Minutes of the Niagara Secular Humanists meeting of Wed. September 16, 2009

1. The meeting began at 7 pm with the reading of the brief summary of recent activities and announcement that next meeting will be on at Saturday. 

2. Roy Blake read the Treasurer’s report and explained desire for a proper membership so we could have elections.

3. Horst introduced the speaker, Just Trottier, executive director of the Centre for Inquiry, Canada. Justin titled his talk “Secular Advocacy in Canada: When Where Why What How.” He described his own personal journey to secular humanism and scepticism with concentration on his work on university campuses, a theme he returned to at the end of the meeting. He first joined the Trinity College Atheist Society. This became the U of T Secular Alliance which, in turn, helped found the Free-thought Association of Canada.  He described how their involvement in the anti-Sharia law movement gained them publicity. Justin brought to our attention a new threat to free speech: a demand the religions be given the same kind of protection that individuals have under the concept of human rights. CFI Toronto began in spring 2006 thanks to a donor providing rent for the Beverley Street offices for five years. He described CFI’s involvement in the one school network and the bus campaign.  Justin has become a spokesperson for secular humanism appearing on the Michael Coren and in both the National Post and the Globe & Mail, and on CBC. CFI has now opened in Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver and there are many affiliated campus groups. He discussed the pro-religion bias in the Charter and how both the federal and provincial governments give money to churches. This leads to a tax loss of approximately $1 billion a year. Canadian municipalities lose some $160 million because churches pay no property taxes; no other charity receives this exemption. He discussed the problems related to the special charitable status given to churches compared to the difficulty secular humanist groups have getting charitable status. A separate group has been set up to carry out political and social advocacy.  Justin was able to make NSH the venue for the first public announcement that CFI has been granted charitable status as an educational organisation.

4. A lively Q & A session followed the excellent presentation.  Questioned about the large number of secular humanist/atheist/free thought/sceptical organisations, Justin said “there’s room for a lot of chefs.” Another question brought out the information that the government has been asked to allow the choice of atheist on the next census in 2011. Justin described some of the upcoming events at CFI including Tariq Fatah at the end of October.  He also mentioned Dawkins’ Toronto speech, not a CFI event.

5. The session ended about 9 PM.