Bill C-9 Removes a Religious-Speech Safeguard — Then Liberals Say “Trust Us”
Bill C-9 is not a “Bible ban.” The problem is more precise — and more dangerous: the Liberal government has passed House language that removes a statutory defence, then asks Canadians to trust how the new power will be used.
Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, is still moving through Parliament. The official LEGISinfo page says the government bill passed third reading in the House of Commons on March 25, 2026, by 186 votes to 137, and the Senate has continued second-reading debate through April. This is not a dormant Trudeau-era proposal. It is live legislation under Mark Carney's Liberals.
The key issue is in the House-passed text. Parliament's own bill page says C-9 would “repeal the defence based on the expression of opinions on religious subjects or texts” for specified hate-propaganda offences. That sentence matters. It means a long-standing legal safeguard for good-faith religious expression is not being clarified, modernized, or narrowed in the bill text the House approved. It is being removed.
Supporters will say the bill targets hate, not ordinary worship. Fair enough: nobody should pretend the text says the Bible, Torah, Quran or any other religious book is banned. It does not. But conservative accountability requires judging governments by the law they write, not by the press lines they offer after Canadians notice the risk.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops warned Prime Minister Carney that removing the “good faith” religious-text defence could create uncertainty and chill clergy, educators and faith communities. That concern is reasonable. Criminal law does not just punish after conviction. It changes behaviour before anyone is charged, especially when ordinary Canadians are told a familiar defence is being repealed and they should trust prosecutors to sort it out later.
Justice Minister Sean Fraser has reportedly said Liberals are open to wording changes to make clear that reading religious texts would not qualify as hate speech. If that is the government's position, the fix is simple: put the protection in the statute. Do not remove the safeguard first and promise that future interpretation will be generous.
This is the recurring Liberal problem on speech: broad power now, reassurance later. Canadians have already seen online-speech bills, platform controls and police-surveillance secrecy defended as harmless because officials insist only bad actors need worry. That is not how civil liberties work. Rights are protected by clear limits on state power, not by ministerial confidence.
Bill C-9 deserves a serious Senate rewrite. Hate can be prosecuted without making pastors, rabbis, imams, teachers and parents wonder whether good-faith discussion of religious texts now depends on the mood of the Crown. In a free country, the burden is on government to prove its new criminal law is narrow, clear and necessary. On this safeguard, the Liberals have not met that test.