Richelle Wiseman

Last week, the Mayor of Vancouver stood on the steps of a downtown Catholic church to make an important announcement.  This week, he will table a motion to go before city council in April to make faith-based charitable organizations exempt from a city land use permit which could hinder services to the city’s poor.

Apparently, soup kitchens and shelters for homeless and poor people sponsored by churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples, cause line-ups, which annoy residents who live nearby these downtown locations.    In response to concerns of neighbours, city officials decided to require religious organizations to take out a “social service permit” which would involve hiring security guards to manage the lineups and to obtain personal identification information from homeless clientele.   

Mayor Sam Sullivan thinks those requirements are going too far, and will create unnecessary hoops for organizations keen on helping Vancouver’s less fortunate citizens.  

According to the Globe and Mail, a group of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh leaders got together to speak out against the new permit requirements, in defense of the church which started the controversy in the first place, Tenth Avenue Alliance Church, a historic evangelical congregation in the Vancouver core.

It was a courageous move for the mayor who is facing a civic election this year.  He has taken an important stand to acknowledge that religion does have a role to play in the public square, and surely, helping the poor is one of those roles. 

Who knew there are civic officials in Canada who want religious organizations to obtain permits to practice compassion, love, mercy, and generosity?  

The notion seems to be that places of worship are confined to worship, and that “land use” for such buildings is limited to private activities.  But this is to misunderstand the very essence of religious communities which historically, and intrinsically, seek to serve the wider community.   Most religious groups don’t distinguish between worship and “social service.”  In fact, many houses of worship would claim that serving the poor is itself an act of worship, and a natural expression of religious beliefs.  Indeed, across Canada, religious organizations have historically attended to a wide range of social needs by providing education, hospitals, hospices, orphanages, soup kitchens, homes for unwed mothers, shelters for homeless, the list goes on.  

So why the need for an additional permit to help people?  Surely the complaints of a few people with NIMBY syndrome should not be allowed to prevail.

Furthermore, the bureaucrats shouldn’t set up red tape around “holy ground”, when the city is grasping for ways to address homelessness and poverty.  

It seems the only time we hear about Canada’s Sikh community in the media is when there is a)a major Sikh festival which attracts cameras, b)some further development in the two-decade old Air India inquiry, or c)there is an issue with a turban or a kirpan somewhere.   This week, the Sikh story was about a Sikh motorcyclist who refused to wear a mandatory helmet, as he claimed it violated his religious beliefs to be forced to remove his turban.  However, the Ontario judge in this case believed that religious rights in this instance are trumped by the cost to address the motorcyclist’s health care costs should he become involved in an accident.  Not only is he placing himself at greater risk, he is also risking tax dollars in the health care system.    In other cases, such as the Muslim girl who was prohibited from playing soccer for wearing a hijab, the safety question took precedence over religious dress. 

Is this a disturbing development?  One might ask, what other instances might arise when the state decides that religious freedoms take a back seat to other considerations?  (Common sense would suggest that the temporary removal of a turban to accomodate a life-saving helmet does not pose a threat to religious freedom. )

But other issues are at play here.  The brewing storm over accommodation issues in Quebec has resulted in a formal process to determine how such religious rights versus community norms and civil law can best be negotiated.  The “Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences” (the Bouchard-Taylor Commission) will be read with avid interest across the country by legislators, educators, religious leaders, people of many faiths, politicians, and people keen to see religion locked up in the nearest closet.   It will also be read by people who steadfastly work against racism in this country.    It is due to be released the by the end of this month.

So underneath the helmet issue, there are the larger issues of accommodation.  When does Canada’s much-celebrated multicultural society accommodate differences, and when do those differences need to succumb to the wider sense of what it means to be Canadian?

There is yet another issue.  How does the media portray Canada’s diverse communities? What happens when their religious, ethnic, cultural, and social identities and values come into conflict with those which are deemed the foundational social values and principles of this great country?  How do the media answer these questions simply by what they do and don’t cover?  A quick scan about Sikhs in Canada’s newspapers headlines over the past few years reveal that most stories involving Canadian Sikhs are negative. The same is undoubtedly true of Canadian Muslims. 

Where are the positive stories?  Are all Canadian Sikhs and Muslims terrorists themselves, or guilty of helping terrorists, or otherwise disrupting the fabric of Canada by demanding accommodation?  Are there not Canadian Sikhs and Muslims making significant contributions to Canadian society?  The answer is….yes, of course there are.  Scores of them. For instance, a little mentioned story in Calgary media was the donation of money by the local Sikh community to a local hospital several years ago.  There are Members of Parliament and provincial legislatures who are Sikhs, and also Muslims.  There are numerous faculty members of post-secondary institutions across the nation who are Sikhs, and also Muslims.  There are educators, lawyers, doctors, and people of all trades and vocations who are of Sikh and Muslim traditions, and they are making Canada a better country.  But if the predominant media image of these communities is a negative one, does it affect the way all of us view Sikh and Muslim Canadians?

Of course it does.  Which is why we need to look under the helmets, the kirpans, the hijabs, and get on with looking at how diverse Canadians are making a positive difference in this country.  What a breath of fresh air that would be.