whole different kind of a dish and I think that comes back to one of the cases that I mentioned earlier there was actually a challenge to changes to the RCMP regulations RCMP regulations were amended to allow Sikh officers to wear their turban with their uniform and this is a challenge on the grounds that it infringed the freedom of religion of the rest of us somehow perhaps being arrested by somebody wearing a turban was in violation of your freedom of religion and of course it's no and I'm agree with the court on that what I have to say so for me it would always come back to trying to say are there real harms or are there harms so significant that that would justify limiting freedom of religion which I see as a profoundly fundamental freedom and my answer is yes sometimes there are times when it's justified to limit freedom of religion but I would want to look at those I would want to look for real harm before I was willing to go in that direction and I think the other interesting point that you brought up was about what role could religious forces have in trying to influence the secular society law, politics and so on and my view would be that if you're trying to argue for reason or persuade on a matter of public policy you should be free to do it from whatever your stance is so if you're arguing for or against something on secular grounds say so if you're arguing for or against something on religious grounds say so what I want to provide those of that would be once you put your religious views out there as your basis for arguing for or against some piece of public policy you should be as ready to have your religious views discounted criticize, satirize whatever else as any other so in other words the parallel that I would make is if I'm speaking in favor of a piece of public policy and I say I come to this as a feminist I'm going to recognize that some people are going to say feminism is idiocy equally if I say I come to this because of my religious views I've got to accept that someone is going to look at me and think your religious views are idiocy and so I should be open to speak to issues of public policy from a religious basis and that should be welcome and fine but with the providers that I have been willing to have my religious views criticize just as I would have any of my secular views criticize pretty western university request to host a law school so I think it's an interesting I mean, prior to the religious educational institutions not new but I guess it perforated the role of employers it's a tough one and I go back before so University of West of UBC, Trinity Western that is thinking about setting up a law school it's a privately funded religious university and the controversy is around the fact that as a student I think probably also as faculty if you are a student there or hired there you have to sign the sort of code of conduct that says we adhere to these religious values and movement gauges and these ungodly acts which lists a bunch of stuff including homosexual activity so the issue is well first of all the background the case of the university first of all the public eye some years ago when it's applied to have a teacher training certificate up until then you could take your four years at Trinity Western but you had to go to Simon Fraser or somewhere else to get your last year to get your teacher certificate to be able to teach in public schools and Trinity Western applies to say no you'd like to be able to take somebody here for all five years and turn them and the regulatory body in B.C. that will be approving such as saying turn it down because of this statement that teacher that professors and students have designed and the courts I think me, you like to speak for a candidate and this is one of the cases where the court says there is no hierarchy of rights I think me before kind of danced around the issue of this but ultimately said you would need to provide if you're going to refuse the right for the school to have this fifth year teacher training you're going to have to prove with their term in other words you're going to have to prove that teachers who come through five years of Trinity Western teacher training are going to be more homophobic in the classroom than teachers who come through four years of Trinity Western training plus a year at Simon Fraser and the majority of the courts really don't have evidence on that and I think the sort of said underlined part of the argument was you know what, you could be a teacher from some other university and still be homophobic it's not that we've managed to get rid of homophobia among everybody else so now this university is thinking of setting up its own law school and presumably those who talked there and went there would have to sign the same thing and so the base about what one's response to that should be I mean certainly at a personal level if not something that makes me at all happy I was asked by somebody I know to contribute financially to the setting up of the university and I said I can't I simply can't because it stands on this issue but again, do we do we say that the state can prevent people with those who are just beliefs and getting together and training lawyers do we say that it can be justified because those lawyers will have a role you know it's not just like training pulbers it's often they're not going to have a role in the development of the law and in the articulation of the law including equality rights and freedom of religion and so those are the issues of the state and I'm not quite sure what I think the answer is on that one I know I feel real this is at the thought of such a law school and yet I also know that I have a duty to sort of interrogate myself and ask whether I simply say no law schools for those who believe that I do sort of thing I'm not sure yes if you were overtly homophobic in the classroom and were cost behaving in that way there probably would be sanctions for you but we don't actually look into people's minds and souls as they're going to teach a training and try to figure out what it is that they're actually believing before it's translated into action so yes there certainly could be and there would be in any law school people who hold wildly diverse views on some of these issues and who will go out and be lawyers and as I say on the one hand there is certainly a level of discomfort on the other hand the idea that we say you know lawyers must sort of fit within this law can also have problems I'm better at seeing the difficulties in the argument on both sides than necessarily knowing it's a perfect answer so I think that is 8.30 which I think is a time which we promise to liberate people just for some to remind you, ask you to fill in the comment sheets if you're coming seriously as we continue to work on improving the program the second is to let you know that the next session of these is on March 6th, it's on disability and human rights implementing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities so we welcome you all to come back on March 6th and finally I would actually join me in thanking Diana for laying out here