In a post-Christian and secular Canada, is the Good Friday holiday discriminatory?

Is Good Friday a discriminatory holiday? That was the question raised by the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) last fall when it published a discussion paper on religious intolerance. 

In the paper, the Commissions suggested Good Friday and Christmas are not only “grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism” but are “an obvious example” of religious intolerance—being the “only Canadian statutory holidays linked to religious holy days.” 

The result, the paper went on to say, is that while Christians are privileged by getting days off for their religious observances, non-Christians may experience intolerance or discrimination since they need “to request special accommodations to observe their holy days and other times of the year where their religion requires them to abstain from work.” 

So why is Good Friday still a statutory holiday in our very secular and post-Christian country? And how could Canada make people from other religions feel more included? That’s the question I address in my most recent Free Press column.