(Global News) Organizations trying to challenge Bill 21 won a small victory in court on Thursday. The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), along with Ichrak Nourel Hak — a university student who wears a […]
(Religion News) Quebec’s Superior Court recently rejected civil rights advocates’ legal request to suspend the Canadian province’s controversial new ban on religious symbols for state workers. But activists in Canada and around the world say the fight is not yet over. “We […]
(CBC) Hassan Diab and his lawyer are accusing the federal government of perpetrating a “whitewash” after an external review, released today, concluded government lawyers acted ethically and followed proper procedures in extraditing him to France for a terrorism case that later fell […]
(CBC) Two civil rights groups are seeking an appeal after a Quebec Superior Court justice refused their emergency request to temporarily freeze parts of the province’s new religious symbols law. The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and the Canadian Civil Liberties […]
(Middle East Eye) Hate crimes against Muslims in Canada were down 50 percent in 2018 compared to the year before, a new report by Statistics Canada has said. But a national advocacy group has warned about an uptick in hate incidents targeting religious institutions. […]
(CBC) The Canadian wing of an international Jewish organization wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to send government lawyers to join the legal fight against Quebec’s secularism law. B’nai Brith Canada published an open letter Thursday after a Quebec Superior Court justice denied […]
(National Post) A federal labour board has upheld the 2015 firing of a Canada Revenue Agency employee who worked next to the Calgary airport and wrote frequent Twitter and Facebook posts that “appeared to glorify the Boston Marathon terror bombing, celebrate the […]
(National-UAE) While much has been made of the apparent security threat emanating from beyond America’s southern border by the White House and elsewhere, recent events show that it may actually be Canada that presents a greater terror concern to US soil. During […]
(CBC) A Quebec Superior Court justice has rejected a request to temporarily suspend parts of the province’s new religious symbols law, though he did agree it raises “serious” constitutional questions. Justice Michel Yergeau said Thursday the court must defer, at this stage, […]
(Canadian Press) Ontario’s top court has upheld a decision allowing a man found not criminally responsible in a knife attack at a Toronto military recruitment centre to eventually take college classes on his own. The appeal court says the Ontario Review Board […]
(Middle East Eye) A prominent Canadian Muslim advocacy group has declined an invitation to attend an upcoming US government conference on religious freedom because of President Donald Trump’s travel ban of several Muslim-majority countries. The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) on […]
(Montreal Gazette) Claiming a Montreal police officer removed a Muslim woman’s hijab and prayer robe without her permission, the Quebec Human Rights Commission is seeking to have the force ordered to update its search policies to better accommodate religious minorities. According to […]
(CBC) The Quebec government can’t “with a straight face” claim its new religious symbols law won’t have any harmful effects, a lawyer for two civil rights groups told a Superior Court justice Tuesday. Catherine McKenzie made the comment as she asked the […]
(CBC) Quebec’s religious symbols law was not yet 12 hours old when it became the subject of a Superior Court motion seeking to have it struck down. On Tuesday, the motion, filed last month by the National Council of Canadian Muslims and […]
(CBC) A Victoria councillor has tabled a motion that will ask the city to support a legal challenge of a Quebec law that bans employees from wearing religious symbols at work. The motion from Sharmarke Dubow asks that the City of Victoria […]
(Canadian Press) Quebec’s education minister is being accused of hypocrisy after tweeting a picture of himself with Nobel Prize-winning human rights activist Malala Yousafzai. Jean-Francois Roberge met Yousafzai while in France, and said on Twitter that they discussed education and international development. […]
(Canadian Press) A reporter’s last-ditch attempt at blocking an RCMP demand for his background materials in a terrorism case failed Thursday with a judge refusing to stay the production order. In her ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Breese Davies said the Mounties still […]
(CBC) A pre-election survey conducted for CBC News suggests Canadians are divided on immigration, with clear limits on the kind of migration they find acceptable. The government groups immigrants into three categories: economic, which are skilled workers and businesspeople, along with their […]
(CBC) Quebec Premier François Legault says he doesn’t “really” believe Muslim women in the province who say they’ve been the target of Islamophobic incidents since the government passed a law making it illegal for some civil servants to wear religious symbols. Several Muslim […]
(Canadian Press) Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister says he will be seeking a joint response to Quebec’s new religious symbols law when western premiers meet on Thursday in Edmonton. “That is, certainly to my mind, dangerous and un-Canadian and deserves to be opposed,” Pallister said in […]
(Canadian Press) Prosecutors are seeking a new trial for a man who attacked uniformed personnel at a Toronto military centre three years ago, arguing he should be considered a terrorist even though he acted alone and mental illness rendered him not criminally […]
(CBC) Quebec’s federation of school boards (FCSQ) says it intends on obeying the province’s new secularism law when classes resume in September. The move comes after the province’s largest school board, the Commission scolaire de Montréal (CSDM), said it would not enforce the […]
(CBC) An Ontario police force will launch a recruiting campaign targeting Quebec residents affected by the province’s new law on religious symbols. The Peel Regional Police, which covers territory including the cities of Mississauga and Brampton, will conduct a campaign in Quebec after a motion was passed unanimously […]
(Global News) Two men have been arrested in the aftermath of a National Citizens Alliance rally and counter-protest on Saturday in Halifax’s Grand Parade. Four supporters of the NCA — a far-right political party registered with Elections Canada — booked the downtown […]
(Global News) A political group whose core policy planks feature a rejection of Canada’s multiculturalism framework, a belief that political correctness threatens Canada’s identity and culture, and whose website calls for the ban of “political-Islam” are set to host a rally in […]
(CBC) Lisa Starr’s job is to find internships for prospective teachers. Her task for next fall just got more complicated, now that Quebec’s ban on religious symbols has been passed into law. “I think there’s a lot of confusion and a lot of […]
(CBC) The Commission Scolaire de Montréal voted unanimously Wednesday to delay the application of Quebec’s religious symbols law until a proper consultation process with its internal groups can be carried out. The consultations could last until the fall of 2020, the CSDM said […]
(Toronto Sun) On Sunday night after a marathon session, Quebec legislators voted 73-35 to bring into law Premier François Legault’s Bill 21 that bans some public servants from wearing religious symbols. Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government, which also had the backing […]
(CBC) Conservative MP Michael Cooper made comments deriding “goat herder cultures” during a discussion about Islam’s compatibility with Canadian democracy when he was a law student at the University of Alberta a decade ago, according to two lawyers who have come forward […]
(CBC) Quebec Premier François Legault had a blunt message Tuesday for minorities worried about his government’s new religious symbols law: the legislation, he said, “could have gone further.” The law, which was passed late Sunday, bars civil servants in positions of authority — including public school teachers, […]
(AP) A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Canadian man to 26 years in U.S. prison for supporting a group of jihadists who committed a 2009 suicide attack that killed five American soldiers in Iraq. The sentence came over the objections of […]
(CBC) Quebec’s new law on religious symbols has been on the books for less than 24 hours, but already opposition is being mounted on several fronts, both in the courts and on the streets. The law was rammed through the legislature late Sunday […]
(CBC) Quebec’s opposition is warning last-minute changes to the Coalition Avenir Québec’s religious symbols law open the door to the establishment of “secularism police.” In the final hours before Bill 21 was passed late Sunday, the CAQ introduced several amendments, including provisions to ensure the […]
(CBC) Quebec’s majority government has pushed through a controversial piece of legislation that will bar public-school teachers, government lawyers, judges and police officers from wearing religious symbols while at work. The bill, introduced by the Coalition Avenir Québec government, passed after a marathon weekend of deliberations […]
(CBC) After a 19-hour marathon session, members of Quebec’s National Assembly have passed legislation that would allow the government to cancel roughly 16,000 immigration applications, some from people who have waited in limbo for years as their files languished in the old […]
(CBC) Opposition parties are accusing Quebec’s Legault government of trying to run the National Assembly like a business, as they attempt to extend the debate of its two flagship Bills 9 and 21. Members of the National Assembly are sitting this weekend […]
(CBC) Quebec Premier François Legault says there’s a risk of upsetting “social cohesion” in the province if the debate over religious symbols is allowed to linger any longer. Legault will invoke closure to pass his government’s controversial secularism and immigration bills, putting an end […]
(CBC) A controversial statement by Conservative MP Michael Cooper before the Commons justice committee — in which he named the New Zealand mosque shooter and recited passages from his manifesto — will be officially struck from the record. After a testy exchange, […]
(CBC) The Coalition Avenir Québec government will invoke closure this weekend to force passage of two controversial pieces of legislation — one that reforms the province’s immigration system and another that bars civil servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols. The centre-right party […]
(Global News) A Toronto-area organization that was suspended by charities regulators and fined $550,000 over concerns it may have funded armed militants in Pakistan has been awarded a federal summer jobs grant. Although the Islamic Society of North America-Canada is serving a […]
(Toronto Sun) Last week’s Ontario Superior Court judgment exonerating two men for a dozen criminal charges related to the marketing of Islamic mortgages based on Shariah law went unreported in all Canadian newspapers and network TV other than the online pages of […]
(CBC) The Quebec government is offering a first concession to critics of its proposed law restricting religious symbols worn by some civil servants. Tuesday afternoon, Immigration Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette tabled the amendment which would define what a religious symbol is. The amendment seeks to define a religious symbol […]
(Toronto Sun) Two Muslim men — an activist turned Shariah mortgage seller and an Islamic cleric who sold his Islamic seal of approval on such mortgages — were acquitted on Friday of a dozen criminal charges by an Ontario Superior Court judge […]
(CBC) Several dozen people stood in the pouring rain outside Quebec’s National Assembly on Tuesday to tell the Coalition Avenir Québec that they will continue to fight against the party’s proposed ban on religious symbols in the civil service, even if Bill 21 is passed at […]
(CBC) More than four years after a Quebec court judge refused to hear the case of a woman because she was wearing a hijab, the Conseil de la magistrature finally held a disciplinary hearing into the judge’s conduct. In February 2015, Judge […]
(CBC) Two men who provided Shariah-compliant mortgages to Muslim homeowners in the GTA were acquitted of a dozen criminal charges in Ontario Superior Court Friday after a trial that began back in October 2018. Omar Kalair and Yusuf Panchbhaya were on trial […]
(Toronto Sun) We tend to place individuals and ideologies in neat, homogeneous compartments, when shades of grey better convey the reality. This seems to have happened in the controversy surrounding the tiff between Faisal Khan Suri, president of the Alberta Muslim Public […]
(Global News) The RCMP is looking into whether war crimes laws can be used to prosecute Canadians detained in Syria over their alleged involvement in the so-called Islamic State, Global News has learned. National security investigators are exploring not only whether terrorism […]
(CBC) The House of Commons justice committee in Ottawa has voted to strike controversial remarks from Conservative MP Michael Cooper from the record. Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault put forward the motion on Tuesday morning, calling Cooper’s comments “discriminatory, hurtful and disrespectful.” Over […]
(CBC) A Liberal MP wants Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to strip MP Michael Cooper of his role as deputy justice critic and toss him from the party caucus for berating a Muslim witness at a parliamentary committee last week. A second Liberal […]
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