The BC Humanist Association joins leading Canadian charities in applauding a report released today that calls for a regulatory and legislative overhaul "to enable charities to fully participate in public policy dialogue and development."

The coalition of charities, formed in response to the political activities audits under the previous government, had called for a new law to protect the ability of charities to speak out on public policy issues.

The report was written by a panel of five experts charged by the Minister of National Revenue with giving recommendations for a new legislative framework to strengthen the charitable sector. The report recommends that the rules governing the freedom of Canadians to speak be enhanced by removing prohibitions on participation in public policy development by charities they support. It recommends that the antiquated laws which govern the 86,000 Canadian charities be replaced so as to prevent further infringements on freedom of speech.

The charities are requesting the Federal Government immediately table a bill to implement the recommendations of the Expert Panel Report.

Ex-staffers have told HuffPost Canada that Senator Don Meredith forced them to pray with him and draft sermons while on the Parliamentary clock.

Meredith is a Pentecostal pastor at the GTA Faith Alliance church in Richmond Hill, Ontario and is facing expulsion from the Senate following a separate investigation into a sexual relationship with a teenage girl.

Update (May 1, 2017): The Chief's response and our take can be found below.

The BC Humanist Association has accused the Delta Police Department of religious "endorsement by exclusion" over a recent Interfaith Symposium on drug addiction.

The event, held on March 30 at Baitur Rahman Mosque in Delta, was the second annual Interfaith Symposium held by the Department. This year's focus was on addictions and the role religion plays in addictions recovery.

Delta Police Chief Neil Dubbord reportedly said at the symposium:

Whenever I have spoken to anyone who is making the journey, faith is a major part in what they believe in. Consider these statistics from people who accepted a religious faith into their lives: two times more likely not to smoke, three times more likely not to binge drink, four times more likely not to use illicit drugs and six times more likely not to smoke weed or pot. Without faith nothing is possible and nothing is impossible, so it is clear that faith plays a most important role in drugs and drug addiction.

The BC Humanist Association challenges the constitutionality of excluding non-religious voices from the event and the evidence for Chief Dubbord's comments.

While Buddhists, Wiccans, Unitarians and even Scientologists can perform marriages in British Columbia, Humanists and other atheists are being discriminated against by the province's arbitrary implementation of the Marriage Act, according to a new report by the BC Humanist Association.

The Case for Humanist Marriage in BC sets out the current laws governing the solemnization of marriages in BC and across Canada and contrasts it with seven other jurisdictions around the world where Humanists are permitted to perform marriages. In Scotland, for example, Humanist marriages are now more popular than Church of Scotland weddings.

The report calls for a judicial challenge or legislative change to the province's Marriage Act.

BC's Select Standing Committee on Health released a report last week calling for the province to fund evidence-based addiction recovery programs and expand harm reduction services.

The recommendations were part of the report, Looking Forward: Improving Rural Health Care, Primary Care, and Addictions Recovery Programs, which follows consultations that the BC Humanist Association took part in last June.

Specifically, the BC Humanist Association called on the province to end its tacit endorsement of religious based addictions recovery programs, like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).

Canada's highest court announced last week that it will hear appeals on the proposed law school at Evangelical Christian Trinity Western University.

Law societies in BC, Ontario and Nova Scotia had denied accreditation to the school on the basis that the Community Covenant it forces students to sign excludes same-sex couples. Appeal courts in Nova Scotia and BC sided with TWU, while the Ontario court sided with their law society. The Supreme Court of Canada will hear the appeals to the BC and Ontario decisions together later this year.

A man is facing blasphemy charges after allegedly burning a copy of the Quran for an online video posted to an anti-Islam group in December 2015.

The prosecution marks the first time in 45 years that Denmark has invoked the law. The last accusations were brought against a radio station that was ultimately acquitted in 1971. The last conviction was in 1946.

Canada's blasphemy law is under review by the Minister of Justice and could be repealed as part of broader justice reform.

Jody Wilson-Raybould made the commitment in her response to a petition signed by nearly 7500 people calling on the government to repeal section 296 (the prohibition on blasphemous libel) of the Criminal Code.

The position has been filled

The BC Humanist Association (BCHA) is seeking a Vancouver Meetings Technical Assistant to help us professionalize and produce our weekly meetings. The BCHA has been hosting a weekly meeting series in Vancouver for many years. Recently, the meetings have featured a number of prominent and fascinating local speakers. The majority of those talks have been posted through our podcast and some have been posted as videos online.

The BC Humanist Association (BCHA) joins teachers and the President of the Cariboo-Chilcotin Teachers' Association (CCTA) in celebrating School District No 27 decision to end its policy of distributing Gideon Bibles to grade 5 students in the district.

In a phone call in response to the BCHA, SD 27 confirmed today that it would "not permit" the practice to continue. The BCHA argued in a November 29, 2016 letter, that the distribution violates the School Act's requirement that schools be "strictly secular and non-sectarian" and arguably also puts the district in breach of the Charter by promoting one religious viewpoint to the exclusion of others.

The BCHA had asked whether the District would allow other religious or atheist materials, including editions of Godless Comics, to be distributed, if it refused to cease distributing bibles.