The BC Humanist Association has launched a petition in support of new application requirements for the Government of Canada's Canada Summer Jobs program.

The program provides wage subsidies to employers to hire high school and post-secondary students. The new policy requires applicants to attest that neither the job nor the employer's "core mandate" are contrary to human rights, including reproductive rights and the rights of transgender Canadians.

The BC Humanist Association urges the City of Vancouver to adopt a recommendation from the City's LGBTQ2+ Advisory Committee to prohibit "conversion therapy" within the city.

According to Xtra, the committee's recommendation passed unanimously in November and calls for the city to amend a licensing bylaw to prohibit any services that "purport to alter an individual's sexual orientation or gender identity."

Canada's blasphemy law is one step closer to being repealed after MPs in the House of Commons agreed to pass Bill C-51 at third reading on Monday.

The bill makes a number of amendments to the Criminal Code, including repealing the prohibition on blasphemous libel. The BC Humanist Association and other freethought and secular groups across Canada have been calling for its repeal, including 7400 Canadians who signed a Parliamentary e-petition last year.

The BC Humanist Association welcomes the 25 recommendations made in a report on creating a new BC Human Rights Commission.

Parliamentary Secretary Ravi Kahlon presented his report to the Attorney General for the new Commission on December 10, Human Rights Day. The report follows online and in person consultations, including submissions from over 500 individuals and almost 70 organizations. The BC Humanist Association attended in person consultations and submitted a written response. We also collected over 1000 signatures calling for "nonreligion" to be added as a protected class in the BC Human Rights Code.

Kahlon writes:

The general consensus is that the new commission must be modern, efficient and effective. It should educate the public about human rights, promote equality, awareness and respect, and address systemic abuse. It should also complement not replace the current work of the BC Human Rights Tribunal and Human Rights Clinic. I have heard British Columbians say that B.C. should aspire to be the human rights leader by adopting innovative practices to ensure that individuals, no matter where they live, have equal access to justice and to the supports they need to turn human rights ideals into reality.

I just got back from my week in Ottawa last night. There I was supporting our lawyers in our intervention at the Supreme Court of Canada.

Throughout the two days of hearings, I provided a running commentary from our Twitter account and did Facebook live recaps with our legal team.

You can find all of that content, along with the webcast of Wes McMillan, our lead counsel, arguing before the court on our website.

We can never know in advance what way a court will go. That said, I was encouraged by the fact many judges, particularly Justice Rosalie Abella, were engaged with the issues we planned to raise, namely whether a law school can even claim to have religious rights. No lower court has yet considered these questions in their decisions.

There's no timeline for when the Court will make its decision, though it will almost certainly be before June 15, 2018 which is the last day retiring Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin is able to contribute to a decision.

What this shows is that our efforts are being paid attention to. We were only able to do this, however, with generous pro-bono support and donations from dozens of you. Please read our 2018 case for support and consider making a donation to our year end campaign if you haven't yet.

To everyone who's supported our work thus far: Thank you.

On November 30 and December 1 the Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments over whether law societies must recognize evangelical Trinity Western University’s proposed law school. The BC Humanist Association was there.

TWU's Community Covenant excludes sexual intimacy outside a heterosexual marriage. As such, the case has been framed as pitting religious freedom against LGBTQ equality or in terms of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, whether law societies must prioritize sections 2a (freedom of religion) or section 15 (equality).

In our first intervention at the Court, our lawyers, Wes McMillan and Kaitlyn Meyer from Hakemi & Ridgedale LLP, built on fellow interveners from the United Church of Canada and the Faith, Fealty & Creed Society to argue that organizations should not be able to claim religious rights under Canadian law.

On Thursday and Friday last week, the Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments in the cases surrounding evangelical Trinity Western University's proposed law school. We were there as an intervenor and live-tweeted the hearings.

If you missed those tweets, we've collected the highlights below. Unfortunately, the service we used to collect our Tweets (Storify) was removed in 2018. You can still watch the webcasts of the hearings below.

I don't have much time for the newsletter today as I'm finishing off a number of tasks before I head off to Ottawa tomorrow morning. There I'll be meeting up with our lawyers from Hakemi & Ridgedale to prep for our arguments before the Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday and Friday.

Our first appearance at the country's highest court is in the cases over evangelical Trinity Western University's proposed law school. We're specifically arguing that TWU can't claim religious freedom as organizations don't have recognized beliefs in Canadian law.

You can read the full arguments that we submitted in our factum.

If you are interested in watching the hearings at home, they'll be live broadcast on CPAC. Unfortunately, we don't know what time we'll be presenting, so your best bet will be to follow our Twitter account, where I'll be live-tweeting the hearings. You can also follow #TWUlaw for everyone's running commentary on the hearings (you should be able to view those links without a Twitter account).

Finally, after each day's hearings, I'm going to debrief with our lawyers on Facebook live. Look for those videos on our Facebook page around 5pm EST on Thursday and Friday. I'll share links to those next week (I'll make sure you can see them without a Facebook account then).

If you want to help, please add to the conversation on social media and consider making a donation to our year-end campaign.

We need your help in 2018 to keep the BC Humanist Association afloat.

This last year we've seen tremendous growth in our movement. We started 2017 with 1000 email supporters, now we have 2000. In the same period, we increased our membership by almost 50%. We’ve worked with people and groups from Kimberley to Prince George to Courtenay.

The bill to repeal Canada's blasphemy law has passed the House of Commons justice committee and is on track to become law by the end of this year or early next. While all parties agreed to repeal section 296 (the explicit blasphemy law) of the Criminal Code, MPs decided to amend rather than repeal section 176.

This latter section prohibits disrupting a religious service. Many conservative religious groups lobbied hard to keep it and that effort proved successful as MPs on the committee cited those letters as the reason for their change of heart.

This just shows how much more work we still have to do.

But we're getting there. Last week, I was able to present our petition with over 1000 signatures to add nonreligion to the BC Human Rights Code to the government in person. That meeting went well and you can read our full submission online.

In the meantime, help us continue to build our movement by sharing our updates with any friends or colleagues who might be interested.

Each email we send goes out to more and more supporters. When we launched our new website two years ago, our newsletter went out to 500 people. Today we can reach nearly 2000.