Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff on BCHA Research & Activism

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/24

Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff’s BCHA biography states: “Dr Teale N Phelps Bondaroff is an experienced researcher with a PhD in politics and international studies from the University of Cambridge and BAs in political science (honours) and international relations from the University of Calgary. He is proficient with in a wide range of social science research methods, which he employs in his research on behalf of his strategy and research consultancy, the Idea Tree Consulting. With years of experience in the field, Dr. Phelps Bondaroff is a world expert on illegal fishing and organized crime, and currently works as the Director of Research of OceansAsia, a marine conservation organization, and has consulted for a number of marine conservation groups (The Black Fish, the Sea Ranger Service, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and others). Dr Phelps Bondaroff remains active as an academic researcher, with work examining the strategic use of international law by non-state actors. He also cofounded the AccessBC Campaign for free prescription contraception in BC and is active in all levels of Canadian politics. Since December 2018, he has been serving as a research coordinator for the BC Humanist Association. You can learn about his numerous projects at www.teale.ca. Pronouns: he/him (what’s this?).” Here we talk about recent and ongoing work about municipal prayers in British Columbia and Canada.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here again with Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff of the wonderful British Columbia Humanist Association, which recently gave an update on municipal prayers in a publication, “We Yelled at Them Until They Stopped: Revisiting Prayers in BC Municipal Council Meetings and the Power of Secular Advocacy” on November 15, 2023. What is the overarching question that was asked about the public municipal prayers? What was the big answer? 

Dr. Teale Phelps Bondaroff: Yes! Always good to talk to you. The BCHA has been looking at municipal prayer for a number of years. When we say, “Municipal prayer,” we mean a prayer included in the agenda of a municipal council meeting in British Columbia. 

Now, let’s do a bit of background on this. In 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in the Saguenay decision that you may not have prayer in a municipal council meeting. The state has a “duty of religious neutrality” and is a “democratic imperative.” After that ruling, municipalities should not be scheduling prayers in their meetings. In 2018, we received reports that this was taking place in BC. Municipalities were including prayers in their council meetings. We looked into those situations. 

We did a full review of all 163 municipalities in British Columbia. What we found, 23 of them had prayer in their inaugural meetings. An inaugural meeting tends to take place after, or soon after, an election. They tend to have some key elements, like the swearing-in of a new council. There is often a mayoral address. There is pomp, circumstance, and ceremony to the meeting. We found 23 that had municipal prayers in them. When we later looked back at our 2018 data, we found that we had missed 3. In fact, 26 in 2018 had prayer in their inaugural meetings. 

So, between that time and the most recent round of inaugural meetings in 2022, the BC Humanist Association did a lot of work. We emailed all 23 municipalities. We did a lot of public communication and advocacy work. We had good success in so far as the vast number of those municipalities that we talked to ended their practice or committed to ending their practice. So, many didn’t include prayer in their inaugural meetings in 2022. 

Correspondence occurred several years after the 2022 inaugurals, with emails going out in 2019 and 2020. Some of these letters also went out weeks before the 2022 inaugural meetings. If we saw a prayer pop up [on the agenda prior to the meeting], we would message the municipality. Then we would say, “You have a duty to religious neutrality. You can’t be including prayer in your meetings.” 

The report that we just released is “We Yelled at Them Until They Stopped.” It is an exploration of the advocacy we did, how effective it was, and how it reduced the number of municipalities with a prayer in their 2022 inaugural meetings. It also identifies municipalities that may continue to violate Saguenay and their duty of religious neutrality. 

In the study, we identified 7 municipalities that included prayer in their 2022 inaugurals. Those 7 are: Belcarra, Colwood, Delta, Parksville, Tumbler Ridge, Vancouver, and West Kelowna. I can give you a bit of a rundown on those prayers if that is helpful. 

In 2018, we found all 23 and then the three more that were identified when we reviewed the data. So, all 26 of those municipalities that had prayers in their inaugural meetings in 2018 had Christian prayers. 

In 2022, it was similar insofar as everyone who had a prayer had a Christian prayer. The only outlier was Vancouver, with five prayers. After the report came out in November (2023), we messaged those all those municipalities. We wrote to them to change their practices. We had a couple commit to changing. 

The first one is Colwood. Colwood is a bit of an outlier. They didn’t have a religious figure come and deliver a prayer. They had a local public high school choir come and sing. The choir happened to sing a Christian liturgical song, Deo Gratia. 

My understanding of this, based on a Freedom of Information request, was that they just didn’t check what song was going to be sung. They said, “Great, we have the same high school choir as last year.” Things sort of happened. My understanding is Colwood will not schedule one in the future. They did write back and said this probably won’t happen again. 

Belcarra emailed us. Basically, they had a special emergency council meeting to discuss our letter. They committed to or adopted a motion on November 4. Prayers, religious invocations, or any religious observances will not take part in Belcarra. 

[As of the publication of this interview, all but two of the aforementioned seven municipalities had committed to not including prayer in future inaugurals. The two outliers are Parksville and Vancouver].

Basically, we sent a letter to municipalities informing them that they have to change their practices. If they don’t by the end of the year, we will follow with a stronger letter and possible legal action. At this point, there is no reason municipalities should have prayers. In 2018, maybe the memo didn’t reach small towns. It can be chaotic organizing an inaugural meeting after an election. It may be a reason for prayer as an accidental inclusion back in the day. In 2022, there is no reason. They have received correspondence. So, they can’t plead ignorance. If a municipality insists on prayer in inaugural meetings in BC, we will pursue it further. 

Jacobsen: One of them that was listed was a stipulation about a Jewish, Sikh, and Muslim one in Vancouver and a Christian. Actually, do all 5 at once to follow up on your point earlier; they were the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver, Canadian Memorial United Church, Temple Shalom, Khalsa Diwan Society, and BC Muslim Association. All done by males except for the Canadian Memorial United Church. What is the breakup there because that breaks from a substantial history given the demographics of Canada, which is mostly Christian in most of the other areas of the country?

Phelps Bondaroff: Yes, so there were a couple of interesting things about Vancouver. There were five prayers at the 2022 inaugural meeting. You had five representatives of different faith traditions. It was interesting to watch. They kind of each delivered one sentence of a prayer. It was 13 minutes long and was like a high school group project. Each read a different religious element. 

At its heart, having five prayers rather than one prayer is no better. Saguenay says you can have no prayer in a municipal council meeting. It doesn’t specify the number or the number of people delivering the prayer. A choir singing with 17 high school students or five people delivering prayers would violate Saguenay. It touches on the fundamental issue of excluding other religions and those people without religious beliefs. Saguenay is about the state having a duty to religious neutrality. It is about abstention. It is not picking one over others or some over others. So, when the City of Vancouver selected five prayers, as opposed to one, they were trying to be ecumenical. Yet, they have no basis for picking those five religious figures. 

One interesting thing about the prayers selected is something we describe as Abrahamic hegemony. You’ve got five religious traditions: four of those come from the Abrahamic faith traditions (two Christians, one Jewish, one Muslim), and then one Sikh prayer. What is interesting is that those five religious traditions aren’t the five most populous in Vancouver. Not that this is a decent basis for selecting what prayers to include in a meeting. They forgot the Hindus and the Buddhists if they were going by population. It is not all the top five. 

The state arbitrarily selected five to give an ecumenical invocation, which necessarily excludes a host of other faith traditions and sects within those faith traditions and also, fundamentally, the non-religion. When they have five people delivering prayers, doing a group prayer thing, they are privileging religion over non-religion and underscoring it. It is not one person giving a two-minute invocation. It is five people giving a 13-minute invocation. It is favouring religion over non-religion. 

We suggest, in our report, and I think the facts hold this out, that they try to be ecumenical, but being more religious, in fact, excludes the non-religious even more. This says, “This municipal space is for those who are religious and not the non-religious,” and, of course, some religions are being favoured over non-religion. 

We haven’t heard back from the City of Vancouver regarding their response so far. By the way, this is the first time Vancouver has included a prayer in one of their meetings. The Mayors have a significant role in selecting how the inaugural meeting proceeds. It is a black box in municipalities. We did do Freedom of Information requests to see emails as to how these decisions are made. What seems to have happened last time is the new mayor, maybe new council members, chat with staff, and then this coalesces around a final output: The inaugural meeting. 

It is a time for a new mayor to learn their new job. The chaos following an election. So, there are a bunch of moving parts. Ultimately, in this case, we have the decision by the incoming mayor to include more prayers than you should have in a meeting, and the number of prayers you should have is zero. 

I will note one other thing to support what I was saying earlier. When we looked at our initial study, we found, as I mentioned, that we missed three meetings in 2018 that had prayer. What was interesting was that those three municipalities still had prayer in 2022. This indicated something interesting. The vast majority of municipalities that had prayers in 2018 would have received communication from us. Thus municipalities, most of them stopped having prayers. The three that we didn’t talk to continued to have prayer. It told us our advocacy was having a significant effect. We saw this with other municipalities. When you look at those who had them in 2018, several of them – both of the Langleys – adopted motions to make sure they didn’t have prayers in their future meetings. A lot of municipalities said we will take this under advisement for future meetings. What is significant on the ground is advocacy by the BCHA; it has had an effect on making change in municipalities when Saguenay was under violation. 

Jacobsen: In general, the big takeaway, as far as I am gathering, is simply reminding individual municipalities that the law is sufficient to make a change. Meanwhile, a few handful will not get the message until a follow-up letter is given with the potential for legal recourse to force the municipality or convince them legally that it is a wise thing to follow equality under the law as everyone else is doing. 

Phelps Bondaroff: Absolutely, you need vigilance and ongoing secular advocacy. We have looked into practices in other provinces. Now, obviously, the BC Humanist Association is BC-based. We’ve had an amazing research team able to look across the Rockies. We found other provinces have prayers in their municipal council meetings. 

When we looked at Manitoba in 2018, we found that six of their inaugural 2018 meetings had prayer. We looked at meetings outside of this – regular council meetings – and found that four municipalities in Manitoba continued to have them in regular meetings, including Winnipeg. 

When we looked at Ontario, we found larger numbers. We found 156 municipalities out of 328 in Ontario had prayer in their 2018 inaugural meetings. Nine out of 360 had prayer in their regular council meetings. By the way, we had a cutoff for municipalities with a population over 1,000 in Ontario, given the bigger population. That’s a lot. That is well close to half. That is an alarming number. It also shows that we have different religious and non-religious demographics here in British Columbia. 

We are working to support those other provinces. Just because a Supreme Court ruling has been made doesn’t mean it has necessarily been followed. We have to make sure the decision has been followed. 

The research philosophy of the BCHA research team is to put it in a cheeky way: do good research, wave it around, or yell it around until people listen and change. This work shows that work was effective. I am pleased with the output. 

We are currently doing a review of Alberta. We are looking at Albertan municipalities. We are doing a second review for Ontario because, since 2018, there has been another round of municipal elections. That report should be coming out next year [2024]. 

I’m interested in these findings as there are fewer groups doing advocacy on the ground in Ontario, so we can get a better idea of not just compliance with Saguenay but also the effectiveness of our advocacy here in BC. 

Jacobsen: Teale, I have one final question. It might be split into two. But they might be the same question framed as one. A freethought person or organization as a broad category or an indigenous community or individual as a broad category may want to see the representation in the municipality. Where the municipality has agreed, everyone gets it rather than no one. What has been the form that the indigenous representation or the freethought representation has been expressed where it’s being defined as a prayer or it’s being not defined as a prayer?

Phelps Bondaroff: I might rephrase the question a little bit. You are not allowed to have prayer in a municipal council meeting, whether a secular invocation by a humanist group that is prayer adjacent, a United Church person giving a secular declaration, or a deeply religious person giving a fire and brimstone sermon. The state cannot allocate time in their agenda for prayer. Full stop. 

A couple of things to parse. This doesn’t preclude an individual from expressing religious beliefs. If you are coming to a Saanich council meeting [ Dr. Phelps Bondaroff is a Councillor in the District of Saanich, BC], and you are talking about a specific development project, and your personal religious beliefs influence your view on that development project, there is no reason why you cannot express them to members of the council, as long as you are staying on topic within the rules and procedures. You could say your god inspired you to come and talk to the council to support a specific development project. As someone who is a municipal councillor and sits through a lot of these meetings and receives extensive feedback from residents, I would say this isn’t the most compelling argument in support or opposition to a development project, but someone is welcome to make it.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Phelps Bondaroff: Similarly, a council member can attend council meetings wearing religious paraphernalia. They can reference personal faith when sharing their views on a project. If you are speaking at council as a councillor, and if you are speaking about a specific project, and your specific faith traditions inspired you to look at this project a certain way, there’s no reason why you couldn’t mention it.

The issue with Saguenay is acting in an official capacity when representing the government. Doing things such as beginning meetings of the council with time specifically allocated to prayer or inviting religious figures to deliver a prayer. You are allocating time for a prayer, or you are using the specific levers of state power to favour one religion over others, or over none. 

We have these conversations around often French versions of Laïcité: someone wearing religious clothing to a meeting does not amount to an endorsement of the religion. It is when the state allocates time to it. 

The other part of your question was Indigenous content. So, we explored this in the report, though it was not the focus. A number of municipalities had Indigenous content in their inaugural meetings. Again, inaugural meetings tend to have more ceremonial elements. There is often piping, speeches, singing, drumming, the singing O Canada, that sort of thing. We noted a number of municipalities included a range of Indigenous elements. 

When I say Indigenous elements, I mean quite a range of Indigenous elements. There were speeches and welcomes from elders. There were formal welcomes. There were traditional Indigenous welcomes, territorial acknowledgements, drumming, singing, and often combinations of those elements. The purpose of the report was to look at religious prayer as it relates to Saguenay. Saguenay looked at religious prayer, not on Indigenous content. 

Since we were looking at all the minutes, agendas, and meeting videos, we thought we’d look at this [Indigenous content] while gathering the data and sharing the findings in our report. In 2018, 38.8% of municipalities had Indigenous content in their inaugural meetings. In 2022, that rose to 71.6%. So, there was a significant increase. 

This is important because we live in an era of reconciliation. Although these are symbolic elements, they should be backed up with tangible actions, but these symbolic parts play a role in reconciliation, which is important. They varied considerably. Some municipalities will have a territorial acknowledgement read at the beginning of the meeting. Some will invite an elder to give a statement – anything the elder wants. Sometimes, the elder may speak in their own language. Sometimes, they will sing or drum or make comments about cooperation, reconciliation, etc. Then, sometimes, they will do a traditional welcome. Traditional welcome ceremonies differ considerably. 

We had trouble classifying these. It might be called a ‘prayer’ or a ‘blessing’ in the agenda. The language may include spiritual elements or references to deities or higher powers. Classification was challenging despite how it was identified in the agenda.

An indigenous traditional welcome is not a straightforward territorial acknowledgement; it’s something else. It is not just a prayer. It is a diplomatic protocol, a cultural protocol. And there is also a difference between someone welcoming you to their territory and someone proselytizing with a prayer. 

On top of that, we live in an era of reconciliation, and this work is important. Some of the Indigenous content approached what many folks might consider a ‘prayer.’ They may have used quite religious language. In Squamish, for example, a representative of the local Squamish Nation delivered a prayer while wearing a vest covered in crosses. In addition to being an elder, he was a local Shaker priest. He said, ‘I was asked to give a blessing. So, I will give a blessing the way I know how which is through the local Christian faith tradition.’ 

A lot of times, you will have these religious elements making their way into Indigenous elements due to syncretism. There was an attempted genocide against Indigenous peoples, and religion was used in this. And syncretism is something that emerged from that. As a result, you have this blending of elements. 

It is also problematic to say, “Please come to our meeting and give a traditional welcome, but don’t do this, this, or this.” It would seem counter to the goal of reconciliation. 

We have been exploring these complexities in a number of our reports. They are fascinating and complex. It is important to include Indigenous elements for reconciliation in these meetings, and how this is done and what this looks like is part of an ongoing and broader conversation. 

Phelps Bondaroff: Returning to prayers, we are not done yet. There are other provinces that we will be looking at, and we will be continuing our advocacy in BC. We are following up with the few municipalities that have pushed back. Parksville was one such municipality: they received correspondence from us. They will have seen news items, etc. Yet despite this, they persisted with prayer, and we never heard back from them. 

With Parksville, what happened is they had a prayer in their inaugural meeting in 2022 and announced the agenda ten days before the meeting. We read it. We wrote to them and said, “You shouldn’t include it.” They went ahead. They were fully aware that you cannot have prayer in a meeting. 

Jacobsen: This is going to be a good news story.

Phelps Bondaroff: Yeah, and Parksville’s response contrasts to other municipalities. When we reached out to Terrace, and said something like: “Hey, you had a prayer in the [agenda for your] inaugural meeting. Can you take it out?” They said, “Oh, we didn’t know. We took it out.” This was a very reasonable response to an organization pointing out a procedural error. 

Later, they emailed us and said, “So, we also have this nativity scene that we put on top of city hall. We probably shouldn’t do that either, right?” They took it down as well. It was the biggest ‘scandal’ to hit Terrace city hall for a while. There are a number of news items in the report on that as well. 

So, I may conclude by saying this. I am now a councillor in the District of Saanich. I participate in a lot of meetings. When residents come to speak to the council, unless they’re one of our repeat customers, it may be their first time talking to the council. They are nervous and often point this out. As councillors, we want to hear from the public to better understand their views. We want to encourage the public to participate. It would be bad if people didn’t feel welcome in our council chamber such that it deterred them from presenting. If they didn’t feel welcome, we would be robbed of the benefit of their insight and feedback from members of our community. 

There are other barriers to attending municipal council meetings, which is a topic for another day. But we don’t want any unnecessary barriers, and we don’t want to be creating an environment where some are more welcome than others. 

When it comes to the inclusion of prayer, by doing nothing, the state isn’t taking a side relating to religion. It remains neutral. The state is not taking a position. I usually underscore this for people as there is sometimes a tendency to argue that if we remove prayers, then we are discriminating against the religious: No, we are not replacing prayer with something. We are replacing prayer with nothing. Saguenay had a good way of saying this. ‘The opposite of a prayer is not no prayer. The opposite would be starting every meeting with the affirmation that there was no god or gods.’ For example, you can’t start a meeting with the following, ‘Welcome to Cowichan Valley; there is no god here.’ That would also violate the state’s duty to religious neutrality, whereas doing nothing is abstention. And this is what the state should be doing on such matters. 

Jacobsen: Teale, thank you very much. 

Phelps Bondaroff: It’s always a pleasure talking to you, Scott.

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