Christians in Finland are having a hard time of it lately. On the heels of the Finnish Supreme Court convicting MP Päivi Räsänen of “hate speech” over a booklet on the biblical view on homosexuality, now the country is going after mentions of God in songs sung at school graduations.
freedom of religious expression
Conrad Black: Liberals unfairly target religious expression
Bill C-9, the Combating Hate Act, which passed the House of Commons this spring has been controversial because of widespread fears that its broad definitions of hate speech and intimidation threatened fundamental democratic rights. Almost everybody opposes incitement to group hatred but almost everybody also supports the widest definition of freedom of human conduct that does not lead to chaos or promote or defend sociopathic behaviour. Opponents of C-9 are particularly concerned at the removal from the Criminal Code’s protection of people acting in good faith in reciting religious texts that could be construed as incitements to hate, even if unintentionally.
Removal of Religious Exemption to Hate Speech Laws Would Lead to ‘Open Season on Christians,’ Professor Tells Senators
Wilfrid Laurier University professor David Haskell says proposed legislation that removes religious exemption to hate speech laws would be detrimental to the rights of Christians in Canada, which he argues are already under sustained attack.
Haskell’s comments came during a recent hearing on Bill C-9 before the Senate committee on human rights, and were joined by criticisms from several other expert witnesses who said the bill is too vague to effectively counter hateful incidents or so open to interpretation that it risks infringing on basic civil liberties.
“If this Criminal Code protection is removed, it will be open season on Christians, as ideological opponents increasingly claim [Christians’] beliefs harm society,” Haskell told senators, adding that “it will lead to even more discrimination against Christians in Canada and negatively affect the social good they contribute.”
Trump’s free speech tsar: We’re flooded by complaints from Britons
British citizens are flocking to a website set up by the Trump administration to bypass online-safety laws because they are living under a government “hostile to freedom of speech”, a senior US official has said.
Sarah Rogers, the under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department, said freedom.gov had received significant interest from British users.
Finnish MP To Appeal ‘Hate Speech’ Conviction to Strasbourg
Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen announced today that she will take her conviction for “insulting a group” to the European Court of Human Rights, setting up a test of how far free speech and religious expression are protected under European law.
The Finnish Supreme Court found her guilty in March 2026, by a narrow 3–2 majority, for disseminating a 2004 pamphlet to her religious community. In that text, Räsänen outlined the Christian conception of marriage as a union between a man and a woman and questioned certain practices from that doctrinal perspective.
BREAKING: Christian Finnish parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen, who was criminally convicted for “hate speech” by her country’s Supreme Court for a church booklet she wrote decades ago, has today announced that she will appeal her case to the European Court of Human Rights. pic.twitter.com/pQgsNZdRAb
— ADF International (@ADFIntl) May 7, 2026
President Trump Make Us An Offer!
Sliding into tyranny, one sunny way at a time. @fancypants_s https://t.co/FaRfwQQXjL
— Patti Jo (@TheSupeHero) April 23, 2026
Spread the word: Protests against Bill C-9 taking place across Canada on May 1
We’re entering a critical stretch in the fight against the Liberal government’s anti-religion Bill C-9.
This legislation directly threatens our fundamental freedoms of expression and religion, including the ability of Christians to live out their beliefs without fear of government prosecution.
Certain Bible passages will be effectively banned as “hate speech” if C-9 passes in the Senate.
Carney is making annexation more attractive by the day.
I hope the US accepts us as political refugees.
h/t Patti Jo
A New Online Harms Act Would Mean Canadians Talk Less Freely
Once it was confirmed that, for the first time, Canada would be ruled by a majority government achieved through floor-crossing, it didn’t take long for talk of a renewed Online Harms Act to be proposed.
Heritage Minister Marc Miller was approached after his party—thanks to winning three byelections to hold seats it had previously won in last year’s election and gaining five floor-crossing MPs—had turned a minority government into a majority with unfettered legislative power.
Self-censorship has become the safest form of expression
A few years ago, I was in New York with my 21-year-old daughter. We visited museums, ate at great restaurants, did some shopping. During our trip, she found a pair of sandals made of embroidered Chinese fabric and fell in love with them.
But that summer, I noticed she never wore them. When I asked why, she said: “I just feel like there’s a chance I’ll offend someone.”
Democrats Aren’t Far Behind Canada In Efforts To Ban Christian Speech
Canada’s dominant Liberal Party has introduced legislation that may soon make Christian speech illegal.
In March, the Canadian House of Commons passed Bill C-9, also known as the “Combatting Hate Act.” The bill was introduced under the guise of mitigating antisemitic attacks in the wake of Hamas’ violent attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Liberals claimed it was developed to protect religious communities, but C-9 eagerly expanded to prohibit public displays of “hate,” including “Islamophobia, homophobia, and transphobia.” The Canadian Liberals have used so-called hate speech as a Trojan horse to enact censorship laws — the same thing American Democrats are trying to do here.
Canada Poised To Criminalize Christianity With Ban On Citing Biblical Truths
Leftists may claim that they work for the common good, but what really drives them is often nothing less than religious fanaticism.
Case in point: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his new anti-Christian bill (C-9). Not content with the current hate speech laws in force in Canada, Carney is pushing stricter restrictions on speech with a new law that would prohibit using religious texts as a defense of speech the left deems offensive. According to a report in The Telegraph, “Bill C-9, the Act is a wide-ranging piece of legislation aimed at targeting what Carney’s government claims is ‘rising anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, homophobia and transphobia.’”
After Oct. 7, hate-speech laws looked like the answer. Europe shows why they aren’t
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas carried out the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, recording the horrors and sharing them online. The attack triggered a bloody Israeli invasion of Gaza that killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. It also had immediate consequences far beyond the region.
In Canada, Jewish communities experienced what Deborah Lyons, the former Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, called an “unprecedented wave” of antisemitism involving “harassment, intimidation, threats of violence” and a near tripling of hate crimes. In Europe, pro-Palestinian demonstrations were marred by antisemitic chants. In Berlin, a synagogue was attacked with firebombs while Stars of David were scrawled on apartments housing Jews, reminiscent of Nazi intimidation.
I had a call with @OttawaPolice today. I was told if I don’t delete my X posts where I say Mosques in Occupied Iran are hubs of terrorism and should be bombed, I would be charged under the Criminal Code of Canada.
So I deleted my posts.
Meanwhile, Mosques in Occupied Iran: pic.twitter.com/TAL1z1Pg0i
— Goldie Ghamari | گلسا قمری 🇮🇷 (@gghamari) April 8, 2026
Europe now treats Christian views as criminal
In what has become known as the ‘Bible trial’, Christian politician Päivi Räsänen was criminally convicted last week of ‘hate speech’ in Finland’s Supreme Court. Her successful prosecution was based on a 21-year-old church pamphlet, which simply re-stated Christian sexual ethics. The verdict, the culmination of a seven-year witch hunt carried out by Finnish authorities, is perhaps the clearest illustration yet of Europe’s censorship crisis.
Why Carney’s liberals are going to war with the Bible
Pastor Derek Reimer is not liberal Canada’s favourite free-speech champion. The Bible-bashing leader of Calgary’s Mission 7 ministry has waged a one-man war on his government’s progressive, LGBTQ-friendly agenda – especially its promotion of transgender rights.
In 2023, he was arrested three times after protesting against “family-friendly” storytime events at Calgary’s public libraries, in which local drag queens read to children. He denounced it all as “pervert grooming sessions”, and told a librarian that if she carried on “corrupting kids”, he would post her details online. He also quoted from Deuteronomy 22:5, which states: “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak.”
So far, his protests have earned him a conviction for harassment, more than 100 days in jail, and limited sympathy from the wider public – who, whatever their views on transgender issues, often see his methods as extreme.
Yet in recent months, his name has frequently been cited in a growing row over freedom of speech – centred around a planned new law that would remove the right of religious activists to quote scripture as a defence against hate crime charges.
Finland has Convicted an MP of ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ for Publishing Religious Pamphlet
Is homosexuality a sin?
That’s like asking whether adultery is a sin, or taking God’s name in vain. The Bible is quite clear on the matter, and for over two millennia, it was uncontroversial to believe that the sexual binary and method of human procreation made clear that God made men and women to be complementary.
Get ready Canada …
Anti-hate bill that provoked bitter debate over religious freedom passes the Commons
Jewish groups welcomed the government’s anti-hate bill passing through the Commons Wednesday evening after months of filibustering and fractious debate about whether it threatens religious freedom.
Bill C-9, as it’s known, would make it a crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, to obstruct someone from accessing a place of worship or other sites where Jews, Muslims and other identifiable groups gather.
Closing Debate on Ottawa’s Anti-Hate Bill Risks Undermining Canada’s Religious Freedom
I am writing as a concerned citizen to express my profound concern over the federal government’s March 9, 2026, move to close debate on Bill C-9, Ottawa’s anti-hate bill.
As recently reported by the National Post, Khaled Al-Qazzaz, executive director of the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council, said he and other Muslim groups representing hundreds of Muslim organizations opposed the bill and felt “ambushed” by the government’s decision to limit further debate.