Hidden fault lines: uncovering the colonial threads underlying the characterization of religion in Canadian courts
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The recent case of Ktunaxa Nation v British Columbia (Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations) (“Ktunaxa case”) represents the failure of section 2(a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“s. 2(a)”) in protecting the religious freedom of Indigenous communities. This project seeks to analyze the outcome of the Ktunaxa case to challenge the idea that the Canadian courts can maintain neutrality when adjudicating freedom of religion cases under s. 2(a). This study discloses a particular view of three core aspects of religion— (1) sacred things, (2) religious beliefs, and (3) rites— that underlies the religious freedom framework and suggests that this view of religion renders the s. 2(a) right ineffective when applied to the Indigenous context. A brief introduction about the issues relating to the notion of religion will provide the context for this thesis. This thesis will then lay out three core features Christianity and contrast these with Ktunaxa spirituality to show how both traditions differ from one another. Following these, an examination of some of the key s. 2(a) jurisprudence shows that, although the judiciary maintains a language of neutrality, the courts retain a Christian shape of religion to guide s. 2(a) cases. It will be demonstrated that the Ktunaxa case stands as a testament to how remnants of colonialism retain a subtle but animating force within the s. 2(a) rights jurisprudence, in shaping how Indigenous communities are expected to claim a right to religious freedom. Given this analysis, this thesis contends that the courts retain at least three Christian presuppositions about the notion of religion, which provide the vocabulary used by judges to adjudicate religious freedom claims
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.024 | 0.030 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.011 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".