Context: The Confederation Report
Host: Steven R. Martins
Language: English
This is The Confederation Report, a weekly analysis of Canadian news and culture from a Biblical worldview.
Excerpt: Christ is Lord over all things—yes, even over Caesar. We believe the Gospel we proclaim changes lives. And if we disciple believers in a holistic, full-orbed Gospel—Christ for all of life—we should expect to see culture and society change as well.
Opening Words (00:00-00:35)
Part I: Bill C-9 and the Lordship of Christ (00:35–05:17)
The Liberal government, with the support of the Bloc Québécois, has moved to remove Canada’s long-standing religious-text exemption from the Criminal Code’s hate-speech laws. This exemption has historically protected Canadians who speak “in good faith” from Scripture or other sacred texts—even when addressing controversial moral topics. Under new amendments tied to Bill C-9, that defence would be eliminated, meaning religious expression itself could be exposed to hate-speech prosecution.
Part II: Property Rights Out the Door (05:17–09:09)
A recent court ruling recognized an Indigenous title claim over a defined area of land in the Lower Mainland, land upon which hundreds of Canadian homeowners have long held ownership. While the ruling itself does not immediately dispossess residents of their homes, it has exposed a profound failure of government leadership.
Part III: A Heritage Older Than We Knew (09:09–11:43)
Would you believe me if I told you that Christianity may have reached Canada well before the French and the English?
Did You Know? (11:43 –13:04)
Recent scientific research has established with remarkable precision that Norse explorers were present in what is now Canada in the year 1021 AD, exactly one millennium ago.
Recommended Resource (13:04 –13:54)
This week’s recommended resource is This Is My God: The Story of a Dutch Immigrant, His Country, and His God, the autobiography of John Hultink.
Closing Words (13:54)
Transcript:
It’s Week 43, and this is The Confederation Report—the flagship weekly podcast of the Cántaro Institute. My name is Steven Martins, and I’ll be your host, bringing you incisive analysis, cultural commentary, and thought-provoking interviews on the issues shaping Canadian life and beyond—all through the lens of a biblical worldview. Because Christ is Lord—over Canada, over culture, over all of life.
Part I: Bill C-9 and the Lordship of Christ (00:35–05:17)
Just two weeks ago, at our Niagara Conference 2025, titled All Hail the King—Christ & Government, I delivered a lecture on the parallel of the struggle between church and statism between the early church and today’s Canadian context. I had made mention of a Liberal MP who had gone on public record of wanting to criminalize certain Bible passages, restricting freedom of speech, in an effort to (1) protect and enforce government-established norms and (2) advance secularism and woke progressivism. One political commentator said that the Prime Minister and his minister may want to control what is read and taught in Church. I said that she may have been exaggerating, but then I remarked, perhaps not. Unfortunately, it really is “perhaps not.” This is the latest in the news cycle:
The Liberal government, with the support of the Bloc Québécois, has moved to remove Canada’s long-standing religious-text exemption from the Criminal Code’s hate-speech laws. This exemption has historically protected Canadians who speak “in good faith” from Scripture or other sacred texts—even when addressing controversial moral topics. Under new amendments tied to Bill C-9, that defence would be eliminated, meaning religious expression itself could be exposed to hate-speech prosecution.
The change is part of a broader justice bill that also targets hate symbols and creates new offences around intimidation at places of worship. But it is the removal of the religious defence that has sparked immediate concern. Conservative MPs have denounced the move as an assault on freedom of expression and freedom of religion, warning that without the exemption, ordinary readings or teachings from the Bible, Torah, or Qur’an could become vulnerable to criminal complaint. Some legal experts note that the exemption was rarely invoked in court, yet its presence functioned as an important safeguard recognizing the legitimacy of religious conviction in public speech.
Supporters of the change argue the exemption has been misused by extremists to shield hateful rhetoric. Critics counter that removing it expands state power over religious discourse at a moment when tensions around speech and belief are already heightened. In short, the proposed amendment marks a significant shift in how the federal government intends to regulate the intersection of religious expression and public dialogue.
With the recent martyrdom of American Charlie Kirk, there has been a rise of young conservative Christians who earnestly desire to engage the culture from a distinctly Christian worldview—not only in the United States, but here in Canada as well. Believers everywhere are waking up. They want their voices heard. They want to bring good to their neighbour, and they want to see their country return to the truth. At our conference in Welland, which we capped at 250 attendees, a little over 300 showed up. These were men and women asking how to relate their faith to public life, how to stand firm in a hostile age, and how to recover the Christian heritage that once made Canada the land of the free—yes, freer even than America.
These were faithful, earnest believers who had questions they weren’t hearing answered from their pulpits. And yet every one of them left the conference encouraged and strengthened, ready to step into their vocations with boldness and conviction, knowing that Christ is Lord over all things—yes, even over Caesar. We believe the Gospel we proclaim changes lives. And if we disciple believers in a holistic, full-orbed Gospel—Christ for all of life—we should expect to see culture and society change as well.
But this also means we cannot let the state push us around. Civil government has its own jurisdiction under God; it has no authority to intrude upon the jurisdiction and mission of the Church. Our task is to proclaim the truth of Scripture in a lost world, standing firmly upon that Reformational principle of Sola Scriptura. In a time such as ours, may we NOT shy away. May our voices rise in service of the truth and with a spirit of love anchored in Christ.
Part II: Property Rights Out the Door (05:17–09:09)
Since we are already addressing the steady erosion of rights and freedoms in Canada, it’s worth turning our attention to the latest and most revealing fiasco—this time unfolding in British Columbia.
In brief, a recent court ruling recognized an Indigenous title claim over a defined area of land in the Lower Mainland, land upon which hundreds of Canadian homeowners have long held ownership. While the ruling itself does not immediately dispossess residents of their homes, it has exposed a profound failure of government leadership. For years, provincial and federal authorities knew this claim was advancing through the courts. They knew its implications. Yet they said nothing—no warnings, no transparency, no effort to prepare the very people whose homes, mortgages, and inheritances would be thrown into uncertainty. When the decision finally came down, homeowners learned of it through media headlines and public panic. Perceived injustice was allowed to metastasize into real injustice.
Now, before the reflexive cultural instinct kicks in—the instinct that insists that we must immediately justify whatever outcome favours Indigenous claims simply because they are, well, Indigenous—we need to slow down, forget about the woke herd mentality, and ask a more fundamental question: what does biblical justice actually require?
It is certainly true that Indigenous peoples inhabited and used this land prior to the arrival of the English and the French. What does not follow, however, is the modern assumption that prior inhabitation is equivalent to private property ownership in the biblical and legal sense. Historically, Indigenous land tenure was communal and customary, governed by use, kinship, and stewardship rather than by exclusive, alienable title. Land was not held as individually owned property that could be permanently bought, sold, mortgaged, or inherited in the manner Scripture presupposes and protects. Ironically, the contemporary charge of “land theft” depends upon biblical categories of property, title, and restitution—categories introduced through Christian law and civilization. To invoke those categories selectively, while rejecting the biblical worldview that grounds them, is not justice but sheer incoherence.
What we are witnessing in British Columbia is thus not restitution in the biblical sense. It’s not the restoration of stolen private property to its rightful owners. Rather, it is a state-enabled redefinition of ownership that effectively punishes innocent homeowners for historical grievances they did not commit. The victims in this case are not abstract entities; they’re families who acted in good faith under Canadian law and were deliberately left in the dark by those entrusted to govern.
If we are to see clearly, we must see biblically—without the fog of progressive, woke ideology that confuses moral categories and substitutes sentiment for justice. How this situation in British Columbia will ultimately resolve remains to be seen. But one thing is already evident: when perceived injustice is pursued apart from the light of God’s revealed law, it does not bring healing or restitution; it simply begets further injustice.
Part III: A Heritage Older Than We Knew (09:09–11:43)
Would you believe me if I told you that Christianity may have reached Canada well before the French and the English? And would you believe me if I added that the evidence is not buried in some obscure archive, but literally carved into stone—an inscription of the Lord’s Prayer, etched painstakingly into the bedrock of Ontario, written in a language that is now extinct? More than that, a language that was already obscure even during the colonial period?
The CBC assures us (whatever that’s worth) that this remarkable inscription was the work of Swedish labourers employed by the Hudson Bay Company in the nineteenth century. But pause for a moment and consider how little sense that explanation actually makes. Why would transient workers undertake such an arduous and time-consuming task deep in the wilderness? Why carve a full liturgical prayer into rock, in an ancient language—Nordic runes to be precise—only to abandon it—without record, without explanation, without any obvious purpose? The narrative feels tidy, but it doesn’t quite fit.
What seems far more plausible—and far less comfortable—is that there were visitors to this land well before the familiar French and English storylines took shape. Visitors who spoke an ancient tongue. Visitors who were Christian. They didn’t stay long. They didn’t build institutions or leave behind written histories. But they left their mark. And that mark complicates the prevailing assumption that Canada’s Christian heritage begins neatly with colonial administration and missionary expansion.
This matters more than we might think. Our modern debates about land, history, and justice are built upon carefully curated narratives about who was here first, who belonged, and who arrived later. When evidence emerges that might unsettle those narratives, there’s an understandable reluctance to follow it to its logical conclusions. Yet history does not bend itself to our ideological preferences. It simply is.
It appears, then, that Canada’s Christian heritage is older—and more complex—than we have been led to believe. And if that is so, how magnificent to know that worship was offered unto God in this land long before it was claimed by either the French or the English.
Did You Know? (11:43 –13:04)
Recent scientific research has established with remarkable precision that Norse explorers were present in what is now Canada in the year 1021 AD, exactly one millennium ago. Although it has long been acknowledged that Vikings reached North America centuries before Christopher Columbus, a study published in Nature has, for the first time, provided a definitive calendar date. The findings are based on archaeological evidence from L’Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland, the only confirmed Norse settlement in the Americas outside of Greenland, thereby confirming that Europeans crossed the Atlantic nearly five centuries earlier than traditionally recognized.
The conclusion rests on the analysis of wooden artifacts bearing clean cuts produced by metal tools, a technology not used by Indigenous peoples in the region at that time. By examining tree rings that recorded a distinctive cosmic radiation event in 993 AD, researchers were able to count outward to determine the exact year the trees were cut. All samples independently converged on the year 1021, providing the earliest securely dated evidence of European activity in North America.
Recommended Reading (13:04–13:54)
This week’s recommended resource is This Is My God: The Story of a Dutch Immigrant, his Country and his God, the autobiography of John Hultink. This coffee-table book style publication is distinguished by its seamless integration of personal narrative with profound theological and philosophical reflection. More than a memoir, it presents Hultink’s life as a lived testimony to God’s might and grace—an embodied expression of robust, world-engaging Scriptural faith. As Nelson D. Kloosterman notes, the story of John Hultink stands as an eloquent model of living coram Deo, offering a legacy rooted in truth, faith, and devotion that invites readers to take up and receive its enduring Christian witness. Now available through the Cántaro Institute store.
Closing Words (13:54)
Thanks for listening to The Confederation Report, this podcast is brought to you by the Cántaro Institute. Visit our website at cantaroinstitute.org for more information. For books to read on worldview, philosophy, and theology, visit our store at cantaroinstitute.store
We’ll meet again next week.
Additional Reading & Documentation:
National Post (Tristin Hopper)
FIRST READING: The biblical passages that Canada could list as hate speech
The Hub (Kirk LaPointe)
B.C.’s Indigenous land claim dilemma is a mess—one the government has made a whole lot worse
Archaeology Magazine
Mystery of Strange Canadian Rock Carvings Solved