From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Marco Navarro-Genie

History shows that when churches are silenced, freedom falters. Calls to revoke their charitable status are a threat to liberty

Progressives are not shy about their endgame with religion.

Step by step, they seek to strip churches of their civic standing, reduce them to private clubs, and eventually banish them from public life.

In Canada, the latest salvo comes in the form of recommendations before Parliament to revoke charitable status for the advancement of religion. Pierre Gilbert, in a recent paper published by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, warns that if this campaign succeeds, it will saddle congregations with crushing tax burdens and drive many into closure.

This is no accident. Secular activists are working to cut off resources and delegitimize faith itself. The reason is clear: churches remain one of the last institutions that uphold the idea that there is a law above the state, a truth that cannot be legislated away.

History shows that religious freedom has long served as the canary in the coal mine for liberal democracies, warning of threats to liberty.

The 20th century proved this with blood. Against Nazi and Communist totalitarianism, no secular institution matched the witness of a religiously formed conscience.

Take Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young Lutheran pastor, who saw what many Germans preferred to ignore. Hitler’s regime demanded obedience, conformity and silence in the face of mass murder. Bonhoeffer refused.

He preached Christ over Führer. Arrested in 1943, he spent two years in prison writing letters that still inspire courage against evil today. In April 1945, he was hanged at Flossenbürg concentration camp. His last words: “This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.” His conscience, tuned to a higher authority, made him incapable of surrendering to a murderous state.

In the Soviet Union, figures like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Natan Sharansky stood firm.

Solzhenitsyn was a novelist whose writings exposed the brutal realities of Soviet totalitarianism, most notably through works like The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. His Christian Orthodox faith became central to his resistance. His faith provided the moral clarity and the courage to frame his resistance as a defense of human dignity and divine order against the inhumanity of atheistic materialism.

Sharansky, a Jewish activist, spent nine years in Soviet prisons, much of it in solitary confinement. What sustained him was prayer, the Psalms and the conviction that his jailers could shackle his body but never his soul. He later wrote that inner freedom, rooted in faith, was the foundation of political freedom.

Romania saw the same courage in Lutheran pastor László Tőkés, who refused to bow before dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. Armed only with Scripture, he helped topple one of Eastern Europe’s most brutal tyrannies. In December 1989, his parishioners formed a human shield around his church when the regime tried to silence him. Their courage spread across the country, culminating in Ceaușescu’s downfall.

Poland offers perhaps the clearest case of faith undermining empire.

Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, drew millions into the streets during his first pilgrimage back to Poland in 1979.  “Be not afraid,” he told them. The words electrified a nation and emboldened a movement that ultimately cracked Soviet power in half.

Lech Wałęsa, an electrician at the Gdańsk shipyard, responded to the call for change. His Catholic faith anchored his commitment to human dignity in opposition to the oppressive Communist state. As he led the Solidarity movement, he proudly wore an image of Our Lady of Częstochowa on his lapel.

Even in democratic societies, religious conscience has proven indispensable. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist preacher, anchored the American civil rights movement not in the shifting sands of public opinion but in the conviction that all are equal before God.

His sermons drew on Amos, Isaiah and the Gospel of Christ. From Montgomery to Memphis, he taught that unjust laws lose their claim on conscience. The state could jail him, but it could not silence the truth he proclaimed.

What unites these figures is not politics but faith. Their consciences could not be traded as commodities for safety or position. They were attuned to higher ideals than obeying political leaders or fashionable orthodoxies.

Human dignity is upheld not by bureaucratic decree but by truths that governments cannot grant or revoke. This is why churches remain indispensable to Western civilization. They nurture nonconformists and people who can look at a prevailing ideology and say, “No.”

That role is not comfortable, least of all for politicians, but it is invaluable. In an era when governments govern increasingly by whim, cloaked in progressive slogans, the presence of institutions that point beyond the state serves as a safeguard against soft tyranny.

Gilbert’s warning is therefore timely. Revoking charitable status is not a bookkeeping measure. It is the deliberate weakening of the institutions that, time and again, have given birth to the men and women who resist tyranny.

A Canada that silences its churches will not long remain free.

History shows us the choice: societies with independent churches and followers who put their faith in transcendent truths produce Bonhoeffers, Solzhenitsyns, Wałęsas and Kings. Societies without them encourage conformists and tyrants.

Marco Navarro-Genie is vice-president of research at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and co-author, with Barry Cooper, of Canada’s COVID: The Story of a Pandemic Moral Panic (2023).

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Conrad Eder

The federal and Ontario governments’ $500 million loan to Algoma Steel exemplifies costly corporate welfare, with taxpayers bearing risks that private investors avoid, continuing a decades-long pattern of subsidies that distorts markets and burdens Canadians.

Governments call subsidies an economic strategy, but Canadians know they’re just another way to raid their pockets

Another day, another giveaway. This time, it’s Algoma Steel.

Despite the company’s market capitalization of roughly $500 million at the time, the governments of Canada and Ontario extended a loan equal to that amount—an extraordinary and objectively questionable move  that isn’t just bad policy, but a sign that elected officials don’t know how to support businesses.

Officials justify the loan by claiming it will help Algoma refocus on its domestic market, lessening its reliance on the United States. Yet the fastest and most efficient way to execute such a strategy would involve doing so with private capital. Private markets allocate capital efficiently because investors directly bear the consequences of their decisions. Companies that cannot secure private funding typically lack a viable business model or face fundamental structural problems that subsidies will not solve.

Even if Algoma has a credible plan for pivoting its operations, the fact that taxpayers are shouldering risks private investors refuse to bear raises serious concerns. Canadians have a right to question whether this is a sound investment or just another costly political decision dressed up as economic strategy.

This isn’t the first time the company has leaned on public funds. Over the past three decades, Algoma has received more than $1.3 billion in government bailouts and subsidies, including $110 million for restructuring in 1992, $50 million in 2001, $60 million in 2015, $150 million in 2019, $420 million in 2021, and now $500 million in tariff-relief loans. That kind of prolonged public support makes it difficult to argue Algoma operates on a level playing field.

Proponents may argue that since Algoma continues to operate and provide employment, it proves government intervention works. But they ignore the enormous opportunity cost of these subsidies—costs largely hidden from public view. Every dollar spent propping up one company is a dollar that can’t fund other priorities, whether health care, education, infrastructure, or tax relief.

How will Ottawa and Queen’s Park cover their latest $500 million pledge? There are limited options. They may choose to forgo funding other priorities, borrow the money they just lent to cover other commitments, or monetize the debt by printing money or financing it through the central bank. In any case, Canadians are left worse off, whether by higher taxes, reduced services, or inflationary pressures. That’s the real cost of corporate subsidies, borne not by the companies that benefit, but by the public that pays.

But what if Algoma Steel faces further economic pressures, or its plans to refocus on domestic manufacturing fall through? Are we to expect that, having committed $500 million, the government will walk away? History suggests otherwise. More likely, officials will try to protect their investment regardless of the cost. It’s a slippery slope, one that often leads to even larger bailouts down the road.

Instead of selective corporate welfare, Canada should pursue policies that benefit all businesses: reducing regulatory burdens, lowering corporate tax rates, and eliminating trade barriers. These broad-based reforms create conditions where efficient companies thrive while inefficient ones face appropriate market discipline. The goal should be to make Canada more competitive overall, not just more generous to the few firms with political clout.

Adding insult to injury, this government’s simultaneous interventionism and protectionism places twice the burden on Canadians. First, taxpayers subsidize Algoma’s operations. Second, they pay premium prices for steel products thanks to federally imposed import tariffs introduced in recent years to shield domestic producers from lower-priced foreign steel. We are, in effect, subsidizing Algoma Steel to produce so that we can turn around and buy from them at higher prices than steel could be purchased from international competitors, if not for the tariffs. It’s a double hit to Canadians’ wallets.

Government officials invoke national security arguments to justify these measures, but in reality, they are engaging in the same economic protectionism they decry. During Trump’s first presidency, Canadian politicians rightly condemned similar American steel tariffs as protectionism disguised as security concerns. Now, Canadian officials are making identical arguments to defend their own policies.

While politicians warn about future threats to the country’s steel supply, it isn’t foreign governments restricting access. Ottawa has imposed its own import tariffs, limiting steel imports from abroad. The real barrier to securing steel supply isn’t an export ban. It’s Canada’s own trade policy.

Our own production capacity further weakens the government’s case. With companies like ArcelorMittal Dofasco and Stelco, Canada produces roughly 12.2 million metric tonnes of steel annually. That’s nearly enough to meet domestic demand. For everyday Canadians, this means alarms about steel shortages rings hollow.

This is not an endorsement of these other firms, as they have also received public funds, nearly $1 billion in recent years. In fact, Algoma might be disappointed not to have received more themselves. But it needn’t worry. With this government, another payout is likely just around the corner.

And once again, Canadians will foot the bill.

Conrad Eder is a policy analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.