The BC Humanist Association (BCHA) says that during the inaugural meeting of council, Tumbler Ridge was one of seven municipalities that included prayers.
This is after a ruling in 2015 by the Supreme Court of Canada that “including a prayer in a council meeting violated the state’s duty of neutrality and, therefore, was unconstitutional,” according to Ian Bushfield, Executive Director for the association.
The report, entitled We Yelled at Them Until They Stopped is the BCHA’s follow-up report to The Duty of Neutrality Beyond Saguenay, which looked at the 2018 inaugural council meetings.
“In 2018, 26 municipalities included prayers in their inaugural meetings,” says Bushfield. “Last year, only seven did.
“After we published these findings in 2020, we lobbied municipal staff, generated publicity, and encouraged grassroots advocacy. As a result, only seven BC municipalities included prayers in their 2022 inaugural meetings. We can take credit for some of these changes based on our correspondence with municipalities and freedom of information requests.”
The report comes out about a year after the 2022 inaugural council meetings.
In Vancouver, five different groups—the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, the Canadian Memorial United Church, the Jewish Temple Shalom, the Sikh Khalsa Diwan Society and the BC Muslim Association were all invited to pray. But this move towards religious diversity does not appease Bushfield.
“As BC has become majority non-religious, we’ve seen the practice of opening meetings with a prayer become a thing of the past,” he says. “However, we were still shocked by the number of holdouts, especially the City of Vancouver. Having five different theists deliver a collective prayer does not make the practice any less discriminatory for those not reflected on stage.”
In Tumbler Ridge—as in the other six municipalities—the prayers were delivered by Christian pastors.
The report was co-authored by Dr Teale Phelps Bondaroff. “Municipal council chambers should be a place that is welcoming to all, regardless of their belief, or lack thereof,” says Bondaroff. “The Supreme Court is clear that local governments have a duty of religious neutrality, and this means that they cannot include prayer in council meetings.”
According to Bushfield, in the original Supreme court decision, Justice Gascon wrote: “Even if it were accepted that the prayer at issue is prima facie a non-denominational practice, it is nonetheless a religious practice… Even if a religious practice engaged in by the state is ‘inclusive’, it may nevertheless exclude non-believers.”
After releasing its previous report, the BCHA lobbied those municipalities identified as including a prayer. “Of those targeted by the secularists, only Parksville continued to include a prayer in 2022,” says Bushfield. “Belcarra, Delta and West Kelowna also continued to include prayers but were previously overlooked. The remaining communities, Colwood, Tumbler Ridge and Vancouver, had ceased including prayers in their inaugural meetings.”
Says Bondaroff: “I am proud that the advocacy of the BC Humanist Association is making a positive impact and hope that those municipalities that continued to include unconstitutional prayer in the 2022 inaugural meetings will discontinue this practice in the future.
“The BCHA intends to follow up with the remaining seven municipalities identified to ask them again to follow the law. We will also write again to every council prior to the 2026 inaugural meetings to remind them of their obligations.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.