Canada’s new Liberal government decided the country no longer needs an office dedicated to religious freedom, allowing it to expire on Thursday.
"We now have one less strong partner and one less voice for religious freedom,” Katrina Lantos Swett, commissioner of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, told me. "This is a very unfortunate message to send out to the rest of the world at this time.”
Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper advocated for an office dedicated to international religious freedom, finally opening it in February 2013. But newly elected Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau quickly shut the door on the operation. Trudeau’s administration vows to take a broader approach to global issues of human rights””devaluing a focus specifically on religious freedom. ...
read more: http://www.worldmag.com/2016/04/canada_scraps_religious_freedom_office