No, proposed Canadian law wouldn’t ban Christianity or criminalize Bible quotes

A proposed amendment to Canada’s criminal code regarding hate speech has some social media users claiming it would ban Christianity or allow Christians to be jailed for quoting the Bible.

"Canada is passing a bill to essentially ban the idea of Christianity," read a March 5 Instagram post’s caption. The post shared a screenshot of an X post that said, "Canada is the new North Korea. Bill proposes to jail Christians who quote the Bible in public and to jail pastors who preach against certain sins as guilty of hate crimes."

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The Instagram post didn’t specifically say what it was referring to, but the X post it shared linked to an article on a conservative website that made the accusations about Bill C-367 in Canada. We found other social media posts making similar claims.

Bill C-367 was filed in November by Yves-François Blanchet, the leader of Canada’s Bloc Québécois party. 

The bill does not mention Christianity or any other religion. It seeks to remove religious exemptions as a defense for inciting hatred, antisemitism, or violence, its author said. It doesn’t ban Christianity and wouldn’t lead to arrests for simply quoting the Bible. Under the bill’s terms, someone might be arrested if they are quoting the Bible while inciting violence and vilifying a group, but quoting the Bible is not in itself an offense, experts told PolitiFact.

(Instagram screenshot)

The bill sought to amend Canada’s criminal code in a section about hate propaganda. It proposed two changes to the code.

• First, it proposed repealing paragraph 319(3)(b) of the code, which said a person can’t  be convicted of an offense for the willful promotion of hatred "if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text."

• Second, it proposed repealing paragraph 319(3.1)(b), which said a person can’t be convicted for the willful promotion of antisemitism "if, in good faith, they expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text."

In a Nov. 28 Canadian Parliament debate, Blanchet told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau the bill was in response to threats against the Jewish community.

"Mr. Speaker, gunfire has been heard in Montreal over the past few days. Windows have been broken, and graffiti has been directed specifically against the Jewish community," Blanchet said. "There are fears that these actions were in some way encouraged by an exception in the Criminal code that allows hate speech and the incitement of violence."

Blanchet’s proposal does not refer to Christianity but critics argue that the changes could lead to charges against a Christian who made statements opposing the LGBTQ+ community.

Joanie Riopel, the press secretary for Bloc Québécois, which Blanchet leads, told PolitiFact that in the context of the war between Israel and Hamas, hate speech, violence and antisemitism have increased in Quebec and Canada. Riopel cited a religious preacher in Montreal calling for the death of "Zionists" at a pro-Palestinian rally.

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Because of this, Bloc Québécois proposed Bill C-367, "the only purpose of which is to remove religious exemptions for public incitement to hatred, wilful promotion of hatred and wilful promotion of antisemitism," Riopel said.

The code as it stands "allow anyone to hide behind religion in the context of public incitement to hatred," Riopel said.

The bill has yet to make it past the first of three required readings in the House in Commons. If passed there, it would also need to make it through three readings in the Senate.

In February, Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, another Bloc Québécois member, offered a similar bill in the House of Commons, Bill C-373. It also has not moved past its initial reading there, but because of parliamentary rules, would be debated before C-367. The debate on the second reading of C-373 should happen before June 30, Riopel said.

The proposed bill would not mean banning Christianity, said Richard Moon, a University of Windsor law professor who researches religious freedom and freedom of expression.

"The Criminal Code hate speech ban extends only to speech that vilifies the members of a particular group — racial, religious, etc. The speech must be extreme, for example, describing the group members as subhuman or as inherently dangerous," Moon said. "I'm not sure what a Christian might say that would be so extreme."

Moon said a Christian simply saying that homosexuality is sinful wouldn’t be considered hate speech, but saying gays are pedophiles might.

"But that is not, as far as I know, the view of any Christian group, or at least any mainstream group," Moon said.

Emmett Macfarlane, a University of Waterloo political science professor who studies online hate speech and free expression, called the claims about Bill C-367 "mostly nonsense."

"The exemptions that the bill would remove from the law would not change the very high threshold that must be met before any expression is deemed to be the wilful promotion of hatred or the wilful promotion of antisemitism," said Macfarlane, who added that there is a very high bar in Canada’s hate speech law and few charges have been brought forward.

Striking religious exemptions from the law wouldn’t prevent people quoting Bible passages or other texts generally, Macfarlane said.

"An individual would almost certainly have to be incorporating additional extreme and incendiary speech in their expression to run afoul of the law, with or without the exemptions," he said.

An Instagram post claimed that Canada is passing a bill to "essentially ban the idea of Christianity."

But the bill neither mentions Christianity, nor seeks to ban any religion. In response to antisemitic rhetoric during the Israel-Hamas war, its author proposed amending Canada’s criminal code regarding hate speech to remove religion as a defense for public incitement to hatred or antisemitism. The bill has not progressed in the House of Commons and is not close to being a law.

Experts said simply quoting from a religious text such as the Bible wouldn’t result in hate speech charges, unless it was accompanied by extreme, explicit language. We rate the claim False.