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SASKATOON – A Saskatoon man has taken the next step in his fight to have “Merry Christmas” removed from city transit buses.

Ashu Solo filed a complaint on Monday with the Saskatchewan human rights commission alleging the message violates separation of religion and state and discriminates against non-Christians.

“[This] imposes religious beliefs on people who don’t share them, and gives preferential treatment to one religion over all other religions in violation of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code and Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom,” Solo wrote in his complaint to the commission.

“I am offended and angered that my taxpayer money is funding city buses that promote a religion I don’t believe in.”

Solo, an atheist who was born and raised in Saskatoon, first made a complaint about the programmable bus signs in December.

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He gave transit seven days to remove the display from buses and offer an apology.

The matter was passed on to the city’s executive council, who decided to keep the message and to look at adding other cultural messages in the future.

It then went to the cultural diversity and race relations committee, who could not make a recommendation and passed it back to the executive committee last month.

The report was then received as information only, meaning the message will remain on city buses.

Solo says the message is also “a coercive attempt at Christian indoctrination because this sends the message that Christianity is treated as the religion of Canada.”

He also plans on challenging the legality of both Christmas and Easter as statutory holidays in the future.

“Instead of being forced to take holidays on Christmas and Easter, people should be free to take a few holidays every year according to their own religions or convenience,” Solo wrote to the commission.

“If a company or organization doesn’t have enough people willing to work on a particular day, such as Christmas, it can close for the day.”

Solo has another complaint with the commission that is moving forward.

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The SHRC has found reasonable grounds to proceed with Solo’s complaint over a prayer held at a volunteer appreciation banquet in April 2012.

The commission found there were grounds the prayer violated his freedom of conscience under the provincial human rights code along with discrimination on the prohibited grounds of religion.

That matter is now under investigation.

Solo has asked the commission to combine his two complaints into one case to reduce costs as both involve the city of Saskatoon, are for religious discriminations and involve the same sections of the code.

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