Glenn Blackett is an Alberta based constitutional lawyer.The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms begins with the words: “whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law.”As an atheist lawyer, this reference to God always struck me as an odd anachronism: historically correct, perhaps, but irrelevant to modern Canada and certainly irrelevant to the law and Constitution.In 2025, I have come to see that view of Canada as decidedly and dangerously wrong. .OLDCORN: Liberals $200 million racist slush fund.Canada is founded on Christianity like a building sits on a foundation: remove the foundation, and the building will crumble.I often say I am a Christian in every respect except I do not believe in the resurrection of Christ. My Christian friends tell me this means I am, therefore, decidedly not a Christian. While I am sure that is true, here’s what I mean: my worldview and morality are almost entirely shaped by Christianity, whether I know it or not. I may not believe in God – in the traditional and correct sense – but God is, as Christians say, “written on my heart.” .My conversion, if you will, grew from contemporary discussions about native “oral histories.” I realized that the West has oral histories too, including, first and foremost, the ancient testimonies of the Bible. Maybe these old stories contain some wisdom too? Maybe such wisdom is profound, given the dazzling progress and prosperity of “Christendom”, which we now call, simply and somewhat misleadingly, “the West.” Like a maturing infant, as my meagre knowledge of the Bible grows, so too does my realization that, indeed, these ancestors knew a lot, and I know very little..WIECHNIK: Oil and gas still 'run the world', someone should tell Mark Carney.The particular wisdoms I have encountered in the Bible, which illuminate the importance of the Charter’s reference to the “supremacy of God”, include that God created a single, ordered universe, equally comprehensible to all humans by the application of our “God-given” senses and reason. This model of the universe undergirds Western institutions like science and democracy that rely on empiricism, reason, and dialogue to help us claw our way towards truth and virtue. The Bible also teaches that man is created in God’s image: humans have equal value and are endowed with agency (i.e. the capacity to choose). This is reflected in the West’s institutions of democracy, pluralism, human rights, and the rule of law.However, what seems most important to arresting the socialist authoritarianism I see on the ascendancy in Canada is the simple story of Adam and Eve. The key lesson seems to be that our fallen nature – our original sin, what disconnects us from God – is hubris: the belief that people, like God, can ever really know what is true and what is moral. .Christians, instead, approach the world from a place of ultimate humility: knowledge that truth and good exist separate and apart from man’s faulted, if righteous, attempts to discover them. So, where the Charter says the “supremacy of God”, it seems to me, most of all, a warning to recall the garden. The state, run by God’s humble creations, can never be the source of truth and morality. It exists, instead, to preserve our natural (i.e. “God-given”) individual freedom to search for truth and good, individually and collectively, and to proclaim and proselytize the “good word” we find to our fellow citizens..EYRE: Hands off my house.In violation of this foundational wisdom, Canadian citizens, including those in government, the professions, and the judiciary, increasingly view the state as the source and enforcer of truth and good. During COVID, we saw the state become the arbiter of truth in matters of vaccine safety and efficacy and public health – censoring the “misinformation” and “harmful speech” of citizens, scientists, and policymakers who would dissent. These censored voices often pleaded for the restoration of humility, including the freedom to engage in meaningful scientific, democratic, moral, and spiritual debate. In a sense, these dissenters were praying for the restoration of the supremacy of God – for the restoration of national humility. .The folly of Canada’s hubris led the state, as supposed guardian of “public health”, to become a source, not of truth and morality – because “God revealed” the vaccines did not stop the spread – but of gratuitous insult and injury to countless individuals, families, businesses, organizations, and communities. The Canadian state’s Godless presence continues its invasion deeper into the citizens’ moral, spiritual, and intellectual freedoms. The state surveils your online activity and will censor or punish words it deems wrong or immoral. The state compels employers to eliminate “emotional hazards”, converting citizens into commissariats, enforcing state dogma on other citizens. The state now even purports to surveil and control your inner mind – criminalizing your very thoughts, even those you have not yet formed..JOHNSON: ‘Civilizational Erasure’ — US sanctions Europe, Canada will be next.To the Christian, this rapid metastasis of the Canadian state from “guardian of freedom and democracy” to “source of dogma and controller of bodies and minds” is inevitable: the nation is becoming unmoored from the basic Biblical wisdom that truth and morality are the jurisdiction of God alone.The atheists among you may believe “God is dead”, but it is the Holy Spirit that breathes life into Canada. If you love a strong and free Canada, you had better pray, atheist, that His spirit is resurrected.Glenn Blackett is an Alberta based constitutional lawyer. Follow him on X at @glennblackett
