We are delighted to announce that the BC Humanist Association has made a substantial donation of nearly $20,000 to Rainbow Refugee, an organization dedicated to supporting LGBTQI+ refugees forced from their home countries by discrimination, persecution and abuse. This donation is more than just a financial contribution: it represents the humanist commitment to creating a world where all individuals are treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Despite an increasingly secular population, the school acts and regulations in five provinces still permit religious exercises in Canada according to a new analysis from the BC Humanist Association.

Court cases in Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia have deemed the practice illegal but the school acts of three prairie provinces still allow prayers in schools and regulations in New Brunswick permit teachers to read scriptures or deliver the Lord's Prayer. Additionally, Newfound and Labrador's Education Act allows parents to request a 'religious observance' in schools.

In light of a series of traumatic stories documenting patients forced to transfer from St Paul's Hospital and other religious healthcare facilities in BC to access a legal medically-assisted death, the BC Humanist Association is renewing calls for the province to end its agreement with sectarian health associations.

Trigger warning: Sexual assault

This month, shocking news about alleged sexual assault and cover-ups once again drew attention to inequalities and lack of accountability associated with addiction recovery programs in BC.

Given this unfortunate string of events, we are renewing our 2018 call to the Government of BC to ensure every patient seeking treatment for a substance use issue has access to secular, evidence-based treatment options, by:

NATIONAL – A new study of unlicensed pregnancy counselling centres across Canada finds that they often conceal an anti-abortion agenda and provide medical misinformation to pregnant clients.

Co-developed by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) and the BC Humanist Association (BCHA), the study reviewed websites of the nearly 150 so-called crisis pregnancy centres (CPCs) across Canada to identify the presence of misleading information, and compared the results to a similar 2016 study conducted by ARCC to better understand changes over time.

A campaign claiming to speak for "the most vulnerable" has spent tens of thousands of dollars on Facebook ads in the past three months and is being funded by a group of anti-choice healthcare professionals, according to a new analysis by the BC Humanist Association.

On Monday, January 23, Saanich council will debate a motion calling on the province to eliminate the statutory exemptions for places of worship.

The motion, "transition all statutory tax exemptions for places of worship to permissive tax exemptions," is being brought by Councillor Teale Phelps Bondaroff and would direct the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) to lobby the province for the change.

In its response to the Ministry of Finance's pre-Budget 2023 consultation, the BC Humanist Association is again asking the government to recognize its duty of religious neutrality and end special privileges for religious organizations.

The BCHA previously made these calls to the House of Commons' Finance Committee.

At its December 13, 2022 meeting, the Board of Directors of the BC Humanist Association endorsed the BC Climate Emergency Campaign's 10 Actions to Confront the Climate Emergency.

Français suit

Almost half of the municipalities in Ontario opened their 2018 inaugural meetings with a prayer, according to the latest report from the BC Humanist Association (BCHA). The report also fingers nine municipalities for including prayers or invocations in their regular council meetings.