Who’s Right?

With the Parti Québécois government in Quebec grabbing the centre of Canada’s public policy debate this season with its proposed charter of values, which will apparently seek to ban the wearing of religious symbols by anyone working in the public sector in the province, Mary Anne Waldron’s important new book could not be more timely. In Free to Believe: Rethinking Freedom of Conscience and Religion in Canada, written well before Pauline Marois’s initiative became public, the University of Victoria law professor provides a sophisticated analysis that supports ongoing respect for religious freedom in Canada, subject to principled limits. In an era of mounting skepticism about religious institutions, of increased secularism and of trends toward ever larger numbers of people claiming to be “spiritual but not religious,” Waldron’s work forms an essential aspect of the debate.

The...