The British Columbia Humanist Association supports a secular society that affirms:
- the right of every individual to practice any religion or none, free from coercion by the government, private institutions or their community and
- that the state has a duty of religious neutrality, meaning it must neither endorse nor prohibit any belief or non-belief.
Open secularism is the best way to fully guarantee the freedom of religion and conscience of all citizens in a plural society. Secularism is the principle that the government should not privilege or disadvantage any religious or non-religious belief over any other.
We oppose government funding being given preferentially to religious organizations and tax exemptions that only benefit the religious (for example, permissive exemptions for houses of worship or the Clergy Residence Deduction). We call on the federal government to remove "the supremacy of God" from the preamble of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and to create a secular national anthem.
Latest news
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News
· October 09, 2024
For the sixth time, research from the BCHA has identified municipalities violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms A new report from the BC Humanist Association (BCHA) found that multiple Saskatchewan municipalities continue to include prayers in their council meetings, despite a 2015 Supreme Court of Canada ruling that...
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Blog by Ian Bushfield
· September 10, 2024
The small city of Rossland in the West Kootenays voted last month to tax some vacant land around the local Catholic Church.
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News
· August 28, 2024
The BC Humanist Association is renewing its call for legislatures to end the practice of opening each day's sitting with prayers following a new poll that found a majority of Canadians would prefer a moment of silent reflection or nothing.
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Blog by Ian Bushfield
· July 29, 2024
On June 30, 2024, as rainbows and drag queens marched down Yonge Street with the Toronto Pride Parade, a trio of evangelical churches in Greater Toronto hosted the leader of the opposition and local Conservative Party candidates for campaign-style rallies at their church services. Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation between Church...
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News
· July 18, 2024
In its brief to the House of Commons Finance Committee's Pre-Budget 2025 consultation, the BC Humanist Association (BCHA) today called on the government to end charitable status for anti-abortion organizations, remove the privileged status of religion in charity law and repeal the clergy residence deduction.
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News
· July 16, 2024
British Columbia's privacy laws and the Charter's protection of religious freedom are both fundamentally based on principles of consent and freedom from coercion, we argued in our submissions to the BC Court of Appeal yesterday.
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News
· July 02, 2024
The BC Humanist Association (BCHA) is declaring the end of municipal prayers in British Columbia (BC) following a commitment from the City of Parksville that there will not be prayers in the City's next inaugural council meeting.
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News
· June 03, 2024
The City of Vancouver has said that prayers at its most recent inauguration ceremony were "a breach of the duty of religious neutrality." A lawyer for the City made the concession in response to the threat of legal action from the BC Humanist Association (BCHA).
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News
· May 30, 2024
Council meetings in the Municipal District of Bonnyville, Alberta, no longer open with a prayer. This follows the BC Humanist Association releasing a report that identified it as one of eight Alberta municipalities that violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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