Under new Canadian hate-speech laws, citing the Bible or possibly even a science textbook could be a crime. Canada Pride Flag. Photo by Keepscases, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.
Canada’s new bill to restrict hate speech would remove protections for the Bible, meaning that posting or carrying a placard quoting Leviticus or other scriptures condemning LGBTQ behavior, or possibly even claiming there are only two genders, could be considered hate speech, a jailable offense. Since the existence of only two genders and the fact that a baby is a living, breathing human life inside its mother’s womb are scientific facts, ostensibly citing scientific textbooks could also be jailable if those facts hurt someone’s feelings.
Over the past decade, the UK and Canada, previously two of the freest countries on earth, have shifted so far left that they have become some of the most restrictive in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
UK police made over 12,000 arrests under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act in 2023 alone, roughly 30 per day, a figure that had nearly doubled since 2017. A separate investigation found 292 people charged under the Online Safety Act between its enforcement and February 2025.
The US State Department’s 2024 Human Rights Report stated that the “human rights situation worsened” in Britain in 2024, citing “credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression,” and noted that following the Southport attack the UK government “repeatedly intervened to chill speech.”
Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old white woman married to a Conservative councillor, was convicted for a social media post following the Southport killings and sentenced to two and a half years. Jamila Abdi, a 21-year-old Black woman, was criminally charged for using a racial slur on Twitter; her prosecution ran eight months before the Crown Prosecution Service dropped it, not on free speech grounds, but amid concerns that prosecuting a Black person for the word was itself racist.
Graham Linehan, the Irish writer who created Father Ted and The IT Crowd, was arrested by five armed officers at Heathrow Airport for posting three tweets from Arizona; his original bail condition barred him from using X while in the UK.
Police forces in Britain recorded 13,200 “non-crime hate incidents” (NCHIs) in the year to June 2024. Under previous College of Policing guidance, when someone claimed to be a victim of hatred, officers were required to keep a record against the name of the accused even where no crime was committed, with no investigation of the claims required.
Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act 2021 came into force on April 1, 2024, creating new offenses of “threatening or abusive behaviour which is intended to stir up hatred” across all protected characteristics, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, carrying a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment, and criminalizing certain expression regardless of evidence of harm or violence being likely to result.
The left supports abortion by claiming it is a woman’s right to choose and that a fetus is not a baby and not really a human life, and therefore not entitled to protection. Meanwhile, the biological reality is that a fetus is a human offspring, commonly known as a baby, and it is a human life and therefore should qualify for protection under the law.
Despite the fact that science and Christian teachings overlap in this case, as they do with the two-genders discussion, liberals accuse Christians of ignoring “the science” or rejecting science. However, biology textbooks written before 2019 are quite clear on these points. Under current hate-speech rules, citing those books could be considered a hate crime.
The UK expanded its buffer zone law nationwide as of October 31, 2024, criminalizing the act of “influencing” any person’s decision within 150 meters of any abortion facility in England and Wales. In November 2022, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for praying silently near an abortion facility in Birmingham; in August 2024, West Midlands Police admitted to treating her unjustly and agreed to pay approximately £13,000 for violating her rights.
Adam Smith-Connor, an army veteran, was convicted for praying silently for a few minutes near a Bournemouth abortion facility and ordered to pay £9,000 in costs. Livia Tossici-Bolt, a retired biomedical scientist, received a two-year conditional discharge and was ordered to pay £20,000 in costs after standing near the same facility holding a sign that read: “Here to talk if you want to.”
A 78-year-old grandfather, Clive Johnston, was convicted in Northern Ireland for holding an open-air church service near a hospital in which he preached from John 3:16, displaying no graphic signs, shouting no abuse, blocking no entrances, and not mentioning abortion. The US State Department described prosecutions under buffer zone laws as “an egregious violation of the fundamental right to free speech and religious liberty” and called them “a concerning departure from the shared values that ought to underpin U.S.-UK relations.”
Canada’s Criminal Code currently prescribes jail terms of up to two years for “wilful promotion of hatred” but includes an exemption for statements made in good faith based on belief in a religious text. Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, introduced by Liberal Justice Minister Sean Fraser, passed the House of Commons on March 25, 2026, in a 186–137 vote along party lines and now heads to the Senate. It removes that religious exemption.
Canadian officials have already signaled how they intend to apply the law: Conservative MP Andrew Lawton cited remarks by Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, who stated at a House justice committee hearing that passages in Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Romans contain “clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals” and questioned how the good-faith religious defense could apply to quoting them.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote to Prime Minister Mark Carney warning that removing the exemption endangers Canadians who express sincere theological convictions. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association warned that new hate crime definitions in associated legislation are “far broader than existing prohibitions and could criminalize peaceful protests,” with penalties that “could push activists into silence.”
Bills C-63 and C-367, which preceded C-9, proposed reinstating Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act to allow government censors to investigate and prosecute online speech, empowering the public to anonymously report fellow citizens for online “hate speech,” and proposing life sentences for “hate”-motivated crimes with “hate” left ambiguously defined. Both died on the order paper when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025 and were folded into the framework that became C-9.
Pastor Derek Reimer was arrested multiple times in 2023 for protesting a drag queen story hour event at a Calgary public library and spent Easter weekend that year in jail. In December 2025 he was arrested again after refusing a court order to write and sign an apology to the library manager, a demand his supporters characterized as compelled speech.
Linda Gibbons, a 76-year-old grandmother who has spent over 11 years cumulatively in Canadian jails for peaceful pro-life protests outside abortion clinics, was arrested in February 2025 for silently holding a sign outside Toronto’s Morgentaler clinic, then acquitted in June 2025. Multiple Canadian provinces maintain bubble zone laws prohibiting pro-life expression within 50 meters of abortion clinics.
Human rights tribunals have imposed financial penalties for speech and private expression. The BC Human Rights Tribunal ordered former Chilliwack school trustee Barry Neufeld to pay $750,000 to LGBT-identified teachers for public statements opposing gender ideology in schools and expressing his Christian faith’s role in that opposition. The money was ordered distributed among 45 to 163 LGBT-identified school employees for “injury to their dignity, feelings, and self-respect.” Neufeld is seeking judicial review in the BC Supreme Court.
In January 2025, the same tribunal fined a private individual $10,000 for expressing concern to a friend about the friend’s upcoming double mastectomy intended to affirm a trans identity, ruling the private comments discriminatory; that ruling is also under judicial review. The Quebec Human Rights Tribunal ordered a Montreal salon to pay $500 to a non-binary activist for offering men’s and women’s haircuts on its menu. A BC Ferry union employee paid an $8,000 settlement for using “she/her” pronouns for a colleague who preferred “they/them.”
Josh Alexander, a 16-year-old student at St. Joseph’s Catholic High School in Renfrew, Ontario, stated in a classroom discussion that there are only two sexes and that girls have a right to their own restrooms without biological males.
He was suspended, then excluded from school for the remainder of the year on the grounds that his presence was “detrimental to the physical and mental well-being” of transgender students. When he returned to campus, he was arrested for trespassing in violation of the exclusion order stemming from those stated beliefs.
In Montreal, the city fined an evangelical church CAD $2,500 for hosting a concert by American Christian musician Sean Feucht, citing the absence of a required permit and stating that freedom of expression does not extend to hateful or discriminatory speech. Local governments revoked permits for Feucht performances in Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton, Quebec City, Gatineau, and Vaughan, citing public-safety concerns and anticipated protests.
The Montreal concert proceeded; protesters gathered outside, police arrested one man for obstruction, and a smoke bomb was set off inside the church during the performance. Feucht accused Canadian authorities of censorship and religious discrimination. Officials maintained their actions were based on public safety and municipal regulations.
We are now living in a world where up is down and right is wrong. They say, “Follow the science,” except when the science contradicts their beliefs, in which case they say, “Not that science, stupid.”
It is now considered someone’s right to kill a baby and a crime to point out that they shouldn’t. Despite the fact that there are only men and women, and have always been only men and women, not only are we meant to believe in other genders, but it is a criminal act if we refuse to comply with someone’s delusion.
And most telling of all, the Bible is now considered hate. Anyone who took the time to read the Bible would know it says to love everyone, but we have to recognize sin as sin and advocate against it. Doing so is not an act of hate, but rather an act of love.
How long until that explanation is also considered a crime?
The post The Bible, Science, and Other Sources of Uncomfortable Truth Are Now Crimes in Canada and the UK appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.