SUPREME COURT OF CANADA CITATION: Alberta v. Hutterian ...

[168] In Edwards Books, Dickson C.J. held that indirect but non-trivial burdens on religiouspractice are prohibited by the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion (pp. 758-59). And inBig M, as previously noted, he highlighted “the centrality of individual conscience and theinappropriateness of governmental intervention to compel or to constrain its manifestation” (p. 346).He also noted that[c]oercion includes not only such blatant forms of compulsion as direct commands toact or refrain from acting on pain of sanction, coercion includes indirect forms ofcontrol which determine or limit alternative courses of conduct available to others. [pp.336-37][169] Jeremy Webber argues that the first strand of freedom of religion is freedom fromcoercion, includingboth freedom from coerced religious observance and freedom from interference withreligious observance. This was the original ground on which freedom of religion waswon. It remains the heartland of the freedom.(“Understanding the Religion in Freedom of Religion”, in P. Cane, C. Evans and Z.Robinson, eds., Law and Religion in Theoretical and Historical Context (2008), 26, atp. 29)[170] The mandatory photo requirement is a form of indirect coercion that places the WilsonColony members in the untenable position of having to choose between compliance with theirreligious beliefs or giving up the self-sufficiency of their community, a community that hashistorically preserved its religious autonomy through its communal independence.[171] I also have some discomfort with the majority’s approach to assessing the seriousnessof a religious infringement. It appears to suggest that there is a difference between the constitutionalscrutiny of a government program that is “compulsory”, and one that is “conditional” or a