At its April 19, 2021 meeting, the Board of Directors of the BC Humanist Association adopted a motion joining calls for greater data transparency from governments and decision makers to provide for greater accountability in their response to COVID-19.

Yesterday the Government of Canada released its 2021 budget and today the Government of BC released its budget.

The BC Humanist Association is celebrating investments in childcare, reconciliation and efforts to combat systemic racism.

The BC Humanist Association has joined calls from community to divest from policing and invest in community programs in the City of Vancouver.

Building on its research-driven advocacy around religious prayers in the legislature and municipal councils across British Columbia, the BC Humanist Association is asking today why our provincial politicians have thus far limited their spiritual considerations to more traditional approaches to understanding the universe.

In its new report, Separation of Religion and Government in Retrograde, the BCHA considers the impact of the astrological star signs of MLAs on the province's prosperity.

The BC Humanist Association released a report today calling on municipalities to adopt regular benefits tests for tax exemptions granted to places of worship. These tests, the report states, are necessary to ensure potential recipients of tax exemptions — which total millions each year — provide services that benefit the community as a whole.

This measure would provide much needed safeguards to prevent tax funds from supporting organizations that operate as private clubs, discriminate against protected groups, operate commercial enterprises, or break the laws, such as COVID-19 regulations.

Two types of tax exemptions can apply to places of worship in BC: statutory tax exemptions that are granted automatically by the provincial government, and permissive tax exemptions that can be granted by municipal governments. 

Tax exemptions can be positive tools for governments to support the work of groups that provide beneficial services to the public. However, they require municipal governments to increase taxes elsewhere to cover funds that would otherwise be collected. As a result, the report states that there are a number of important steps that municipal governments should take to ensure these exemptions are fair, transparent, and in the best interest of the public.

The report reveals the value of tax exemptions to places of worship in BC is considerable. In 2019, as much as $45.9 million in potential tax revenue was not accessed by municipalities as a result of statutory tax exemptions, and an additional $12.5 million was granted in permissive tax exemptions. This totals $58.4 million in tax exemptions for 2019, roughly $12 per British Columbian.

At the end of November 2020, the BC Humanist Association (BCHA) released our report, The Duty of Neutrality Beyond Saguenay: Unconstitutional Prayers at Municipal Councils in British Columbia. This study investigates the practice of beginning municipal council meetings in British Columbia (BC) with a prayer, a practice that was found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Mouvement laïque québécois v. Saguenay (City), in 2015. We identified 23 BC municipalities that included prayer in their 2018 inaugural council meetings. None were found to do so in regular council meetings.

As part of our investigation, we reached out to these 23 municipalities and informed them of the Saguenay decision and the implications that it would have on their inaugural meetings. A number of these municipalities responded to us, and several of them pledged to bring their procedures at future meetings into compliance with the constitution. Some wrote that they would take our letter under advisement, and a number did not respond.

After releasing our report, a number of municipalities have expressed their commitment to ending prayers in their inaugural meetings. The Supreme Court ruling was clear that municipal governments have the “democratic imperative” to maintain true neutrality by abstaining from all religious activities. When officials engage in a religious practice, no matter how inclusive it may seem, it indicates a preference for that religious tradition over others. In refraining from religious practices, such as prayer, municipal governments create a neutral space where all citizens feel comfortable to participate.

Here we wanted to summarize the impact of work on these various municipalities.

This past year has been an unprecedented one on many levels. With the mass lockdowns, deaths, and other losses brought on by COVID-19, it has been an important time to stay true to our humanist values of morality, compassion, scientifically backed reason, and compassion.

In the face of these challenges, we at the BC Humanist Association have strived to continue empowering humanists and fighting for religious equality. To that end, our team completed numerous presentations and reports, launched new campaigns targeted at our member’s needs, and created a series of regular virtual events.

The BC Humanist Association has created two guides to discuss issues that humanists and other non-religious people may encounter around the ends of their lives. This guide, on Memorials & Grief, is for anyone non-religious (humanist, atheist, agnostic) and living with the death of a loved one, or simply interested in learning more about the humanist perspective of life & death.

Since our last response in January 2016, there has been a significant amount of research into the demand for medical assistance in dying (MAiD), and experience of the 13,000 Canadians who received their wish of an assisted death in Canada since legislation. However, there are also many people who would have otherwise wished for MAiD, but were excluded from the eligibility criteria until now. Amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada will pave the way for more Canadian adults to fulfill their wishes of a death with dignity, a cause that the overwhelming majority of Canadians support.  

End of life care in Canada has historically been a field of medicine steeped in religion, believed to be the work of Christian chaplains—not doctors—for the purpose of preparing for an afterlife. With a growing number of non-religious people in the world and the multiculturalism of Canada, the landscape of end of life care is changing. The legalization of medical assistance in dying, non-religious pastoral support networks, and advance care planning education offers an opportunity for non-religious people to think of death and dying in a way that simply wasn’t possible before.

With that in mind, the BC Humanist Association have created a guide that discusses issues that humanists and other non-religious people may encounter when considering and planning for the end of their lives. This guide also sheds light on the unique experience of living a life with no expectation of punishment or reward when it’s over and identifies barriers to a death with dignity, along with measures to improve it.