Juno News - December 29, 2020


Are religious services an essential service？


Episode Stats

Length

5 minutes

Words per Minute

203.56567

Word Count

1,138

Sentence Count

11

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

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
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