{"id":265755,"date":"2017-12-04T11:33:06","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T16:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/religion-multiculturalism-and-the-public-square\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T21:53:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T01:53:41","slug":"religion-multiculturalism-and-the-public-square","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2017\/12\/religion-multiculturalism-and-the-public-square\/","title":{"rendered":"Religion, multiculturalism and the public square"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law<\/em>.\u201d <\/strong>Constitution Act<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> 1982. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The inclusion of \u201cGod\u201d in the preamble to Canada\u2019s 1982 Constitution Act<\/em> was a last-minute addition by Pierre Trudeau.<\/p>\n

Thirty-three years later, as his son Justin presided over the swearing in of a new Liberal cabinet, over half of its members chose to drop the words \u201cso help me God\u201d from their oath of office. In a little more than a generation, the religious beliefs that were once the central tenets of Canadian society have been swept aside, as the courts and Parliament moved to assert a person\u2019s individual liberty over their body, their identity and their relationships, from birth to death. And Canadian public opinion \u2014 sometimes leading, at other times following \u2014 has largely kept pace with this transformation.<\/p>\n

The era when churches and religious leaders held sway over public policy in Canada has come to an end. There are important pockets of religious opposition to abortion, assisted dying and gender neutralization, but in the final analysis secularism seems to have won the day.<\/p>\n

Religion and religious influence declined in Canada after the Second World War. (In Quebec during the 1960s the process accelerated, and the province moved from being the most to the least churched society in the modern world.) In the 1980s, not long after Pierre Trudeau wrote the word \u201cGod\u201d into the constitutional preamble, regular church attendance in Canada was at around 40 percent. When Justin Trudeau formed his first cabinet in 2015, regular attendance had decreased to around half that (figure 1).<\/p>\n

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