The lawyer for a 16-year-old Catholic high school student suspended for opposing transgender ideology says his client’s legal battle demonstrates that religious freedom in Canada is rapidly eroding.
“I think it’s representative of where the culture, society, and our government institutions are up here,” attorney James Kitchen said of the case against 16-year-old Josh Alexander.
On February 6, the high school junior was arrested for trespassing after showing up at St. Joseph’s Catholic High School in Renfrew, Ontario, despite an exclusion order. Kitchen is taking legal action against Alexander by appealing the exclusion order and filing a human rights complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal.
Alexander, a born-again Christian, was suspended in November for organizing protests at his school against biological males in girls’ restrooms and arguing in class that God created two unchangeable genders.
Alexander’s suspension was technically lifted in January, but it has remained in effect since the Renfrew County Catholic District School Board “excluded” him for the remainder of the school year. Alexander told The Epoch Times that his principal offered him a return to school if he stopped using transgender students’ “dead names” or given names and excluded himself from classes with two transgender students.
Religious Freedom Declining in Canada
Kitchen, the Liberty Coalition Canada’s chief litigator, said he had no idea how big Alexander’s case would become when he first contacted him around Christmas, following Alexander’s initial suspension from the government-funded school.
The Liberty Coalition Canada website states that clergy founded it in January 2021 to ” support Canadians facing unjust and illegal discrimination for exercising their lawful freedoms.”
“I never imagined it would reach this level,” Kitchen said. “I knew it would be publicized, and there would be some sort of conflict because I knew Josh wouldn’t back down.”
Kitchen believes that religious freedom and freedom of expression are declining in Canada, but that religious liberty is fading faster. He claims that many Canadians are unaware of their government’s growing threat to religious freedom, which he claims is “essentially dead” after withering “for about 10 or 15 years.”
Kitchen said the Supreme Court of Canada issued “the nail in the coffin” with a 2018 decision against Trinity Western University in British Columbia. The Christian school, which sought to establish Canada’s first Christian law school, petitioned the Supreme Court after regional law societies refused to accredit them based on their student covenant, which prohibited extramarital sex.
According to Kitchen, the legal precedent established in that case “really gutted religious freedom in Canada,” and such trends have accelerated in recent years as authorities jailed pastors and seized church properties during the pandemic. Alexander’s case, he claims, is another step up.
The lawyer cited Bill C-4, passed by the Canadian Parliament last year, as a “perfect example” of Canada’s encroaching wave against religious freedom.
Religious Leaders Arrested in Canada
Therapists in Canada who provide counseling to repress or reduce “non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behavior” or “non-cisgender identity” could face up to five years in prison under the law, which prompted protests from thousands of churches across North America.
“We don’t have any cases on it yet, no charges, so we’re all just kind of waiting to see what the government decides to do with that,” Kitchen said, predicting that “the gender and sexuality issue” will lead to more legal clashes between Christians and the Canadian government.
“I fully expect to get a call in the next 12-24 months that a pastor or some other religious leader has been arrested for telling some guy who thinks he’s a woman that he should consider being OK with being a man instead of transitioning to be a woman,” Kitchen said.
“As a lawyer in Canada, I expect to be on that case or at least hear about it,” he added. “That’s where we’re going.” Alexander agreed with Kitchen, saying that “freedom of expression and religion, in general, are under attack” in his country. “There’s no doubt that we’re about to lose all the liberties that we’ve taken for granted for far too long,” he said.
Canadians are free to practice any religion under Section 2 of the Charter. They also have the right to think, believe, and express themselves freely.
Alexander observed that some young people his age are afraid to express themselves. He urged them to “speak up before it’s too late.”
“If you think what I’m dealing with now is bad, wait until your freedom of belief and thought is outlawed,” he warned. “Now is the time to speak up before it’s too late. Our predecessors failed to do so, and it is now up to us to pick up the torch and carry it.”
Trudeau’s Open War on Religion in Canada
The honorable Leslyn Lewis, a Conservative Party of Canada MP and licensed attorney, said she would “stand up” for religious freedom after accusing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of waging an “open war” on people’s faith since his election in 2015.
Lewis blasted a recent report from a Department of National Defence (DND) advisory panel recommending it “not consider for employment as spiritual guides or multi-faith representatives Chaplaincy applicants affiliated with religious groups whose values are not aligned with those of the Defence Team” in a platform update titled “Enough Discrimination.”
“Currently, some chaplains represent or are affiliated with organized religions whose beliefs do not coincide with those of a diverse and inclusive workplace. “Some of these chaplains’ affiliated religions do not subscribe to an open attitude and the promotion of diversity,” according to the DND’s recommendations.
“For example, the exclusion of women from priesthoods in some churches violates equality and social justice principles, as do sexist notions embedded in their religious dogmas.”
This latest report, according to Lewis, is “absolutely shocking.”
“People are only now realizing how far it goes in its assault on traditional faiths,” Lewis observed.
Lewis stated that while asking that “chaplains’ values are aligned with the Defence Team may appear innocent enough,” reading further reveals that “the religious groups it considers do not have the right values fall under the banner of ‘The Abrahamic Religions.'”
“This expressly states that Christianity, Islam, and Judaism followers should be barred from serving as military chaplains,” Lewis wrote.
“How are all the Jewish, Muslim and Christian military members to feel now that they have been singled out as out-of-step with the values of the country they are fighting for? Or that in the same report, their beliefs are explicitly compared to the worst kinds of racism?”
According to the report, “minorities in Canada are consistently just used as political tools by this government,” Lewis continued.
