Human Rights Commission Faced Extensive Backlash After Calling Christmas ‘Discriminatory’: Documents

The Canadian Human Rights Commission says it received such backlash following its report last fall that that described Christmas as a discriminatory holiday rooted in “colonialism,” that it became concerned with staff safety. An Oct. 23 report from the commission called Canada’s celebration of Jesus’s birth “an obvious example” of “systemic religious discrimination.” The report caused an uproar among the public and in Parliament and led to the adoption of a Bloc Québécois motion in the House of Commons in support of Christmas. Parliament also unanimously denounced the report’s portrayal of the holiday as discriminatory. An employee in the Commission’s Policy, Research and International Division created the report, but the author’s name was censored, according to records obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter under an Access to Information request. The name of the author was the only part of the report that was redacted....