Juno News - Are religious services an essential service？

00:00:00.000 So did you know that it is illegal to stop or otherwise obstruct a clergyman from participating

00:00:10.240 or officiating at a religious ceremony? Well I didn't and I thought I would have a look at the

00:00:15.520 criminal code to see what if anything it said about this because there's been a lot of news

00:00:19.780 of church services being halted or just generally religious services being halted or shut down

00:00:25.040 people getting tickets for participating or officiating at religious ceremonies you know

00:00:29.480 holding church at Christmas services that kind of thing. So I thought let's have a look. Now my

00:00:34.600 colleague Andrew Lawton has covered this issue a lot on his show and I definitely recommend that

00:00:38.980 you check out some of his videos but I thought I would pull up the criminal code and I actually

00:00:42.640 found that section 176 says exactly that. It says and I'll quote every person is guilty of an indictable

00:00:49.140 offense and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years or is guilty of an offense

00:00:55.280 punishable on summary conviction who by threats of force unlawfully obstructs or prevents or endeavors

00:01:01.500 to obstruct or prevent an officiant from celebrating a religious or spiritual service or performing any

00:01:07.580 other function in connection with their calling or knowing that an officiant is about to perform

00:01:13.660 is on their way to perform or is returning from the performance of any of the duties or functions

00:01:18.380 mentioned in paragraph a assaults or offers violence to them or arrests them on a civil process or under

00:01:25.300 the pretense of executing a civil process. And there's also a section right underneath that basically

00:01:29.660 says that you cannot disturb a religious service. It says and again I'll quote everyone who willfully 0.95

00:01:34.680 disturbs or interrupts an assemblage of persons met for religious worship or for a moral social or

00:01:40.240 benevolent purpose is guilty of an offense punishable on summary conviction. All right so in layman's terms

00:01:45.840 basically you cannot stop a clergyman you cannot find some reason to stop or obstruct assault them or

00:01:51.480 find some civil process reason to stop them from participating or officiating at their religious

00:01:56.760 service. Now this begs a lot of questions because every province has some set of emergency rules

00:02:02.840 they've passed some you know emergency act or some laws or rules that basically allow them to declare a

00:02:08.940 state of emergency and because there's now a state of emergency things are different you can shut

00:02:13.480 businesses down you can order different closures and so this actually sets up a very interesting

00:02:18.080 question and this is why I wanted to bring it up not because I want to necessarily advocate for one

00:02:22.500 position or another but because I find it very interesting that we have this in the criminal code

00:02:27.360 and that this may be fertile ground for a lawsuit or someone to appeal possibly all the way up to the

00:02:32.940 Supreme Court. Now if we stop and think about it for a moment the very fact that it is phrased in such a

00:02:38.340 way that obstructing or violence to arrest and officiating clergymen right so it basically says

00:02:45.540 that you're guilty of an offense if you want to obstruct someone that almost implies that there's

00:02:49.360 there's a right there right there's a very important right and if you look at the charter

00:02:52.960 the right for freedom of conscience and religion that's section two but that's the first part so 2a

00:02:58.500 freedom of conscience and religion followed by right after freedom of thought belief opinion

00:03:03.000 and expression including freedom of the press and other media of communication so glad you're checking

00:03:07.120 us out here on true north independent media we are doing just that but this is a very interesting

00:03:12.220 question which one of these rights is going to dominate now there's a couple of questions in

00:03:17.540 my mind because again certain things you know there might be an emergency but this emergency has been going

00:03:22.840 on for a long time does that make a difference there are safety rules in place wearing masks social

00:03:28.260 distancing you know hand sanitizing that kind of stuff is that going to make a difference there's a lot

00:03:33.260 of things that might make a difference should this thing be brought up to the supreme court or just

00:03:38.700 in general to a court now a couple of other things to consider is the question of essential services now

00:03:45.200 there's a petition on change.org that basically is asking that church be made an essential service and

00:03:51.280 that might be a question whether or not church would fall or any religious you know any religious

00:03:55.340 practice or setting would be a an essential service because it might fall under for example mental

00:04:03.280 health you might want to make that argument right that that'd be something that I might want to try

00:04:06.520 there might be questions with regards to you know just certain charitable services that churches or

00:04:12.740 other religious institutions are going to be offering and whether or not you know whether or not

00:04:16.620 that's allowed so there's a lot of questions with regard to churches and religious institutions being

00:04:23.280 allowed to operate during these times and I think it's very interesting that the criminal code

00:04:28.700 provides a direct instruction that you cannot stop or obstruct the clergyman or clergy person if you

00:04:34.760 want to be really politically correct from officiating or participating in a religious service now again

00:04:40.600 I'm not aware of any cases that are headed up or at the very you know to this report or just generally

00:04:45.780 I'm not aware of any cases but with the tickets coming out again check out tnc.news for some of those

00:04:51.200 stories with a number of churches being ticketed a number of officiants being being ticketed it's a

00:04:57.280 really interesting question and I'm curious to see what is going to happen and let me know in the

00:05:01.740 comments what do you think do you think that religious services should be an essential service

00:05:05.800 do you think that we should make some exemptions or at the very least put them in a different

00:05:10.660 category than other services because they are so important to so many Canadians so a lot of stuff to

00:05:15.900 think about again as always this video is going to you know it's a little different because I'm really

00:05:19.220 just asking the question and I want to see what's going to happen but I'm sure that you are curious

00:05:22.880 as well so thank you so so much for watching again for True North I am Sam Ashkenazi don't forget to

00:05:27.520 subscribe and hit that notification bell so you can stay up to date with all the latest and greatest

00:05:31.320 videos from True North thanks so much again for watching and have yourselves a really great day

Juno News - December 29, 2020

Are religious services an essential service？

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