Canada
In September 2012, Conservative Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews cancelled a tender that had been issued by Corrections Canada in British Columbia for a Wiccan prison chaplain. In October of that year, Toews ordered the termination of contracts for all non-Christian prison chaplains in BC and all but two throughout Canada, obliging not only Neopagan prisoners but also Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Buddhists, practitioners of indigenous religions, and others to turn to Christian chaplains for their spiritual needs. Wiccans were among the prisoners who joined a lawsuit alleging that the terminations violated constitutional guarantees of religious equality.
Read more about this topic: Religious Discrimination Against Neopagans
Famous quotes containing the word canada:
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I see Canada as a country torn between a very northern, rather extraordinary, mystical spirit which it fears and its desire to present itself to the world as a Scotch banker.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)
“I do not consider divorce an evil by any means. It is just as much a refuge for women married to brutal men as Canada was to the slaves of brutal masters.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)