I haven’t listened to his music, but a quick browse of Sean Feucht’s Wikipedia page suggests it’s extremely not my jam. He’s a pretty extreme conservative by my lights and seems to be one of the many, many people further radicalized by public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. He’s been in the news in Canada lately because of both public and official opposition to his concert tour, including government-owned venues cancelling his appearances.
There’s a bit of a Barbara Streisand effect going on here: I’d literally never heard of this guy until people started making a bunch of noise about how awful he is, and now he’s been making headlines every day for more than a week in large part because of the protests. I genuinely don’t know that there’s a right answer to this kind of thing in general, but in this specific case, I’d say that Feucht’s critics have done him more good than harm.
Feucht is a tempest in a teapot during a slow summer news season that would not otherwise prompt a column from me, except for one thing: the city of Montreal fined a church that hosted a concert by Feucht, saying the congregation had failed to get a proper permit from the city. That’s a dangerous move, and one Canadians in general should oppose regardless of your political, religious, or musical preferences.
There are nuances in these kinds of cases: a city might cancel a performance in a publicly-owned venue because they have reasonable grounds that a concert could lead to a public disturbance, or they could try and force the performer to bear higher security costs. That’s not the issue with the Ministerios Restauración Church in Montreal, and different rules should pretty obviously apply for a concert being held in a church among worshippers (or even non-worshippers just there for the music.)
I say “pretty obviously” because the first freedom guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is literally freedom of conscience and religion — and if that wasn’t clear enough, before the Charter even gets to the text with real legal weight it starts with the assertion of “the supremacy of God and the rule of law.” I am not a religious believer, but the religious rights recognized by the Charter aren’t fake, and they aren’t an inconvenience meant to be dispensed of when inconvenient.
Montreal’s mayor isn’t even trying to pretend that this isn’t a kind of retaliation for Feucht’s political and religious views, with a spokesperson saying, “This show runs counter to the values of inclusion, solidarity, and respect that are championed in Montreal,” in a statement.
Was Feucht trying to get around the sanctions being imposed on him by other official bodies? Probably. But singing has been part of Christian worship for centuries and the point of the Charter is to put some areas of our private lives beyond the reach of the state. That’s not a loophole; it’s the entire point of guaranteeing rights.
Municipalities failing to grasp the spirit of our rights is not, alas, a Montreal-only story. In Niagara Falls, mayor Jim Diodati had women arrested before a council meeting because they were silently, peacefully holding signs saying “Women of Ontario Say No,” which is also the name of their organization. (WOSN members were not subsequently charged.) Niagara Falls council, like many cities, has a rule forbidding the display of signs in chambers outside of formal deputations.
The women were protesting a decision by city staff which denied them the right to speak at council — they intended to request that the city send a delegation to Queen’s Park regarding Bill 9, the Ford government’s (deeply imperfect) proposed law allowing municipal councillors to be removed for misconduct.
Why were WOSN members denied the right to speak? Because one of Niagara Falls’ councillors has been arrested and charged with domestic assault, and city staff determined that there was a risk that WOSN members would say something in a public forum that would infringe the councillor’s right to a fair trial. This is, to put it in complex legal language, cuckoo-bananapants. There’s no evidence WOSN members wanted to turn their deputation into a broadside against the councillor in question, and in any event council had options available to it, starting with simply warning them about the consequences of straying into risky legal territory during their speaking time. Everyone involved in this incident are grownups, and it shouldn’t be unreasonable to expect elected officials in particular to act like it.
Does Montreal have the authority to regulate concerts in public places? Sure, of course. Does Niagara Falls have the right to insist on rules and procedures that keep its meetings orderly and well-run? Absolutely. Municipalities, whether in Ontario or Quebec, have important work to do. They are, as the saying goes, the level of government that’s closest to us in our daily lives — they collect our trash, keep our drinking water safe and our roads clear. But precisely because they’re so close, because their relationship with our lives is so intimate, they can stray into the kinds of actions that violate people’s rights even as they exercise otherwise normal powers.
The power to regulate land use has been used to discriminate against places of worship for religious groups (often on the basis of parking lots); powers over business licensing have been used to benefit well-heeled incumbents over their smaller competitors; even public health rules have been used to harass ethnic groups with novel-to-Canada cuisines. There’s a long and substantial history of these cases in Canada, and even before the Charter era, courts did a regular trade in swatting down these kinds of laws. Even if courts eventually clear Montreal and Niagara Falls in these cases, we as citizens are within our rights to demand better.
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