In July of 2021, CHP Canada (Christian Heritage Party of Canada) acted as one of the intervenors in an Ontario Superior Court of Justice Judicial Review in which Guelph and Area Right to Life (GRTL) challenged a decision of the City of Guelph to remove three of their previously accepted ‘Say No to Abortion’ ads from their transit buses. The three ads simply read:

1. “Life Should Be the Most Fundamental Human Right – Say No to Abortion”;
2. “Human rights should not depend on where you are. Say No to Abortion”;
3. “What about her choice? Say No to Abortion”.

In their decision to remove these ads the stated justifications were:

Ad 1—they claimed—was inaccurate because it suggested pre-born children are human beings when the Criminal Code of Canada provides that a child becomes a human only when “it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother.”

Ad 2—they claimed—was inaccurate and demeaning to women because the image of a woman at the late stage of pregnancy depicted in the ad image suggested that women in this late stage routinely have abortions.

Ad 3—they claimed—was misleading by suggesting that the pre-born child in the ad image has a choice and the use of the pronoun “her” could trigger painful reactions from women who have had an abortion or a miscarriage.

GRTL argued that the City’s decisions violated the applicant’s section 2(b) Charter rights to freedom of expression. CHP Canada’s lawyer John Sikkema argued that the City’s reliance on the Criminal Code to define “human being” ignored a legitimate political debate on the issue.

The ruling of January 26, 2022 outlined:

[45] “The core issue in this case is whether the City’s decisions to remove the applicant’s three advertisements violated its section 2(b) rights under the Charter.”

[46] Section 2(b) of the Charter provides that everyone has the “fundamental … freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression…” Section 2(b) protects even unpopular and disturbing speech: see, for example, R. v. Zundel, [1992] 2 S.C.R. 731. However, freedom of expression is not unlimited.

It is certainly disappointing that the case focused only on the protection of freedom of expression and made no attempt to determine if the use of term “human” is misleading when referring to the pre-born child or using the pronoun “her” but that is the road that the court chose.

CHP Canada’s 2018 court win in Hamilton was considered in this ruling where it noted:

[55] In CHP v. City of Hamilton, 2018 ONSC 3690 (Div. Ct.), this Court dealt with another circumstance in which a municipality decided to remove advertisements that challenged equality rights for transgendered people. While the advertisements did not deal with abortion, they nevertheless raised similar legal issues. In that case, the Court granted an application for Judicial Review challenging the City of Hamilton’s decision because the municipality had accorded no procedural fairness to the applicant when it decided to remove the advertisements.

For this GRTL case, a 3-judge panel ruled unanimously against the City of Guelph:

[3] For the reasons below, we agree with the applicant that the City’s decisions are unreasonable because the City did not engage in the balancing exercise required by the Doré/Loyola test. This does not mean that the City is required to post the applicant’s advertisements. Rather, the matter is remitted back to the City to be decided in accordance with the requisite analysis.

A victory once again for freedom of expression and the associated process that must be followed by all levels of government when dealing with the various views arising on any subject matter. We thank the Lord for this victory in which the door was opened for CHP Canada to participate and for the numerous financial donors who made it possible . . . yet the victory is not everything we would want, in that the ruling does not make a statement about the accuracy of the ads. It does not acknowledge the obvious; the pre-born child is both a human being and a person who has the same human rights as any other human.

The Christian biblical view is increasingly becoming unpopular, hated and actually now illegal under the light of the recent passing of Bill C-4. The Christian road is becoming the road less travelled and perhaps undiscoverable to some; staying on this narrow road is not for wimps or vote seekers. The historical explorer of Africa David Livingstone once said, “I want men who will come if there is no road at all.” Are you a person of that calibre? Are you committed to the narrow road of righteousness no matter the cost? If you are, then you are with the right party, CHP Canada, Christian Heritage Party of Canada and we thank the Lord for people like you.

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