A Quebec Superior Court judge just ordered former tourism minister Caroline Proulx to personally write a check for more than $60,000 after she killed a Christian conference because she didn't like the group's pro-life message. Not the government's money. Her money.
Turns out bureaucrats who weaponize their authority against people of faith occasionally discover that judges still read the constitution.
Justice Alain Trudel found that Proulx acted "in an arbitrary and abusive manner" when she ordered Quebec City's Convention Centre to cancel the rental agreement for Harvest Ministries International's "Faith, Fire, and Freedom" conference just 10 days before 1,200 daily attendees were expected to arrive. The British Columbia-based evangelical ministry had booked the venue as part of its "Battle for Canada" tour in June 2023, and everything was proceeding normally — until Radio-Canada started asking questions about the event.
That's when Proulx swooped in. The government issued a statement citing "serious reservations" about the conference. Translation: the group holds pro-life views, and that made the minister uncomfortable. So she pulled the plug.
Justice Trudel wasn't having it. The court ordered $30,636.92 in compensatory damages against Proulx personally, then tacked on another $30,000 in punitive damages — also against Proulx personally. His ruling was surgical: "Preventing a message that displeases the minister or causes deep unease within the government from being conveyed in the public sphere does not constitute an urgent and genuine objective that justifies a restriction on freedom of expression."
Read that ruling again if you're a government official who thinks your personal discomfort with Christian beliefs qualifies as policy. It doesn't. A judge just put a price tag on it.
Proulx had declared she would "NEVER back down" on defending abortion access, which is fine as a political position. What isn't fine is using the machinery of the state to cancel a private event at a convention center because the speakers disagree with you. The conference wasn't a government program. It was a rental. Harvest Ministries paid for the space. They had a contract.
Meanwhile, south of the border, the same playbook just failed in Georgia. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia ordered Vidalia City Schools to reinstate The Sweet Onion Christian Learning Center, a released-time religious program that had operated for more than a decade. The school board axed the program after its director, Reverend Gady Youmans, committed the unforgivable sin of posting on Facebook that the district didn't "need more money" and that "The Board of Education office keeps hiring admins we don't need with near $100,000 salaries."
A pastor criticized the school board's spending. So they killed his program. Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Mercer Martin noted that Youmans was exercising "the right to publicly criticize the government" — a right the school board apparently forgot exists. Superintendent Sandy Reid's district is now under court order to put the program back while the case proceeds.
Two countries, two courts, identical pattern. A government official encounters a Christian organization whose views they find inconvenient, and instead of tolerating the disagreement like an adult, they reach for the off switch. In Quebec, it was a tourism minister offended by pro-life theology. In Vidalia, Georgia, it was a school board embarrassed by budget criticism. Neither bothered to hide that the real issue was the viewpoint, not the program.
Both rulings reinforce something that should be obvious: the government doesn't get to defund you because it dislikes your sermon. Proulx isn't even seeking re-election in Quebec's October provincial election, so the $60,000 hit is her parting gift from the bench.
The convention center eventually hosted about 200 supporters for alternative events — a fraction of the 1,200 expected. That's the real damage. Not just the dollars, but the silencing effect: the people who didn't show up because the government told them the event was cancelled.
A judge in Quebec and a judge in Georgia just sent the same message within days of each other. The price of using public office to shut down Christian programming is no longer zero.