View cases - Stewart McKelvey

- 100 -Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which applies only to constrain State action and doesnot regulate private relationships, is different. Even in the case of the Canadian Charter,however, the Court has observed that “although the freedom of belief may be broad, thefreedom to act upon those beliefs is considerably narrower”: B. (R.) v. Children’s AidSociety of Metropolitan Toronto, [1995] 1 S.C.R. 315, at para. 226. See also Ross v.New Brunswick School District No. 15, [1996] 1 S.C.R. 825, at para. 72; Trinity WesternUniversity v. British Columbia College of Teachers, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 772, 2001 SCC 31,2004 SCC 47 (CanLII)at para. 30.188 It is helpful to approach s. 3 of the Quebec Charter using the frameworkproposed by the authors H. Brun and G. Tremblay, in their text Droit constitutionnel (4thed. 2002), at p. 1033, which poses four requirements: [TRANSLATION] “(1) existence ofa religious precept; (2) sincere belief in that precept; (3) existence of a conflict betweenthe precept and the rule; and (4) reasonableness of the objection”.189 I accept that Mr. Amselem has met the threshold test of bringing his claimwithin the protected zone of religious freedom. (For present purposes, as I conclude theappeal should be dismissed, it is unnecessary to dwell on the alleged insufficiencies ofthe evidence of the other appellants.) Mr. Amselem clearly respects the succah ritual asa religious precept, by which I understand him to mean a divine command (ShorterOxford English Dictionary (5th ed. 2002), vol. 2, at p. 2316). There is no doubtexpressed by any of the parties that in general terms the precept exists as an article of theJewish faith. We are not dealing here with a religion of one phenomenon, or a nontraditionalclaim such as the smoking of peyote as part of a claimed religious experience(Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S.872 (1990)). Those types of issues will have to be addressed when they arise.