Have Canadian Christians experienced a pattern of attempts to liberalize the traditional notion of family over the past two decades at the hands of the federal government? Unquestionably so.
For one, we have witnessed a campaign to eliminate the traditional categories of binary gender at the federal level. A major milestone in this history was the passage of Bill C-16, amending the Canadian Human Rights Act to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” as prohibited grounds of discrimination, in June of 2017. In August of 2017 Canadians were granted the ability to mark “X” as their gender on their passport applications. A directive was issued to Service Canada employees in 2018 by the Trudeau Liberals advising them not to use the words “mother” and “father”, or Mr. and Mrs. when interacting with the public, in favor of gender-neutral terms such as “parent.” At the same time the words “mother” and “father” were removed from the Social Insurance Number application form.
The terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” migrated into social policy in various Canadian provinces as well, to the detriment of traditional beliefs about sexuality. In June of 2017 the Liberals in the province of Ontario passed a bill, Bill 89 that expanded the list of factors which should be considered in child welfare cases to include gender identity and gender expression. It shifted the focus away from the belief that parents have the right to direct their children’s education in favor that the rights of the child should be the first consideration, and those rights were to include rights pertaining to the child’s gender identity and gender expression, which were borrowed from the Ontario Human Rights Act.
At the time, critics such as John Sikkema of the Association of Reformed Political Action reported that the application of terms that originally were employed in the context of employment law and the provision of services in the Ontario Human Rights Act, to the realm of the family was overreach.1) Crucially, the type of protections for discrimination due to religious beliefs found in the OHRA were omitted from Bill 89. In fact it entirely removed the obligation of Children’s Aid Society (CAS) workers to consider the religious environment of the home. Through Bill 89 it thus became possible to deny adoptive parents the ability to adopt if they did not agree to allow a child’s gender transition if so requested or if they held traditional beliefs about homosexuality.
Ontario parents Amanda and Levi DenBok found themselves excluded by CAS from adopting a child because of their beliefs about homosexuality in 2018. Although they insisted that they would love a child who was homosexual, CAS disqualified them because of their biblical beliefs about homosexuality.
“It wasn’t enough that we demonstrated that we would love any child that was placed in our home. It wasn’t enough that we would provide a safe place for a child to learn and grow. We had to BELIEVE differently. That’s not conformity — that’s conversion,” Den Bok stated.
“We live in Canada — a country that is celebrated worldwide for our spirit of inclusion and our culture of diversity. If inclusion and diversity are going to continue to thrive in our country, we must give each other the freedom to think differently.” 2)
An Alberta couple had a similar experience in August of 2017, when their petition for adoption was rejected by Alberta Children’s services under the leadership of Rachel Notley’s New Democrats. Fortunately, the child welfare agency reversed its decision after pushback from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
While children’s rights have been on the ascend, parental rights have taken a beating. The tension between the two was reflected in the previously mentioned adoption controversies. In 2021 the federal government passed a bill, C-4, an anti-conversion therapy bill, which punished parents who opposed their children’s gender transition with up to five years in prison.
Some respite offered to parents by the premiers of New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta in 2023 and 2024 in the form of policies demanding parental consent before children change their names or pronouns at school. Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe even invoked the “notwithstanding clause” of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to pass his “Parents’ Bill of Rights” to protect the parental right to grant consent to a child’s transition. And yet, parental rights have seen more setbacks than victories over the past decade in Canada. It’s time for a change!
- John Sikkema, “Is Bill 89 About Human Rights? Don’t Buy It,” Association for Reformed Political Action, March 9, 2017.
- Stoyan Zaimov, “Christian Parents in Canada See Foster Application Rejected Over Beliefs on Homosexuality, Spanking,” Christian Post, October 31, 2018.
- Andrea Huncar, “Edmonton couple wins fight to adopt after province reverses decision based on religious beliefs,”CBC News, May 02, 2018.
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