Canada’s Office of Religious Freedom

Here’s a story I just filed on the Harper government’s intetnion to establish an Office of Religious Freedom as part of Foreign Affairs. that would report to the minister of countries that oppress religions or do not protect them when other citizens attack.
AMazingly, there are people against this. Of course, it is a tactic of Harper’s enemies to keep emphasizing anything about religion under this government, to build the story that the Harper government is under trhe influence of (gasp) Christians who are TRYING TO RAM THEIR FAITH DOWN OTHER”S THROATS.
So while the office to protect religious freedom seems admirable, the opposition will atack it anyway in order to build their case. The hilariously paranoid book, Armageddon Factor, is an example of this tactic.

Canada plans controversial Religious Freedom Office, copies U.S.
Meanwhile, US Commission on International Religious Freedom nearly loses funding

By Steve Weatherbe

As Muslims firebomb Christian churches in northern Nigeria, and the Chinese Communists imprison the faithful of many religions, the Conservative government of Canada is planning to respond with its new Office of Religious Freedom modeled after one the U.S.

Canadian critics of the government are recycling criticisms first used in 1998 when the U.S. created the U.S. Office of International Religious Freedom (USIRF) was as part of the State Department. To the evident confusion of many Canadians, the same legislation set up the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom (USCIRF) . The latter, which is semi-autonomous and stands accused of pro-Christian bias, barely escaped extinction in December, as a last-minute reform bill gave it another three years’ funding but cut its budget and forced seven commissioners to resign.

While the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called on Congress to refund the Commission, its Canadian counterpart has offered no encouragement to the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper to bring its own Office of Religious Freedom into being this spring. Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops spokesman Rene Laprise told the Register the conference “had no comment on that. We are waiting to see how it works.”

Religious Liberty is the First Liberty
Less circumspect was Father Raymond de Souza, newspaper columnist, sometime Register contributor, and a participant in the government’s consultation process about the new Office. “This is a very good idea. Religious liberty has always been the first liberty. The freedom of the English church from the English monarchy was the first thing in the Magna Carta. Freedom of religion is the first right in the U.S. Bill of Rights and in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If the state controls that, all other freedoms are in peril.”

Critics of the office include Dalton McGuinty, the premier of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. Missing the point of the Office entirely, he said Canada already had a safeguard for religious freedom. “We have a document in this country that does that; it’s called the Charter of Rights [and Freedom].”
When the Conservatives promised to create the office, during the runup to last summer’s decisive election victory, they won the support of the opposition Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff. But Ignatieff, a foreign affairs expert, is long gone. His replacement, Bob Rae, has accused the Conservatives of creating the office to pander to ethnic and religious minorities. “It has much more to do with Canadian domestic politics than it has to do with the necessity of having a coherent strategy for the promotion of democracy and human rights,” said Rae.
The charge of vote pandering arose from another prominent Liberal, backroom operator Warren Kinsella, who blogged 10 reasons for not having the Office, or about five too many, given the many contradictions. Reviewing invitees to a government consultation in October on the Office, he complained that there were no Hindus and, while Muslims were present, they did not belong to the two most numerous Islamic sects, leaving his readers to wonder how ignoring the largest voter blocs could be considered pandering.
Other objections included the Office’s expense–$5 million a year—and the fact that it won’t be bipartisan as the American one is, clearly confusing USIRF, which is the model for the Canadian office and is part of the State Department, with USCIRF, which is bipartisan, advisory and independent of the administration.
Kinsella also combined persistent claims about the U.S. Commission’s pro-Christian bias with current left-wing concerns about the Harper government’s presumed pro-Christian bias, and accused the Harper government of cultural imperialism for foisting its Christian values on other countries. But then he undermined these concerns by claiming that Canada was not important enough for other countries to pay any attention to it anyway.
But those who do care about religious rights disagree. Allen Hertzke, presidential professor of political science at Oklahoma University calls the Canadian move “an exciting development.” What’s more, Canada’s middle-power status is actually an advantage. “Whenever the U.S. raises the issue, it is always open to criticism, as a superpower, of having mixed motives. Canada doesn’t carry that baggage.”

As to what business Canada or the United States have monitoring or complaining about religious rights violations elsewhere, Hertzke said, “We’ve heard that criticism a lot in the U.S. But, in fact, both countries are obliged to stand up for religious freedom and for other human rights in international forums, as are all signatories to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. It is perfectly legitimate for Canada to call other countries, including the United States, to account on how they are living up to their obligations.”

Hertzke dismisses Kinsella’s other criticism that the U.S. Office of International Religious Freedom (USIRF) has shown a pro-Christian and anti-Muslim bias. “That was raised when the law creating the office was being debated but today it is usually heard only from Islamic leaders who want to divert attention from religious rights violations in their countries. If anything we see the State Department bending over backwards to appear unbiased, by focusing on Muslim on Muslim persecution, or Christian on Christian.”

Predatory Proselytization
However, the same cannot be said for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) The Commission, as set up, has nine commissioners, three each appointed by Senate, House of Representatives and the President. While USIRF reports annually on every country, USCIRF reports only on problem countries. According to Hindu activist Suhag Shukla, co-founder of the Hindu American Foundation, the Commission not only ignores many “hot spots” of religious persecution such as Malaysia and Syria because Christians are not the victims there, but the whole intent of the U.S.’s religious freedom laws is to enable “predatory proselytization” by Christian missionaries in countries where other religious predominate. Shukla applauded the shrinking of the commissioners’ terms, which will result in seven of the nine incumbents stepping down, most of them Christian.
This criticism even found support from within USCIRF itself. according to Janet Epp Buckingham, one of the Evangelical participants in the Canadian government’s consultation. “USCIRF itself made some statements after the [Canadian] announcement [saying] ‘don’t make the mistakes that we did. This office should be multi-faith, multi-religious, representing many communities out there experiencing religious persecution.’ That is a self-criticism they would make.”
Several critics of the Canadian plan also implied that, since religion itself was bad, religious freedom was bad too. Alex Neve, head of Amnesty International Canada, said religion can have “ contentious relationship” with other human rights, such as homosexuality and women’s rights. And Kinsella ended his list of reasons with,“Throughout history, many [wars] have started at the intersection between faiths.”
But Canada’s Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, the outspoken Catholic who engineered the Conservative party’s successful wooing of ethnic minorities, is unapologetic about the Office. “Perhaps there are some rabid secularists out there who don’t understand there are a lot of vulnerable religious minorities under attack around the world,” said Kenney. “To those people who would challenge [the Office] because they are uncomfortable with religious faith, I would say, ‘Get over it.’ We’re talking about fundamental rights here.”
Voice to the Voiceless
Canada’s foreign affairs minister, John Baird, was equally frank in announcing the creation of the Office at the General Assembly of the United Nations. “It is our common duty to uphold the rights of the afflicted. To give voice to the voiceless.As citizens of the global community, we have a solemn duty to defend the vulnerable, to challenge the aggressor, to protect and promote human rights and human dignity, at home and abroad.”
He went on to defend Israel and condemn its attackers along with such oppressive regimes as Assad’s Syria, North Korea, Kaddafi’s Libya, Communist China and Iran. As well, he faulted the United Nations for making mockery of its own principles.
The push for the Office came from Canada’s Evangelical Christian churches. Though they comprise a much smaller slice of the religious pie in Canada than in the U.S. (under 10 per cent), evangelicals are the only Christian group that is growing, and their influence with the Conservative government of Stephen Harper is significant.

Some of the concern about the new Canadian Office is that the Conservative government has provided only the vaguest details: It will have a staff of five, an operating budget of $500,000 a year and a total budget of $5 million a year. This has left everyone wondering where the non-operational funds will go. The American example suggests it will be granted to non-profit organizations and individuals who are champions of religious freedom.

Sanctions are rare
Does the American Office have a real impact? Hertzke says it does, though not in the way intended by the legislation. This requires the U.S. government to impose one of a range of sanctions on countries that seriously oppress religions, but Hertzke says this rarely happens. Frequently, however, when a country is already being sanctioned for something else, religious oppression is added as a reason.

What have turned out to be their most powerful tools for both USIRF and USCIRF are their respective annual reports, says Hertzke. USIRF’s report is especially authoritative and influential, because it relies on original research by State Department operatives.

Hertzke also believes that the investigations leading up to the report has an important impact on State Department staff who might otherwise spend their time on economic affairs, forcing them to spend time with minority religious leaders.

Joseph Kung, founder and director of the Cardinal Kung Foundation, which is dedicated to defending the underground Catholic church in China, says of USIRF and USCIRF, “They are doing a helluva good job. We need them to tell the world what is going on.” Kung said that without USIRF and USCIRF, nobody would know what was really being done to Christians in China, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.

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