Bill Whatcott’s Thoughts on the State of Religious and Political Freedom in Canada
Dear Friends,
Freedom has been in decline for awhile now in Canada. In 1994 I was arrested for standing on a public sidewalk in Toronto with a Life Chain sign that read “Abortion Kills Children.” The Ontario NDP Government of the time went to court and got an injunction to prevent Ontario’s pro-lifers from protesting in front of abortuaries, even we as taxpayers have to pay for them. I and many other pro-life citizens believed the injunction was unjust and an unjustified attack on free speech. I went into the no protest zone and stood on the public sidewalk and prayed while holding my sign to challenge the injunction. I didn’t obstruct, threaten, or accost anyone. A sheriff read me the injunction and a police officer put handcuffs on me and walked me to the back of a police car where I got in.
I couldn’t raise enough money to go to trial. The lawyer I got thought I would be looking at a $100 fine or so if I plead guilty, in line with anti-logging protesters who were arrested in BC that year who were blocking worksites and disobeying injuctions obtained by logging companies. Both me and my lawyer quickly learned that the treatment of Christian protesters defending the human rights of the unborn child would be very different than the treatment of left wing protesters protecting trees. The NDP saw my case as serious enough to merit sending a special prosecutor to ask for the maximum sentence allowable under law (6 months in jail). And a judge, aptly named Judge Mean, duly imposed the maximum sentence on me as requested by the provincial government’s special prosecutor.
Campaign Life put out a press release denouncing my sentence. My church organized a telephone campaign targeting the Attorney General’s office. A number of pro-life groups held demostrations in front of the Attorney General’s Office demanding I be released from jail. Two Christian media outlets covered my case and I got letters from across Canada and the United States as a result. However, the big media outlets CBC, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, Global News, etc….., they all got the press releases and protest announcements and they all ignored the story.
That was 31 years ago…..
Alot has happened since then….
In 2013 the Whatcott Decision was rendered by the Supreme Court of Canada and for the first time ever, the court ruled that in hate speech cases litigated in a human rights tribunal that truth was not an absolute defence. Since then Whatcott has been cited in multiple cases, criminal, human rights and civil, and sadly the rulings in favour of restricting speech have been piling up.
In parallel with our loss of freedom of speech, the right to firearm ownership and the right for private citizens to protect their persons and private property has also been eroded over the years. In 2015 an Edmonton man named Robert Hinchey was convicted of careless use of a firearm. Mr. Hinchey received a criminal record, and had to forfeit his guns, after he fired a warning shot through the top right hand of his door in an attempt to scare off a large, young, drunk, who was screaming and trying to kick his door down. In the 911 call played in court Mr. Hinchey’s panicked wife could be heard begging the police to come quickly, saying her door was coming off the hinges as the screaming of the drunk and kicking could be heard in the background. Mr. Hinchey fired one warning shot and the drunk quit kicking. Apparently the drunk got a small cut on his forehead from a small piece of wood catching him as the bullet went through the top of the door. The drunk sat on the front step until the police arrived. The police arrested the home owner Robert Hinchey for discharging his firearm in defense of his home and set the drunk free who was screaming and kicking down Mr. Hinchey’s door.
In December 2023, Bill C-21 became law and the sale of handguns became banned in Canada. Since 1996 more than a thousand different types of long guns (mostly semi autos) have also been banned. I lost one gun that I purchased as a non-restricted .22 rifle. It was a 10 shot M-16 look alike called the Armi Jager. It was a cheap, Italian .22 rifle that was not actually that great. I kept it around for rabbits and plinking. One day the government declared it was a “military assault style” rifle and too dangerous for civilians to own. In actual fact after doing some research, I could not find one single instance of the Armi Jager .22 being used in a crime. But truth doesn’t matter and even though gun crime and all types of violent crime and property crime has gone up dramatically in Canada over the past ten years most Canadians are apathetic about the loss of their right to own legal firearms.
Canada’s erosion of freedom cannot be analyzed without considering the lockdowns of 2020-2022. For the first time in Canada’s history churches and small businesses were forcibly closed, people were coerced to take an experimental vaccine, and the negative side effects and reactions were hidden from the public, and the government forced people to wear masks in public.
Eventually the economic and emotional damage was such that large numbers of Canadians started questioning the “science.” It also became hard for Canadians to take Chief Public Health Officers seriously as they started wrecking their own credibility. Alberta’s Public Health Officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw was caught in a lie when she claimed during a press conference that a 14 year old girl died from Covid -19. Dr. Hinshaw and the media was trying hard to convince Albertans young people were dying from Covid -19 and that they needed to be vaccinated. In actual fact more children have been injured and have had their lives potentially shortened from vaccine induced myocarditis than from Covid-19, which has not taken the life of a single healthy child. The girl’s family went on Twitter and corrected the Chief Public Health Officer and stated their daughter died from Leukemia. Twitter deleted the parent’s comment, but not before it went viral and Hinshaw was forced to apologize.
In British Columbia, Chief Public Health Officer “Dr.” Bonnie Henry decided the “science” was you could go to the cannabis store and Starbucks safely, but you couldn’t go to church. Henry kept cannabis stores open for the entirity of the Covid pandemic as they were “essential.” Starbucks while not “essential” was allowed to reopen in the spring of 2020. Churches however were forced to remain closed until June 2021.
“Dr.” Henry also opined that in order to stay safe from Covid-19 when having sex, it was a good idea to do it using “glory holes.” “Glory holes” are a thing in some homosexual bars where homosexual men get a thrill by sticking their penis into a hole in a wall and then a person unkown to them on the other side services it. Bonnie thought this was a good idea for all BC residents and the media uncritically reported it, of course in the name of “science” and “public health.”
Trudeau’s Chief Public Health Officer, “Dr.” Theresa Tam; a possible, crossdressing, homosexual male, locked up Canadians returning from abroad in quarantine hotels for two week periods. He/she decided to do this after allowing thousands of Chinese citizens into the country without any testing or quarantine. Then one day he/she announced to the media it would be a good idea for couples to engage in sex while wearing masks to stay safe from the Covid virus. In addition to huge salaries, Tam and Henry were awarded the Order of Canada for their quackery and incompetence.
Strangely, churches, businesses, and millions of Canadians went along with this “science” for a long time, to great harm to themselves and their country. By the two year mark though, enough Canadians suffered sufficiently, and various politicians and chief public health officers discredited themselves enough that thousands of Canadians said no more and the Freedom Convoy rolled across Canada in early 2022. Dozens of Canadians were imprisoned in various provinces for defying the lockdowns and the Federal government violently crushed the peaceful protest in Ottawa , trampling an elderly indiginous woman using a police horse and thousands of Canadians across the country who donated to the Freedom Convoy had their bank accounts frozen.
The draconian measures inflamed many Canadians even more and it was clear if the lockdowns and repression continued things were going to likely spiral out of control, so suddenly the “science” changed and the country opened up. Masking requirements and vaccine passports ended. Travel bans were lifted, businesses and churches opened up again and people could socialize freely. The predicted mass death from Covid-19 if things opened up didn’t happen.
The government backed down on the mass repression but they were determined to make examples of a few dissidents. Four protesters who were arrested at a blockade in Coutts Alberta were to remain in custody for two more years. Two of the protesters were eventually sentenced to 6.5 years after spending two years in pre-trial custody. The other two I think were released after time served. Apparently they brought some hunting rifles with them to the protest. They claimed their motive was to protect fellow protesters if things got violent. The Prosecutor claimed they were planning on killing police. The Coutts 4 were eventually were acquitted of conspiring to kill a police officer but convicted on illegal gun possession charges.
Trudeau became very unpopular and eventually left in early 2025 and Canadians in an act of “elbows up” and in a display of shallow, pseudo patriotism, elected Mark Carney, a globalist with deep ties to China’s communist party. Just like under Trudeau, car theives, muggers, fentanyl dealers, and sex offenders are being treated leniently, especially if they aren’t white. Political prisoners, if they are conservative and standing for freedom are also being treated the same as under Trudeau. The courts are merciless with those who protest and vocally oppose the Liberal agenda.
The organizers of the Freedom Convoy Chris Barber and Tamara Lich were both arrested as the Freedom Convoy was crushed and spent nearly two months in jail before being released on bail. After more than two years and a lengthy trial, Barber and Lich were found guilty of Mischief in April 2025. Typically, peaceful protesters in Canada receive no jail time for their first offense. Homosexual activist and NDP politician Svend Robinson received a $700 fine when he blocked a logging company’s road in BC back in the 1990s. In 2003 Svend decided to steal a $60,000 ring at an auction to give as a gift to his boyfriend. This offense got Svend copious praise from the sentencing judge for all his alleged good work, promoting homosexuality, euthanasia, hate crime laws, etc…. and Svend’s “sentence” for the $60,000 theft was an absolute discharge.
The Oka confrontation was a more violent affair than either Svend’s anti-logging crusade or the Barber’s and Lich’s Freedom Convoy. Native protesters killed one police officer, shot it out with the provincial police for over an hour, and then enaged in an armed stand-off with the Canadian army for more than two months. Bridges and roads were blockaded, rocks were sometimes thrown at police and soldiers. When the stand-off ended the most visible protester Ronald Cross (he was photographed staring face to face with a Canadian soldier and had a prohibited assault rifle slung over his back) was sentenced to six years in prison.
The Crown Prosecutor is asking for 8 years in prison for Chris Barber, along with the destruction of his truck which is his source of livelihood. The Crown is asking for 7 years in prison for Tamara Lich. Neither are accused of doing anything violent. Neither have criminal records. They have been found to be responsible for some of the truckers honking their horns at inappropriate hours during the first couple days of the protest, though Barber and Lich both encouraged truckers to keep horn honking to daylight hours and indeed all of the truckers complied with that request after they were asked to do so.
This past week an American Christian musician who happens to support Donald Trump (as does tens of millions of other Americans and for what it is worth a substantial minority of Canadians) by the name of Sean Feucht had all of his venues cancelled in Eastern Canada after the CBC did a hit piece on him and called him a “MAGA supporter.”
When a Spanish Evangelical church hosted Mr. Feucht in Montreal, after the Mayor of Montreal Valérie Plante condemned him for his political and religious views and ordered his venue be cancelled, both the police and Antifa showed up at the church. The police threatened the church with a fine if they didn’t cancel Mr. Feucht’s performance. The performance went ahead and the church was fined $2500. An Antifa thug threw two smoke bombs at Mr Feucht while he was singing. The police did nothing and a parishioner took the bombs off the stage and disposed of them outside.
The Montreal Mayor’s office released this statement as justification for cancelling Mr. Feucht’s performance. “This show runs counter to the values of inclusion, solidarity, and respect that are championed in Montreal. Freedom of expression is one of our fundamental values, but hateful and discriminatory speech is not acceptable in Montreal.”
The guy was singing Gospel music, not unlike the music that is sung at my church every Sunday morning. Mr. Feucht said nothing hateful or discriminatory of anyone. The actual hate and lack of respect was shown by the Antifa thug who threw smoke bombs at Mr Feucht, the police who witnessed the attack and refused to protect Mr. Feucht, and the Mayor who abused the power of her government by shutting down Mr. Feucht’s first venue and punishing the Spanish church for offering him an alternative venue.
The Canadian media and various Canadian politicians hate Sean Feucht and want to cancel him because he is opposed to LGBT ideology, is prolife, and he has publicly supported Donald Trump. It appears Mr. Feught has come to Canada on other occassions and he is on record as saying he loves Canada.
Contrast the visceral hatred shown towards a Christian singer with the “wrong” personal views and the hatred Canadians are displaying towards the American President, to the partiality of Canadian politicians on display in this venue below. The Chinese Benevelont Association hosted this event in February at the Terminal City Club in Vancouver. The Chinese Benevelont Association is connected to the Chinese Communist Party and is known to interfere in Canadian elections and silence negative messaging about the Chinese Communist Party amongst the Chinese diaspora in Vancouver.
This event was attended by Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, NDP Burnaby Councillor James Wang and “Conservative” MLAs Steve Kooner and Dallas Brodie. They all join People’s Republic of China’s Deputy Consul General. Zeng Zhi in singing “March of the Volunteers” the Chinese Communist Party anthem. Neither the Mayor, nor any of the other politicians, nor any of the media present, is calling on the venue to cancel the event because of it’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The Deputy Consul General Zeng Zhi is not being denounced because he is singing the communist anthem nor is he being critciizing because he likes Chinese Communist Dictator Xi Jinping.
While it is true Trump imposed a 25% tariff on Canadian automobiles and our automobile sector is suffering, it is also true China imposed a 100% tariff on Canadian canola. While tariffs are nasty, I don’t think they are a crime. Countries have the right to impose tariffs if they wish. The Canadian government has chosen to keep tariffs to protect Canada’s dairy industry. Depending on the dairy product and its quota, our tariffs on American dairy products seem to be between 7.5% and up to 300%.
Trump’s other “crimes” seem to be calling Trudeau “governor” and saying Canada should be a 51st state.
China by contrast has taken two of our citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor and held them hostage for three years in a Chinese prison though they committed no crimes. The Chinese have interfered in our elections. Chinese labs with apparent state sanction have flooded our streets with fentanyl, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. Chinese government actors have stolen both Canadian state and private sector secrets and the Chinese are responsible for hacking into and stealing our former flagship industry Nortel’s data, duplicating our company’s technology, and then the Chinese Communist Party controlled company Huawei underbidded Nortel with its own products and drove our company into bankrupcy, costing Canada tens of thousands of good paying jobs and untold billions of dollars in revenue.
The Orangeman in the White House never did anything like the above to Canada. In fact shortly after BC Premier David Eby announced the BC government was buying 4 ferries from the Chinese and boycotting American shipyards, wine, and whatnot; a quintessentially Canadian terrorist by the name of Shaheer Cassim hijacked a small Cessna and flew it over the Vancouver International airport for a couple hours and shut down Vancouver’s airspace.
I say Cassim is “quintessentially Canadian” because where else except Canada would you find a terrorist like this? Here is an excerpt of his manifesto on Facebook:
“I am a messenger of Allah. I am the messiah sent to save humanity from climate change and usher in an era of world peace, …. The Arctic sea ice is going to disappear within two years. When that happens, huge amounts of methane are going to erupt from the Arctic Ocean, triggering abrupt runaway global warming, turning Earth into Venus.”
Anyways, as Cassim flew over the Vancouver International Airport (Canada’s third busiest airport) and shut it down, performing jihad in the name of saving the earth from climate change, Canada’s airforce was unable to respond. We had no fighter jets on the west coast. Our closest air assets on the day Mr. Cassim performed his climate jihad were located in Cold Lake AB, and they were a half dozen or so 40 year old CF-18s. These elderly fighters were over three hours away and it was determined they would need to refuel upon reaching British Columbia before they could engage the Cessna.
We had to call the Americans to save our third largest city from the Cessna flying jihadist trying to bring awareness to climate change. The Americans scrambled two F-15s to liberate our airspace, but thankfully Mr. Cassim decided he made his point and peacefully landed his commandeered airplane, freeing his flight instructor unharmed, and peacefully gave himself up.
Canadians should note it was the Americans who scambled jets to save us not the Chinese. We should also note we allowed our own airforce to become so pathetic that we were literally unable to save our third largest city from a Cessna.
Our media and leftist politicians in all three levels of governments are complicit in our erosion of freedom; they seem irrationally hostile to the western, Christian, democratic tradition we as a nation have been founded on. This hostility motivates them to move us as a nation away from America’s orbit and towards the Chinese orbit. This is not in Canada’s best interest and for ordinary Canadians to tolerate it, it will be a huge mistake. I pray we Canadians awaken from our apathy and mind numbness and prevent this shift in orbit from happening. If we can’t or won’t wake up, then I pray the Americans themselves prevent us from going further towards Beijing.
If you read this far, I would like to remind you of another freedom issue that is near and dear to my heart. Namely, my own. I have a court case coming up with 5 days of hearings in October and three weeks of trial in March, 2026. The Prosecutor is asking for 6 months to a year in prison if I am convicted. My “crime” is sharing the Gospel and accurate health information while disguised as a “Gay Zombie Cannabis Consumer” at the Toronto Homosexual Pride parade in 2016. You can find out more on the link below and donate if you wish to help me out with the expenses related to this ridiculous prosecution that are imposed on me and my family.
In Christ’s Service,
Bill Whatcott
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