Canada's Christian Heritage Must Be Defended--An American Ally Stands With Canada

Action4Canada founder and director Tanya Gaw and team member Sondra met with Oklahoma State Senator Shane Jett to discuss their shared concerns about growing hostility toward Christians and the Jewish community, threats to Canadians’ freedoms and Christian inheritance, and the strain on the North American alliance.

Following that meeting, Senator Jett and Action4Canada collaborated on a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, calling on him to honour his oath, uphold the public trust and restore Canada’s longstanding relationship with the United States.

A Message from Oklahoma State Senator Shane Jett

“Please find attached the letter addressed to Prime Minister Mark Carney questioning Canadian policies that are antithetical to Canada’s foundational Christian principles and hostile to a longstanding positive relationship with their American neighbors. The letter further urges him to honor the Coronation Oath and Canada’s constitutional recognition of the supremacy of God, restore the good faith religious expression defense removed by bill C-9, and reverse the pattern of restrictions on speech, worship, and assembly.

The letter also addresses the ongoing attacks on churches and synagogues, concerns about strategic alignment with the communist People’s Republic of China at the expense of the North American alliance, and the need for greater transparency regarding potential conflicts of interest. If these questions resonate with you, I encourage you to reach out to the Prime Ministerand your Members of Parliament.

It is my firm belief that the positive neighborly relationship between Canada and the United States must be preserved and that neither politicians nor policies should jeopardize our shared mutual respect and traditional values”.

Very respectfully,
Shane Jett

Oklahoma State Senate

The Right Honourable Mark Carney
Prime Minister of Canada
Re: Honor Your Oath—Defend Canada’s Christian Heritage, Religious Freedom, and the North American Alliance

Prime Minister Carney:

I write as an Oklahoma state senator, a Christian, and a friend of Canada. Friendship requires candor, especially when a government’s actions place under strain the freedoms, constitutional inheritance, and longstanding alliance that have bound our nations.

Your office is a public trust. It does not confer ownership of Canada’s institutions, authority to erase its Christian foundations, or permission to subordinate the freedoms of its citizens—or the security of the North American relationship—to political preference.

Canada’s laws, institutions, and public symbols were shaped by a Judeo-Christian inheritance rooted in both the Old and New Testaments. That inheritance informed its understanding of justice, human dignity, personal responsibility, charity, and a government accountable to an Authority higher than itself. Canadians who defend that inheritance are defending the country’s foundations. They should not be treated as criminals and threats.

You took an oath of allegiance to His Majesty King Charles III. That oath is not a formality; it is binding. The Sovereign to whom you swore fidelity himself swore, at his Coronation, to maintain the laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel. Those words form part of the constitutional inheritance of the Crown in Canada. They are not optional.

Canada’s Christian inheritance is written into the institutions where you exercise power. Twenty-five Biblical passages appear throughout the Peace Tower, including its exterior inscriptions, the stained-glass windows of the Memorial Chamber, and the Altar of Remembrance. Among them are Psalm 72:1 and Proverbs 29:18. Canada’s national motto, A Mari Usque Ad Mare (“From sea to sea”), is drawn from Psalm 72:8: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea.”

This inheritance also extends to the constitutional tradition represented by the Magna Carta, which shaped Canadian laws and values.

The preamble to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms states:

“Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:”

You will immediately notice that this sentence not only constitutionally recognizes the supremacy of our Christian God but also ends with a colon (:). The Canadian Style Manual lists a colon’s function as:

“The colon is used primarily to introduce the words that follow it.”

Hence, all words in the Charter flowing from this constitutional preamble must also recognize the supremacy of only the Christian God and be subordinate to God’s laws as much as they are subordinate to the rule of law, which is referenced in the same sentence. The Charter emanates from the Coronation Oath, not the reverse.

The Canadian Bill of Rights likewise acknowledges the supremacy of God, the dignity and worth of the human person, and the position of the family. These are not decorative phrases. They place moral demands on those who hold public authority.On February 17, 2026, in response to remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, you stated that “Canadian nationalism is civic nationalism” and rejected what you described as “Christian nationalism.” You are entitled to your personal political views. However, you are not entitled, by virtue of your oath, to dismiss Canada’s Christian inheritance.

The contrast is sharp. At an Eid al-Adha event hosted by the Muslim Association of Canada, you declared: “These are Muslim values, these are Canadian values.” The Muslim Association of Canada has, in its own earlier materials, traced its modern roots to the movement of the Muslim Brotherhood and the teachings of Hassan al-Banna. A Canada Revenue Agency audit later raised serious concerns about the organization’s activities and associations. Canadians are entitled to ask why a Prime Minister who publicly sets aside the country’s Christian foundations will, in the same period, affirm “Muslim values” as Canadian values at an organization with that documented history.

Canadian security agencies have repeatedly documented Islamic threats, including from individuals with ties to the IRGC and Hamas, as well as plots linked to ISIS. Canada and the United States share a border and vital security interests. Threats to Canada’s security also threaten the security of the United States.

Bill C-9, which received Royal Assent on June 18, 2026, removed the longstanding good-faith religious-expression defense under section 319(3)(b) of the Criminal Code. During committee proceedings, Liberal MP Marc Miller stated that Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Romans contain “clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals,” and questioned whether the good-faith defense should protect those who invoke such passages. Christians who teach or quote Scripture on matters of doctrine now face heightened legal risk for doing so in public. The defense should be restored.

These measures form part of a broader pattern that warrants a direct warning. The removal of a statutory religious defense, the arrest and prosecution of pastors and street preachers for public Biblical witness, the use of emergency powers and financial penalties against the trucker convoy, policing and censorship of citizens free expression and restrictions on military chaplains are not isolated disputes. Taken together, they describe a trajectory in which the state increasingly defines the boundaries of acceptable speech, worship, and assembly, then enforces those boundaries through criminal process, administrative sanction, and institutional exclusion. Canadians should be rightly alarmed by this shift toward authoritarianism. A free country does not require its clergy to edit Scripture or its citizens to abandon protest under threat of asset seizure or arrest. Once those habits take root, they expand.

The same warning applies to the physical security of houses of worship. Since May 2021, more than 130 Christian churches across Canada have been burned, vandalized, or desecrated. CBC News documented that at least 33 churches burned to the ground between May 2021 and the end of 2023, with 24 confirmed as arsons. Sacred Heart Mission in Penticton and St. Gregory Mission on Osoyoos land were destroyed by fire in June 2021. St. Jean Baptiste Church in Morinville, Alberta, burned completely that same summer. Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Catholic Church in Fort Chipewyan was destroyed by arson in August 2022. These attacks followed the residential-school announcements and were met with limited federal redress.

Jewish institutions have faced parallel violence. On September 20, 2026, a gunman opened fire outside the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario, during Yom Kippur services, critically wounding a police officer in an attack that police described as deliberate and hate-motivated. In March 2026, gunfire damaged the Beth Avraham Yoseph synagogue in Vaughan and Shaarei Shomayim synagogue in Toronto. Temple Emanu-El in Toronto was shot at in March 2026, with more than a dozen rounds fired at its doors. A Jewish girls’ school in Toronto was targeted by gunfire in December 2024. Congregants now worship behind fences, cameras, and private security. The scale and repetition of these attacks on churches and synagogues, combined with the absence of a sustained national response equal to the threat, amount to tolerance and tacit consent of hostility directed at Christians and at the Jewish community. Jewish Canadians—roughly one percent of the population—have faced the majority of faith-based attacks reported to police.Families are now weighing whether they can remain in a country where their schools and synagogues require armed protection. That is not the Canada of its constitutional inheritance.

These are not abstract concerns. In Oklahoma, communities are assisting Jewish Canadians who are relocating because they no longer believe they can worship and raise their children in safety. In 2021, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley urged the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to consider Canada for its Watch List following the arrests of Canadian pastors. The trajectory of liberty for Jews and Christians to practice their faith in Canada warrants continued scrutiny, including whether conditions justify a recommendation for placement on the U.S. State Department’s Special Watch List.

Of equal concern is the direction of Canada’s external posture. You have described the United States as a source of economic coercion, urged middle powers to reduce reliance on Washington, and framed American power as a threat from which Canada must hedge. At the same time, you met President Xi Jinping for the first formal leader-level contact in years, hailed the encounter a “turning point” that positions Canada well for the “New World Order”, and advanced deeper economic and military engagement with the People’s Republic of China while speaking of “guardrails”.

Canadians should be rightly alarmed by rhetoric, policy, and posture that treat a nuclear-armed communist state—one that engages in transnational repression, intellectual-property theft, election interference and coercive diplomacy—as a preferred counterweight to the free and democratic ally with whom Canada has shared the longest undefended border and the most integrated security relationship in the world. Diversifying trade is one thing. Signaling that Ottawa is prepared to accommodate Beijing at the expense of the North American alliance is another. It is a departure from the affinity and mutual defense that have served both nations for generations. 

During my visit to Ottawa earlier this month, members of our delegation encountered Chinese-Canadian citizens protesting the decision by the federally owned National Arts Centre to refuse further performances of Shen Yun. That company presents classical Chinese dance as a revival of traditional culture predating communist rule. Organizers and petitioners have alleged that Chinese diplomatic pressure contributed to the cancellation after nearly two decades of performances; a court challenge is pending. Whatever the commercial explanations offered by the Centre, the episode illustrates the risk that Canadian public institutions will yield to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party at the expense of free expression by Canadian citizens and residents. It is a concrete example of kowtowing that should concern anyone who values open cultural space.

Your long association with the World Economic Forum, including prior board membership and a prominent address at Davos in which you declared the rules-based order effectively dead and called on middle powers to construct alternative arrangements, reinforces the concern. The Forum has long promoted frameworks that subordinate national sovereignty to supranational coordination on climate, finance, and governance. Canadians are entitled to ask whether those affiliations shape a posture that treats national borders and traditional alliances as obstacles rather than foundations.

One further matter requires answers. Your financial stake in Brookfield’s success, while your government advances policies that can benefit related businesses, has already prompted a parliamentary ethics committee inquiry. Brookfield Asset Management moved its headquarters to New York while you were chair. Your disclosures list investments in hundreds of companies, most of them American. Your formal conflict-of-interest screen covers Brookfield, Stripe, and more than one hundred related entities. A blind trust and an ethics screen do not replace public accountability.

Canadians deserve a full, independent accounting of the screen and of any decisions that could benefit entities in which you hold a continuing interest.

Proverbs 11:3 states: “The integrity of the upright will guide them, but the perversity of the unfaithful will destroy them.”

Those who hold public office are not exempt from that standard.You hold the office of Prime Minister in trust for the Canadian people and under the constitutional obligations that accompany it. Publicly setting aside the Christian inheritance of the country, removing statutory protections for Biblical expression, accommodating pressure that restricts cultural expression, tolerating repeated attacks on churches and synagogues, and leaving unresolved questions about financial conflicts of interest and strategic alignment place that trust under strain. The accumulating pattern of restrictions on speech, worship, and assembly, together with the failure to protect houses of worship, marks a shift toward authoritarianism that Canadians should reject before it hardens.

Restore the religious-expression defense. Provide a full accounting of the ethics screen and related decisions. Honor the Coronation Oath and the constitutional inheritance it reflects. Reaffirm the North American alliance rather than treat a communist power as a convenient hedge. Reverse the measures that treat dissent and Biblical teaching as public dangers. Defend the churches and synagogues that are being burned and vandalized.

Canadians committed to faith and freedom will not surrender their conscience to the state. They will speak, worship, organize, and pursue lawful remedies. I stand with them.

Respectfully,
Shane Jett
Oklahoma State Senator
District 17

cc:
The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump
The Honorable Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State
U.S. Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra
U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Canadian Ambassador to the United States, Mark D. Wiseman
Members of the House of Commons of Canada
Members of the Senate of Canada
Premiers of the Canadian Provinces and Territories
Tanya Gaw, Action4Canada
Jason Rapert, National Association of Christian Lawmakers