Author: Lee Harding
Lee Harding is a research fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He holds a master's in public policy (U of C) and a BA in journalism, with a career spanning major networks like CBC and Global TV, as well as landmark published research on Canadian economic and social policy.
A Quebec judge has ordered a former cabinet minister to pay $30,000 in punitive damages for telling a Crown-owned convention centre to tear up a Christian group’s rental agreement.
On July 31, 2026, the Superior Court of Québec ruled that Quebec had breached the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by directing the Quebec City Convention Centre to cancel a conference because its organizers oppose abortion.
The event, the Faith, Fire, Freedom Rally, was organized by Harvest Ministries International, a British Columbia ministry now based in Kelowna, and was booked for June 22 to July 2, 2023. Its agenda centred on worship, prayer and reconciliation, and contained no abortion-related presentations. Barely 20 days before the opening, Quebec’s then-tourism minister, Caroline Proulx, ordered the venue to terminate the rental agreement.
“It’s against Quebec’s fundamental principles,” Proulx said. “This type of event will not take place here. Yes to freedom of expression, but no to hosting events that contradict Quebec’s fundamental principles.”
Then-premier François Legault backed her. Quebec would not allow “anti-abortion groups to put on big shows in public spaces,” he said.
In a 24-page judgment, Justice Alain Trudel found she had acted “without right, on grounds of an arbitrary nature based on an ideological disagreement.”
The court ruled that Proulx unjustifiably infringed the group’s freedom of expression. It ordered Proulx, the convention centre corporation and the Attorney General of Quebec to pay $30,637 in compensatory damages, but ruled that Proulx must ultimately bear the full amount. It then ordered Proulx alone to pay a further $30,000 in punitive damages. Harvest Ministries had sought $80,000.
That second order is the unusual one. Punitive damages required proof of an “unlawful and intentional interference” with a protected freedom, under article 1621 of the Civil Code of Québec and section 49 of the Quebec Charter, as well as the Canadian one, and Trudel found the infringement intentional.
Trudel had more to say that governments elsewhere should heed.
“Preventing a message that displeases the Minister, or that creates deep discomfort for the government, from being conveyed in the public sphere does not constitute a pressing and substantial objective justifying a limitation on freedom of expression,” Trudel explained.
He went further. “In the absence of a rule of law that is otherwise justifiable under section 1 of the [Charter], access to or use of public spaces cannot be made contingent on whether the user subscribes to a particular discourse.” Her decision, he concluded, could not be justified in a free and democratic society.
Precisely. Proulx invoked one principle to override two more basic ones: freedom of expression and the rule that a minister may act only where the law gives her power to act. Nor was this a favour she was free to withdraw. Harvest Ministries held a signed commercial rental agreement with a Crown corporation, and she ordered it torn up.
The principle does not depend on whether anyone agrees with Harvest Ministries about abortion; a government that can exclude this group because it dislikes its beliefs can do the same to another.
Proulx and Legault should have known better. In the mid-1940s, Premier Maurice Duplessis’ government repeatedly arrested Jehovah’s Witnesses for distributing religious literature. Frank Roncarelli, a Witness and owner of Montreal’s Quaff Café, posted about 390 bail bonds for them.
Duplessis, who was also attorney general, warned him to stop; when he would not, the premier had the Quebec Liquor Commission cancel his liquor licence in December 1946, ruining the business and, with it, his capacity to post bail.
Roncarelli sued him personally and won, six to three, in 1959. A public official, the court held, may not use discretionary power to punish a citizen for exercising a lawful right. In Justice Ivan Rand’s words, “no legislative Act can, without express language, be taken to contemplate an unlimited arbitrary power exercisable for any purpose, however capricious or irrelevant …”
Trudel found the same of Proulx: she “acted arbitrarily and with full knowledge,” proceeding “without legislative or regulatory authority whatsoever.” Duplessis was ordered to pay $33,123.53 himself, far more, in real terms, than Proulx’s $30,000 punitive award. Whether $30,000 deters a minister today is a fair question.
Quebec offered Harvest Ministries more money to settle the case than it ultimately received in court, said Olivier Séguin, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms lawyer who acted for the ministry. Harvest refused because it wanted a judgment.
“Had this case not been challenged, governments across Canada would have been encouraged to deny access to public facilities whenever they disagreed with an organization’s beliefs,” Séguin added.
The judgment is not the last word; Quebec’s appeal period was still open as this was written.
Legislatures need not wait. Every province should require its Crown-owned venues to publish a written, viewpoint-neutral booking policy; the Quebec City centre had none, which is why one telephone call could void a contract.
And legislatures should decide in the open whether ministers are to be indemnified out of the treasury for punitive damages awarded for acts a court has found arbitrary and intentional. If the public purse quietly covers Proulx’s $30,000, Trudel’s order is a gesture.
The group that won here is a B.C. ministry that booked a hall on the other side of the continent. What are the rules at the convention centres or the halls in Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Winnipeg? Where nothing is written down, the same telephone call is available to a Western minister tomorrow.
Harvest Ministries could afford three years and a refused settlement to make its point, and a judge was willing to do so. Most groups turned away from a public hall can do neither. Governments have limits; writing them down is how we avoid having to sue to find out where they are.