The BC Humanist Association convinced every municipality in the province to keep meetings secular

Jul 05, 2024

It took nearly a decade, but city councils across British Columbia are officially religion-free—and it happened because Humanists held their feet to the fire and demanded those municipalities obey the law.

Their argument goes back to 2015, when the Canadian Supreme Court unanimous ruled that the city of Saguenay, in Quebec, violated citizens’ rights by opening city council meetings with prayer.

That should’ve put an end to the matter across the nation.

It did not.

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In fact, according to a report released in 2020 by the British Columbia Humanist Association, 23 out of 162 municipalities across that one province still included prayers during their 2018 inaugural meetings. (Choosing a specific date after the Supreme Court ruling gave the group a set point to compare across the board.)

Their research found that those prayers were “100% Christian” despite the fact that fewer than half of citizens in the province identified as such. Also, just about every municipality offered a single prayer; the only one that didn’t had two prayers “both of which were delivered by members of the clergy of Christian sects.” Christianity remained the government’s default faith in many areas.

After they published their research, the BC Humanists said four of the 23 municipalities had “amended their policies to remove prayer from their future council meetings.” They were “optimistic” more would follow suit.

To some extent, they succeeded. A more recent report from the BC Humanists last November found that “only seven BC municipalities included prayers in their 2022 inaugural meetings.” That’s seven too many, but a clear improvement! Vancouver, for example, included several religious representatives (Christian, Sikh, Jewish, and Muslim) during its 2022 inauguration event. The Humanist group also found that more municipalities were including Indigenous content (“such as a greeting from an elder, traditional welcome, or territorial acknowledgement&rdquo, so there was more diversity as well.

But the fact that some municipalities were still offering Christian prayers—and only Christian prayers—at meetings despite the Supreme Court ruling was troubling. Why have laws if government officials felt comfortable breaking them on a whim?

The BC Humanists contacted each of those seven municipalities after publishing their 2023 report, urging leaders to follow the law and get rid of the religious prayers. Even if there were no religious invocations at regular meetings, they didn’t belong at inauguration ceremonies either.

And then they kept following up if they didn’t hear back…

Most of those towns, as you can see, responded and agreed to end the practice.

Vancouver’s response from January only said that, while there were no prayers at city council meetings, prayers at inaugural ceremonies were up to each mayor, and the next such election would take place in 2026. Not exactly a useful response. It left open the possibility that prayers could still occur in the future if the mayor wanted them, regardless of the law. The BC Humanists said they were planning to sue unless they received a set confirmation that the prayers had ended for good.

Parksville took a similar approach, telling the group in April that they had “no intention” of prayers at future inaugurations. But “no intention” is not a firm “no.” (Even that tepid response only came after the Humanists threatened legal action.)

In recent weeks, though, both Vancouver and Parksville have confirmed that prayers will indeed be nixed at all future meetings, including inauguration ceremonies.

With that, the BC Humanists say they will not be filing any lawsuits in the matter and celebrated a well-deserved victory. Ian Bushfield, the group’s Executive Director, said this in a statement:

Nine years after the Saguenay ruling, we’re thrilled to be able to declare BC’s municipal council meetings prayer-free.

We will remain vigilant as we continue playing whac-a-mole with local politicians who privilege religion over nonreligion in the public sphere. We strongly encourage anyone considering bringing prayers back to look closely at the responses we received from municipalities ranging from Belcarra to Vancouver.

It’s almost incredible to see how some simple-but-targeted pressure from the BC Humanists was enough to get rogue municipalities to keep their meetings secular. It took dedicated activists who care about their communities reminding local leaders that they have an obligation to follow the law. Everyone can pray on their own time; city council meetings must remain secular.

In a way, this strategy boils down to going on the offensive. Bushfield himself admitted that’s what his group is trying to do in large part because [gestures broadly in the direction of the United States]:

… [W]e look south and see how quickly the wall separating church and state is crumbling and how most of our American allies are entirely on the defensive. We know that your politics spills north, often a few years later, so we're eager to rack up some clear precedent for the importance of secularism in Canada.

We don't have an establishment clause in our constitution and that gives people the false impression that Canada isn't a secular country. The Saguenay ruling, and these scores of victories, underline the importance of that duty of religious neutrality and sets up the arguments that we want to bring to so many other issues of religious privilege. We can now point out that the City of Vancouver's own lawyers conceded that a multifaith prayer is unconstitutional. 

The group’s push isn’t entirely over, though. While British Columbia has eradicated local government prayers, there are still some towns in Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario that are breaking the law. Bushfield says his group will continue trying to put a stop to those, too.