Surrey School Board Prohibited Religious Beliefs

The Charter has again been used as a weapon by an ideologically driven judge in an attempt to change Canada to fit her own personal moral values.

This case arose when the Surrey BC School Board decided that 3 books sympathetic to the homosexual and lesbian lifestyle should not be used in kindergarten and Grade 1 in its school district.

This was in accordance with The BC School Act which grants school boards the responsibility of approving the educational resource materials that teachers use in classrooms. The Gay and Lesbian Educators of BC (GALE) had prepared a list of books which portrayed homosexual relationships in a positive light. Two homosexual teachers in the Surrey School District requested that these books be used in teaching kindergarten and Grade 1 students in that district.

These books were reviewed three times by various levels of school district administrative staff, all of whom concluded that the books dealt with sensitive material likely to be controversial and cause parental concerns and should not be used as resource materials in the classrooms, especially for such very young children.

The Board voted 4-2 to decline approval the books. The homosexual teachers then launched an action in the BC Supreme Court before Madame Justice Mary Saunders (who was the same judge who upheld the Bubble Zone Abortion law in the Lewis case two years previously).

Madame Justice Saunders concluded that since The 1989 BC School Act provides that BC schools must be conducted on the highest moral secular principles, this meant that all religious beliefs must be excluded from the schools and that "values" contained in the Charter of Rights be applied instead.

There are several errors in Madame Justice Saunders' judgement. In the first place, the word "secular" has been in the BC School Act since the 19th century and has been understood to mean that it requires that a non-sectarian approach be applied in schools, i.e., that the management of a public school must not be subject to the direction of any church or religious organization, and that teachers should not use their position of influence to encourage any sectarian religious belief. However, Judge Saunders, in this case, gave a totally new interpretation to the word "secular" and concluded that it meant that all religion must be excluded from public schools and that teachers and administrators must be prohibited from religious considerations in their decision making. Moreover, the so-called Charter "values" includes in S.2 "freedom of religion," but there is nothing in the Charter that requires that atheism be the approach to decision making, rather than religiously informed moral positions. Simply put, a moral position that is informed, or supported by religious belief ought not to be made publicly objectionable. However, Judge Saunders has concluded that "freedom of religion," a universal right understood throughout the entire world, can be trumped by homosexual/lesbian rights protection, which was not written into the Charter, but merely "read-in" by the courts, even though it was deliberately excluded from the Charter by a vote of 22-2 by the Committee reviewing the Charter in January, 1981. What presumption by the court. It is even more presumptuous of Madame Justice Saunders to conclude that the basic human right of freedom of religion be subject to a "higher" right of homosexual/lesbian protection.

Justice Saunders has made new law, dragging in illiberal, anti-religious prejudices by her conclusion that religious views must be excluded from decision making by elected officials, i.e., that religious belief be denied a place in public deliberations. This, of course, is a removal of freedom of religion and conscience which is explicitly protected by the Charter of Rights.

This decision is very serious and has profound implications for all of us, and especially for those holding public office who have a religious faith. One's religious beliefs are an integral part of the person, and individuals must be entitled to act according to his/her conscience in making public decisions. The incongruity of all this is that Justice Duncan Shaw of the same BC court has concluded that an individual can possess child pornography (See p.3) if it is in accordance with his conscience, on the grounds that child pornography is an integral part of that person's private life, though the material is morally reprehensible in itself. Yet, according to Judge Saunders, a public official is prohibited from applying his "conscience" based on his religious belief, even though religious belief is clearly an integral part of that person's private life. Such confusion from the courts is disturbing.

Something must be done to limit judges who go off on all directions according to their liberal (read illiberal) inclinations before they destroy the very fabric of our society.

The Surrey Board of Education has now appealed this decision to the BC Court of Appeal and it is hoped that the errors in reasoning by Madame Justice Saunders will be rectified.

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