You could smell the smoke, but still feel a chill. 

In 2021, 85 Catholic churches were burned down or vandalized — mostly provable arsons. Even as he was condemning the arsons, Prime Minister Trudeau called them “understandable.”  That official nod to anti-Catholic sentiment gave Catholics across Canada a bad feeling, at the same time the official media set it aside as a slip of the tongue.

But now it’s 2024, and this time it’s more than a nod. 

The prime minister has appointed one of the leaders of the Canadian anti-Catholic movement to the Senate. Kristopher Wells, whose policies about schools are controversial with parents (to say the least) has been attacking Catholic education for years. In his words, “institutional Churches have no place in the classrooms of the nation.”

He’s now in a position to take it much, much farther, and Catholics’ hair should be standing on end.

The prime minister appears to be deliberately harnessing anti-Catholic sentiment for partisan purposes. His party is heading for crushing defeat, and Trudeau may be the least popular PM in history.  If he wants to keep his own party from turfing him, he needs the political boost — a Hail Mary pass, one might say.

And he would hardly be the first North American politician to seek support from a group opposed to Catholic education. Indeed, in a paper titled “Domesticating Catholic Schools”, Premier Haultain once boasted that he had “administered the separateness out of the separate schools.”  It is no accident that the prime minister has extended his wing over an anti-Catholic leader.

The ideologies involved are well-known, but what is less known is their consequences.

Critical Theory justifies attacking Catholics on racial grounds, which explains church burnings. For Wells, Catholics stand in the way of establishing a hegemony for Queer theory. He famously shared a cartoon that likens Catholics to Nazi death camp commandants, with gay people as their victims.

The fact that these arguments are preposterous does not matter: their proponents hold these conclusions as a matter of identity. It’s no different than courting an ethnic group. Anti-Catholics are politically, if not logically relevant. But to really bring them into the fold, Trudeau needs to demonstrate action. And that means Wells’ appointment may be no mere dog-whistle.

The most effective strategy available to Trudeau is to introduce legislation empowering a federal education bureaucracy.  Education may be a provincial power, but so is health care and municipal governance.  The federal government has intervened in health care for decades, and Trudeau has used “infrastructure” funding to intervene in municipalities with a broad brush. 

Trudeau’s administration, which already paid for an educational resource that specifically targets Conservatives for “hate,” may be looking to launch an educational equivalent to the Health Act. 

That is, it would use federal dollars to generously subsidize public school boards across Canada. The subsidy would come with strings attached: boards would have to meet federal guidelines — as dictated by Wells.  Catholics — along with other groups — would receive no federal dollars. In effect, it would amount to radically defunding Catholic schools, along with independent schools. Official suppression could follow.

The Senate can make that happen. We sometimes think of the Senate as being a mere rubber stamp. However, it can be more than that. 

There are two ways that Trudeau can use Senator Wells to great advantage.

In the first place, the Senate can issue formal reports on issues. 

Senator Wells can use this bully pulpit to issue a report on pediatric gender medicine. He’s keen to do so: the excellent Cass Report from Britain made mincemeat of his arguments for unrestricted “gender-affirming care” for children. He’s been trying to refute it, but has neither the standing nor the evidence to do so. 

From a Senate seat however, he has a government endorsement before he even starts. The sort of scientific investigations that have caused European countries to ban pediatric gender affirmation would simply be quashed in Canadian official circles. Senata locuta: causa finita.

In the second place, a Senator can originate legislation. 

This may be a tremendous advantage for Trudeau.  If anti-Catholic legislation is to be an election issue, it needs to be ready to go to the House of Commons when the election is called. Wells can draft the report that justifies it, and then originate a bill in the Senate — the speed of whose passage is more easily controlled than one originating in the Commons. 

The timing can be perfect, and used to rally new troops to Trudeau’s cause.

Trudeau has claimed that his Senate appointees are “unaffiliated.” However, observers note how loyal they are: and the fact that Trudeau’s other Senate pick is a famous Liberal campaign manager gives the lie to claims of independence. Note, that Trudeau has appointed 83 out of the 105 Senators to date.

One can also argue that there are provisions in the Constitution protecting Catholic’s educational interests. However, that protection seems to be more theoretical than real. Several provinces have done away with publicly-funded Catholic schools.  And Canada never signed the UN Convention Against Discrimination on Education, which would have committed it to legal protections.

Granted, much of this is hypothetical. However, anti-Catholic sentiment is connected to English Canadian nationalism, and is rising incredibly rapidly. With groups that are eager to harness it to drive their movements based on Critical and Queer Theory, and now with official support, it is ready to truly blossom.

All this means that Catholics should be very alarmed.  But it isn’t just Catholics. If you’re religious — or one of the many parents who don’t like the radical gender and race ideology Wells and his friends espouse, you’re out of luck. They are in a position to do away with any other views but theirs.

And in the meantime, Catholics — and other religious minorities — will shiver.

John Hilton-O’Brien is the Executive Director of Parents for Choice in Education, www.parentchoice.ca

This article originally appeared in the Western Standard on September 4th, 2024. A printable pdf is available.