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What's Sincerity Got to Do with It? Freedom of Religion in Canada

Recently, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) returned to the test of individual sincerity for determining whether there has been an infringement of freedom of religion pursuant to section 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the Charter) in SL c Commission scolaire des Chênes. Sincerity of belief or in practice as necessary for religious expression on the part of a complainant has been accepted from some of the earliest Charter cases as the triggering requirement for a section 2(a) claim, and, in itself, sufficient to establish a claim which a court must then balance against conflicting claims pursuant to section 1 (‘reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society’) or section 15 (equality rights). In SL, the court confirmed that mere sincerity is no longer sufficient and that an objective burden of proof now rests on a claimant to show how a state-sanctioned requirement infringes the fundamental right to freedom of religion before competing claims will be assessed. In SL, the court found that the complainants had failed to show how a religious education course mandated for all students without exception by the Government of Quebec interfered with what they argued was their religious freedom as Roman Catholic parents to pass on their faith to their children. This result has also been interpreted to mean that the state has a right prior to parental rights in the religious formation of their own children, and, on this reading, has been highly controversial. The court's new formulation of a sincerity test may be of interest elsewhere. The earlier formulation in Syndicat Northcrest v Anselem was adopted by the House of Lords in R (Williamson) v Secretary of State for Education and Employment, and the subsequent spread of its use has since been subject to consideration in England.