Quebec religious group focused on suicide prevention files constitutional challenge

MONTREAL — A Quebec religious group headed by a man who lost his son to suicide has filed a constitutional challenge against the municipality of Waterloo after it was ticketed for going door-to-door to share its message about suicide prevention.

Groupe Jaspe, a Christian group based in Magog, Que., received two tickets in February, worth over $900 after fees, for violating a city bylaw requiring non-profit groups to obtain a permit for “selling, collecting or soliciting in the municipality.”

But rather than pay the tickets, Claude Tremblay, the group’s president and founder, is taking the municipality to court for what he said is a violation of his Charter rights.

“The constitution gives us the right to share our faith,” Tremblay said in an interview.

The challenge argues that the bylaw’s provisions “constitute a non-negligible obstacle to its practice of door-to-door canvassing” and therefore infringe on the group’s freedom of religion and expression as enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The municipality of Waterloo was not immediately available for comment.

Tremblay’s son died by suicide in 1997. Since the group’s founding in 1999, Tremblay said he has been going door-to-door with volunteers to help prevent others from taking their lives.

“I’ve been visiting homes for 24 years, and it’s the best way because people are in their house. Its easier for them to share,” he said, adding that he talks to people about placing their faith in God and allowing Him to help them.

Tremblay said he has brought his Christian approach to 900 villages, 73 cities and 88 Indigenous communities in Canada.

Tremblay says his group has received multiple tickets over the past two decades, but none since winning a similar court case in 2015 in a different municipality on the grounds of religious freedom.

Lawyer Olivier Séguin represents Groupe Jaspe and works with The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms for Quebec cases, which is sponsoring the challenge. He said the current battle may play out differently in court.

Despite previous court rulings, including a 2001 decision in favour of Jehovah’s Witnesses who were ticketed in Blainville, Que., he said he is expecting the municipality to invoke Quebec’s secularism laws.

“The prosecutor for the City of Waterloo already mentioned that he would raise the fact that, since 2001, when the Court of Appeal judgment was rendered in Blainville … things have changed,” said Séguin. “And one of the things that changed is Quebec’s secularism laws.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 2, 2024.

Joe Bongiorno, The Canadian Press