Tibetan exiled politician Lobsang Sangay wants Canada’s new ambassador for religious freedom to investigate religious repression and suicide in his homeland. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

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So Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have launched an Office of Religious Freedom.

One question: why not just celebrate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? It’s right there at the top of the charter’s Fundamental Freedoms section: “freedom of consicence and religion.” Were the Conservatives unaware? Had they read it? Or are they elevating “freedom of conscience and religion” above other fundamental human rights and freedoms — creating a hierarchy of human rights?

Why are they effectively declaring it more important than the right to ‘life, liberty and security of the person’ or the right to be presumed innocent? Why pick out just one charter right, out of all the others, to promote and advance?

What’s going on here, of course, is political and ideological pandering. And it could exact a high price on Canada internationally, complicating and even damaging Canada’s foreign policy and international trade relations.

Although the office is less than a week old, the head of the Central Tibetan Administration, Tibet’s government in exile, is already pleading for Canada to investigate religious repression and suicide in Tibet. Lobsang Sangay is arguing that growing trade between Canada and China should not silence Canada’s concern for human rights in Tibet. (Let’s see how Ottawa talks its way out of that one.)

An overwhelming majority of Canadians — 80 per cent, according to a recent poll — are deeply proud of their charter. So they should be. Eminent jurists from across the globe took the occasion of the Charter’s 30th anniversary last year to heap praise on it.

Among them was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. In an interview with Al-Hayat TV in Egypt, she said that were she drafting a constitution in the year 2012, she would “not look to the United States Constitution.” Instead she praised the constitution of South Africa, the European Convention on Human Rights and Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

A year ago, the Harper government all but ignored the Charter’s 30th anniversary. Asked why, Harper referred to “constitutional divisions” created by the refusal of the separatist Parti Quebecois government to sign the patriation package. (Incidentally, virtually the entire Quebec Liberal caucus voted to support it.)

Many social and religious conservatives — Harper’s bedrock base — loathe the charter. Many of them see it as violating the natural order of things: “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at the gate”, in the words of the old hymn. Or Ephesians 5:22 — “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”

A year ago, the Harper government all but ignored the Charter’s 30th anniversary. Many social and religious conservatives — Harper’s bedrock base — loathe the charter.

It also creates what the Right calls ‘judge-made law.’ Former Reform MP Randy White caused some difficult moments for Harper during the 2004 election when he said, “Well, to heck with the courts, eh? … If the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is going to be used as the crutch to carry forward all of the issues that social libertarians want, then there’s got to be for us conservatives out there a way to put checks and balances in there.”

Harper himself has been critical of the charter. In 2004, as the newly-minted leader of the newly-forged Conservative party, he said, “I agree that serious flaws exist in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” Further, he said he opposed “biased judicial activism and its extremes” and regarded the notwithstanding clause as a “valid part of the constitution.”

Last February, the prime minister’s thoughts on the Charter were scarcely warmer. “In terms of this as an anniversary, the charter was an important step forward in the development of Canadian rights policy, a process that began in earnest with (Conservative prime minister) John Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights in 1960, so it’s a little over 50 years old,” Harper said.

(The comparison is flawed. The charter is part of Canada’s constitution, while the Bill of Rights was legislation serving as advice the courts.)

Rather than pandering to social and religious fundamentalist Conservatives at home, the prime minister could have seized the occasion of the charter’s anniversary to profile it as a beacon of human rights for all nations.

But the longer the Harper government stays in office, the more its colours show. One of Harper’s first acts as PM was to kill the Court Challenges Program — the most effective weapon Canada’s disadvantaged citizens have ever had. His argument was that governments should not be in the business of financing lawsuits against the state using public money.

In 2010, the Harper government withdrew so much money from the Canadian Human Rights Commission that it was forced to close its Toronto, Vancouver and Halifax offices.

In a 2003 speech to the Civitas Society, a right-wing advocacy group founded by libertarian William Gairdiner, Harper set out his philosophy regarding rights. Secular humanism, modern liberalism and leaving too much liberty in the wrong hands leads to disorder and is dangerous, he said. He described the modern Left as being engaged in “a descent into nihilism.”

In a speech to the National Pro-Life Conference in 2004, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews echoed Harper’s sentiments: “My essential thesis this evening is that our Canadian constitution, and in particular, the interpretation and the application of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is fundamentally altering the ability of legislators to respond to concerns raised by their constituents. This is particularly true of the many Canadians who are growing concerned about the direction our society is developing as courts develop and implement decisions that appear to be fundamentally opposed to the values that many Canadians hold as their own.”

Not only do the Harper Conservatives tacitly reject the concept of universal human rights, he (and many of his party members) want to be able to pick and choose the rights to be deemed fundamental — and the people they deem worthy of enjoying them.

Frances Russell is a Winnipeg-based freelance journalist and author. She is a regular contributor to the Winnipeg Free Press and is the author of two award-winning books. Her career has spanned nearly 50 years and includes time as a reporter and political columnist with the Winnipeg Free Press, the Vancouver Sun, the Globe and Mail and United Press International, in Ottawa. She also provided occasional columns and commentary for CBC-TV, CBC Radio, CBC Newsworld, the Ottawa Journal, the Edmonton Journal, the Toronto Star, Canadian Forum Magazine and Time Canada.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.