Discrimination Canadian Style

A case of unusual interest was in the news in Ontario in recent months. It began when William Petty, owner and operator of the Trans-Canada Printers, was asked by Jindra Rutherford, editor of the Canadian Unitarian, to bid for the printing of their magazine. He refused. His reason was that he felt he could not print for the Unitarians without violating his own religious convictions.

William Petty is a devout Christian who believes he must take his religion into his business and run it according to the principles Christ has taught. For him, Christianity is real. He believes that his faith in God helped him survive in shark-infested waters after the rowboat he was using to escape the Japanese in 1942 was blown up in a minefield off Sumatra. He believes also that his faith in God helped him when a wandering band of Gurkas “who were supposed to be fifty miles away” saved him from a surprise attack by Japanese soldiers on the Burma Road in 1945.

After he refused to bid on printing the Unitarian magazine, Petty thought the matter was ended. Not so. The Unitarians sought advice from the Ontario Human Rights Commission and—so they affirm—were “advised” to lodge a formal complaint in the name of the Canadian Unitarian Council. (The director of the commission later denied that he advised the prosecution; this was hotly contested by the Unitarians.) This they did, and immediately Petty found himself faced with the possibility of court action on a charge of discrimination against a public body on the basis of religion and creed. He turned for help to the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and was assured that the fellowship would stand behind him and would provide the best of legal counsel if necessary.

Petty’s straightforward statement of his position was: “We don’t believe we’ve got to print things we can’t agree with.” The case raises important questions. Can a man be compelled to use his skills, his resources, his gifts, to help propagate ideas from which he seriously dissents? Ought he to be forced to do things that violate his conscience and his religious beliefs? Surely not! Yet this is the position in which Petty found himself under a section of the Human Rights Code that the Ontario government introduced in 1962, making it wrong for any man to be discriminated against on the basis of color, race, or creed.

The Human Rights Commission has to walk a tightrope continually, and its attempts to bow out of this case as gracefully as possible were embarrassing, to say the least. Dr. Daniel Hill, its director, said he doubted that the commission’s jurisdiction extended to disputes of this nature. But Mrs. Rutherford adamantly charged that to deny Unitarians the use of printing facilities because of their beliefs was “in the same category as a restaurant denying service to a Negro.”

An interesting sideline to the story emerged when, in discussing the matter with the commission, I asked if our Knox Presbyterian Church in Toronto could advertise for a Christian caretaker. Under no circumstances, came the reply. Would it then be possible for Knox Presbyterian Church to advertise for a Christian minister? Again the reply: we would not be permitted to do so. This whole matter sets the stage for a grand debate on what are “human rights” and what really is “discrimination.”

The Toronto press reacted very unfavorably toward the Unitarians’ case. In an editorial of 130 lines the Globe and Mail boldly stated that “grabbing Mr. Petty by the neck and forcing him to engage in an activity he—rightly or wrongly—finds repugnant, constitutes an invasion of his human rights. In spirit, if not in strict terminology, we should think the Code stands for the defence of Mr. Petty’s rights.” The Toronto Telgram went so far as to say that “the Commission must be careful to define the areas relevant to its purpose. Otherwise it will justify the claims of critics that in the name of freedom it deprives people of freedom.”

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. This is one of the lessons our forefathers learned, and it may well be that we shall need to learn it all over again. If our faith is a true faith in the Son of God as Saviour and Lord, then obviously we will try to do nothing contrary to his revealed will. The great Christian affirmations, be they theological or ethical, must command our unfragmented obedience. Our faith has to be expressed in the market place, at the workbench, in the classroom. There can be no divorce between what we say on Sunday and what we do through the rest of the week. We have heard of people who “prayed on their knees on Sunday and preyed on their neighbors on Monday.” From such separation of belief and practice we must continually ask to be delivered.

“I do not deny that Unitarians have a right to their views. I am only asking that I not be asked to print their magazine.” So said Mr. Petty. With such a simple saying he had seemingly grabbed a tiger by the tail.

But the case came to a sudden conclusion. Early last month the Globe and Mail reported that the Unitarian Council had dropped its dispute with Trans-Canada Printers and had announced that no further action would be taken. Members of the Evangelical Fellowship join Mr. Petty in praising God for this victory.

It would be interesting to know whether the Unitarian press in the United States has ever published any material that is trinitarian in essence, and whether any of the Jewish printing houses have ever consented to print material that denies the great histories of the Exodus, the Passover, and the like. Clearly there is a basic distinction between demanding the use of skills and know-how in order to accomplish some task that is completely alien to the will of the employee, and refusing privileges to others that we ourselves claim as rights. This is the nub of the matter.

One great lesson we have learned from all this is that evangelicals must stand together. If ever there was an hour for a closer drawing together in the bonds of enlightened love, it is now. We dare not allow cases like this to go by default. It is our duty to pray for one another and to support one another—“especially those of the household of faith.” Who can tell what is ahead? There are issues on which we must stand shoulder to shoulder.

Unless the evangelical community in every branch of the Christian Church accepts its responsibility to stand up and be counted at the right moment and in the right place, we shall all suffer and the cause of Christ will be hindered greatly.

God give us grace to serve him as we ought. And may our hearts be filled with his love—the love that knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope. When and if troubles do arise, let us see to it that our love will endure and will stand when all else has fallen.

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