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COUNTRY

Canada

POPULATION

34,300,083 (July 2012 est.)

GDP PER CAPITA

$41,100 (2011 est.)

RELIGIONS

Roman Catholic 42.6%, Protestant 23.3% (United Church 9.5%, Anglican 6.8%, Baptist 2.4%, Lutheran 2%), other Christian 4.4%, Muslim 1.9%, other and unspecified 11.8%, none 16% (2001 census)


Canada

Canada

Events (10)

Canada is an overwhelmingly Christian country, though the role of religion in public life has waned in recent decades. French settlement beginning in the 17th century established a Roman Catholic francophone population in Lower Canada, now Quebec, followed by English settlement that brought Anglicans and other Protestants to Upper Canada, now Ontario. The religious, cultural, and political antagonism between Canadian Protestants and Catholics remained a central theme of Canadian history. The most recent vote for Quebec’s secession from Canada, held in 1995, was defeated by only 1%. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits religiously based discrimination. Provinces are permitted to fund religious education in public schools, leading to funding of Catholic education in Catholic-majority areas like Quebec, and funding of Protestant education in much of the rest of the country.


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  • November 7, 2011
    The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) convened a one day event to reflect on their five year program on Religion and Global Development, a joint initiative of the Henry Luce Foundation and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. The capstone consultation took stock of the project’s results, explored their significance in the light of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and looked towards next...
  • January 20, 2010
    William James once quipped that "in this age of toleration,no one will ever try actively to interfere with our religious faith, provided we enjoy it quietly with our friends and do not make a public nuisance of it." Unfortunately--at least for the privatizers and the secularists--religion is a very public matter for a simple reason: most religions make definitive moral claims that implicate the common good. So says Rabbi David Novak in his new book about religious liberty, why it is...
  • October 30, 2008
    This event, organized by the Ethnicity and Democratic Governance Project of Queen's University, brought together a broad range of scholars to examine the variety of secular regimes across the globe, with a focus on their interaction with religious pluralism. Engaging both theoretical and empirical questions, topics included definitions of the secular state, the relationships between pluralism and respect, as well as the features of secular-religious interaction in several world regions. The...
  • October 29, 2008

    The United States, France, Turkey, and India represent four secular democratic states with distinctively different patterns of religion/state separation and distinctively different modes of religious pluralism. This seminar examined comparatively the historical patterns of constitution of the four secular regimes, as well as the contemporary contentious debates on secularism, religion, and democratic politics in all four countries.

  • May 5, 2008
    Organized by the Canadian Christian Relief and Development Association, this two-day conference focused on helping Canadian faith-based organizations examine the intersection of faith and development and use their knowledge to improve their outreach and service provision. Speeches from Georgetown University professor and former World Bank official Katherine Marshall and Dr. Ray Vander Zaag of Canadian Mennonite University kicked off the conference. The first panel discussion that followed...
  • August 8, 2007
    The 76th Annual Meeting of the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs was held under the theme "The Stranger Next Door: Making Diversity Work." The four-day seminar, held on Lake Couchiching in Canada, focused on a number of issues related to internal pluralism and specifically the relations between Muslims and Western states. The conference featured a number of prominent guest speakers, including Tariq Ramadan and Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star. For Berkley Center Senior Fellow...
  • November 15, 2006
    Canadian organization the Trudeau Foundation hosted a conference in Vancouver, British Columbia on November 16, 2006 entitled "Muslims in Western Societies," which brought together scholars, activists, community leaders, policy makers, business leaders, and representatives from the arts to discuss and debate the position of Muslims in the West. Participants focused on the nebulous nature of the concepts "Muslim" and "West", noting that there are many different versions of Islam and many...
  • September 10, 2006
    The "World's Religions after September 11th Conference" was convened in Montreal, Canada on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. The Conference, held from September 11-15, 2006, brought together over 2025 individuals representing over 20 religions from 84 countries for a series of workshops and discussions with many of the key religion and world affairs experts from around the world. The Conference also featured a youth component stressing the need for dialogue at all ages.
  • August 17, 2006
    Held in Toronto, the 2006 International AIDS Conference brought together scientists, health care providers, journalists, political, community, business, and religious leaders, and people affected by HIV/AIDS for the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and research relating to the fight against the pandemic. The last day of the Conference included a session on the topic "Mobilising the Church to respond to HIV and AIDS." The session discussed the unique role that FBOs are able to take in supporting...
  • July 2, 2006
    Nearly 70 Muslims from all over Canada came together for a strategic 6-hour conference held by the Canadian Islamic Congress in Toronto on July 3, 2006 in order to identify problems and challenges facing the Canadian Muslim community. After isolating these problems, they turned their attention towards finding solutions and creating short and long term "action plans" that stressed education of non-Muslims about Islamic thought and culture through increased Muslim involvement in local...