OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — Canadian senators voted down a recent proposed amendment to anti-Christian “hate speech” legislation, Bill C-9, which would have criminalized “residential school denialism.”

On Wednesday, senators voted 41–32 against adopting an amendment sponsored by Sen. Nancy Karetak-Lindell (Nunavut), who claimed that residential school attendees such as herself faced harms, as well as other changes to the bill. There were two abstentions.

Karetak-Lindell’s amendment would have changed Canada’s Criminal Code to say that any person who willfully promotes hatred against indigenous peoples by “condoning, denying or downplaying” alleged abuses linked to Canada’s residential school system outside of a private conversation could face prosecution or even a summary conviction, which could then lead to potential jail time.

The new amendment to Bill C-9 would have needed a House of Commons ratification if the Senate passed the bill as it stands in the third reading.

The news of the Senate’s vote-down of the amendment received praised from Conservative MP Andrew Lawton.

“The Senate has REJECTED the Senate Human Rights Committee’s amendments to Bill C-9, including the criminalization of residential school ‘downplaying’,” he wrote in an X post.

It is not yet clear what this means for Bill C-9, but the recent vote likely means that the bill will be further stalled from becoming law.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Bill C-9, which is before Canada’s Senate, would criminalize religious expression and belief when quoting parts of the Bible, including passages about homosexuality and gender.

Bill C-9 has been blasted by constitutional experts as allowing empowered police and the government to go after those deemed to have violated a person’s “feelings” in a “hateful” way. The bill was introduced by Justice Minister Sean Fraser last year.

Specifically, Bill C-9 would remove Section 319(3)(b) of Canada’s Criminal Code. This section provides protection to good-faith expression of a person’s religious views, which are based on religious texts such as the Holy Bible.

Bill C-9 has been blasted by some of Canada’s premiers.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently said that she does not want to see authorities “monitoring” church services in her province in light of Bill C-9.

Recently, hundreds of Canadians from coast to coast gathered in front of multiple Liberal MPs’ offices, including Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office, to protest Bill C-9.

In 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools. The reality is that, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.

However, as the claims went unfounded, since the spring of 2021, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic and many of them on indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada.

In 2024, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht said that Canadians are being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the former Trudeau government for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of indigenous children.

Canadian pro-life and faith groups, as well as a Catholic cardinal, sounded the alarm over Bill C-9. Indeed, in a recent letter to Canadian senators, Cardinal Frank Leo, the metropolitan archbishop of Toronto, said that while the Catholic Church recognizes “the importance of addressing hatred and protecting individuals and communities from violence,” changes are needed to the bill.

The removal of the religious exemption prompted condemnation from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, which issued an open letter criticizing the proposed amendment and calling for its repeal.