Last month, Christian Legal Fellowship hosted its first CLI Reunion and Summer Capstone event at Redeemer University in Hamilton, Ontario. Members from different life stages came together and swapped stories of academic aspirations, uncertainties, hardships within their careers, and huge changes in their own life journeys.

This year, the Christian Legal Institute (CLI) ran from April 29 to May 3 and featured many distinguished speakers including lawyers, legal scholars, and honourable justices. CLI started in 2009 and was created to enable students and other professionals to articulate a robust Biblical worldview in a legal context while enjoying opportunities for fellowship, discussion, and refreshment.

CLF has filed its intervention factum with the Alberta Court of Appeal in Wirring v Law Society of Alberta, proposing ways to clarify Canada’s legal test for religious freedom claims and ensure its proper application.

CLF has been granted leave to intervene by the Supreme Court of Canada to defend Canada’s laws combatting sexual exploitation.

CLF is thankful to report that Bill C-62 received royal assent yesterday. Many human rights advocates have urged Parliament to halt the expansion of assisted suicide to people whose sole underlying condition is mental illness. Without Bill C-62, the expansion would have automatically occurred on March 17 of this year. That date has now been pushed to March 17, 2027.

Aujourd’hui, la Cour d’appel du Québec a rendu sa décision dans la contestation constitutionnelle de la Loi 21 du Québec. La Cour a jugé que la loi est constitutionnelle, largement en raison de son invocation de la clause dérogatoire de la Charte. Ainsi, la Loi 21 continuera à s’appliquer au Québec.

The Quebec Court of Appeal has released its decision in the constitutional challenge to Quebec’s Bill 21. The court ruled that the law is constitutional, largely due to the Bill’s invocation of the notwithstanding clause

Christian Legal Fellowship has circulated an open letter urging Parliament to reverse Canada’s proposed expansion of assisted death (“MAID”) for mental illness, currently scheduled to take effect March 17, 2024. The letter is endorsed by over 170 lawyers and law students.

“Physicians who hold the ethical conviction that a medically administered death is not an appropriate ‘treatment’ for non-life-threatening conditions are uniquely equipped to support and reassure Canadians with disabilities who feel targeted and unsafe in a system that all too often fails to adequately support them.”

The Christmas story tells us that there’s a reason for our deeper questions and yearnings: we have been created by a higher power for a higher purpose. And that purpose is sustained by a love that transcends any mistakes we’ve made, any circumstances we feel are impossible to overcome, and any wrongs and darkness we see in the world.

On September 28, 2023, scholars, jurists, and legal professionals from across Canada and around the world gathered at Wycliffe College (University of Toronto) for the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights at 75” Symposium.

More than 13,000 people in Canada had their lives ended through assisted death in 2022 alone. This marks a 31.2 percent increase over the prior year and continues the trend of at least a 30 percent increase in MAiD deaths annually since 2019. 

CLF has submitted a brief to the Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying, urging it to halt Canada’s proposed expansion of assisted death for mental illness, currently scheduled to take effect next March. 

A new peer-reviewed book, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) in Canada: Key Multidisciplinary Perspectives has just been released. Derek Ross, Executive Director and General Counsel for Christian Legal Fellowship and Deina Warren, Director of Legal Affairs at the Canadian Centre for Christian Charities, contributed a chapter on “The Importance of Conscience as an Independent Protection.”

August 1 is Emancipation Day, as designated by Canada's House of Commons, marking "the actual day in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 came into effect across the British Empire".

The Quebec Superior Court has granted Christian Legal Fellowship / Alliance des chrétiens en droit leave to intervene in litigation challenging the province’s “prayer ban” directive.

On June 1, 2023, CLF submitted a written brief responding to the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief’s call for input on the topic of “promotion of the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, or belief at the national and local level”. The submissions received by the Special Rapporteur will inform her report to the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

As part of its special consultative status, CLF is required to submit a “Quadrennial Report” to the United Nations every four years. CLF’s latest report highlights its extensive work promoting fundamental freedoms and human rights.

A new Quebec directive orders all school service centres subject to the Education Act to “ensure that in each of their schools and in each of their centres that no location is used, both in fact and in appearance, for the purposes of religious practices such as overt prayers or other similar practices”

Parliament’s Special Joint Committee on Medical Assistance in Dying has released its final report. It recommends allowing MAID for children “deemed to have the requisite decision-making capacity”, even where the child’s parents or guardians may object. The report also supports expanding MAID for adults whose sole underlying medical condition is a mental disorder. Finally, the report recommends expanding MAID for incapacitated patients who make an “advance request”.