Statistics Canada responds to growth in minority religions

As we near the end of the year, here are two stories about the Canadian government and religion that didn’t get much media attention — starting with an unusual decision by Statistics Canada.

Since 1871, the federal government has asked Canadians about their religious affiliation every 10 years through the census. It’s one of the oldest national efforts to track religion in the world.

That will change in 2026, when Statistics Canada will ask that question just five years after the last census in 2021.

The reason for the change is the growth in minority religions and the dramatic rise in the number of Canadians who say they are not affiliated with any religion, said Simon-Pierre Lacasse, an analyst at the Centre for Population and Social Statistics for Statistics Canada.

Lacasse noted that the number of Canadians who are Muslim, Sikh and Hindu rose from six per cent of the population in 2011 to 9.3 per cent in 2021, while 34.6 per cent of Canadians said they had no religious affiliation in 2021, compared to 29.3 per cent a decade earlier.

By asking the question next year instead of waiting another five years, the agency will be better able to track these trends, he said. It will provide policy makers, business leaders and others with better and more up-to-date data about the religious and ethnic diversity of the country.

The change is welcomed by Sarah Wilkins-Laflamme, who teaches sociology at the University of Waterloo and is also director of the Institute for Religion, Culture and Societal Futures. “This will give a much better view of the changing religious landscape in the country,” she said.

The rise in the number of people who are Muslim, Sikh and Hindu, along with the growth of those who say they are not affiliated with any religion, “has implications for politics, culture and economics,” she added.

Also welcoming the news is Peter Schuurman, who teaches religion and theology at Redeemer University in Ancaster, Ont.

“What is especially important in the coming years is to know just when the non-affiliated, the ‘nones,’ might bypass the number of Christians in the country,” he said. “That would be a historic first and a shift in how we see religious life in Canada.”

The other major story involving the government and religion involves the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). In fall it reached out to the Canadian Council of Churches, the Canadian Interfaith Conversation and the Canadian Multifaith Federation, asking them to share information about the measles outbreak. The request followed a roundtable with those groups hosted by the PHAC on Sept. 16.

The agency decided to reach out to faith groups to get out the message because they are seen as trustworthy by their members, said Nicolas Janveau of the PHAC.

“The aim of our engagement with faith leaders is to share knowledge, strengthen trust, and explore proactive approaches to measles prevention,” Janveau said, adding the PHAC “regularly engages with a range of partners and interest holders, including faith-based and community organizations, as part of its routine public health outreach.”

By engaging faith leaders, the PHAC “aims to enable communities to make informed decisions and prevent outbreaks from occurring or escalating,” he said.

For Richard Chambers, a volunteer with the Canadian Interfaith Conversation (CIC), the outreach from the PHAC shows how serious measles is in Canada now.

“My personal take is that local public health units are working flat out this year to contain the measles outbreak in Canada, and are asking for help from other civil society organizations to point people to reliable information,” he said.

He also finds it significant that the PHAC still sees religious communities as a trusted voice in society, noting something similar happened in 2020 when then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a Zoom roundtable with about 350 faith leaders about ways faith groups could respond to the pandemic.

“I think they remembered that event, so reached out again to see how faith groups could assist with the measles outbreak,” Chambers said, adding the CIC is sharing the message with its 62 member groups.

In making the request to faith groups, the PHAC asked them to tailor it to their communities. “In an interfaith context, it would be too hard to come up with one message for everyone,” Chambers said.

We live at a time when some people of faith view the current government as anti-religion for various reasons — some of which are worth informed discussion, while others are based on misinformation or stoked deliberately by groups who benefit from fear mongering. So it’s nice to hear a bit of news about how government agencies are taking religion seriously, seeing it as something worth researching because of how it impacts life in Canada, or as an ally in curbing a potentially deadly disease.

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