An Ontario court will hear arguments Monday about whether mandatory Indigenous land acknowledgements at school council meetings are constitutional.
Geoffrey Horsman, a member of the school council at Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate and Vocational School, is challenging the Waterloo Region District School Board’s mandate that school councils begin meetings with land acknowledgements.
“The recitation of land acknowledgements infringes [Horsman’s] right to freedom of conscience by compelling him either to acquiesce to these recitations, contrary to his conscience, or excuse himself, thus excluding him on the basis of conscientious belief,” the lawsuit says.
Indigenous land acknowledgements typically identify any Indigenous groups that traditionally lived in an area where an organization is located. They may also include commitments to reconciliation or honouring Indigenous Peoples.
The Waterloo Region District School Board is located in the Haldimand Tract, which includes land on six miles of each side of the Grand River that was given to the Six Nations of the Grand River.
The Waterloo Region District School Board ends its official land acknowledgement with, “I also acknowledge the enduring presence and deep traditional knowledge, laws and philosophies of the Indigenous Peoples with whom we share this land today.
“We are all treaty people with a responsibility to honour all our relations.”
Horsman is not denying the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada, says Hatim Kheir, Horsman’s lawyer.
But some of the land acknowledgements at the school council meetings went beyond citing historic facts and do not acknowledge the complexities of history, says Kheir.
“This isn’t just a debate on land acknowledgements as a political issue [of the day],” he said.
“This is about how the school council starts its own meetings and how it runs its own affairs,” he said. “If it can’t even debate that, then it doesn’t bode well for its freedom to debate issues that relate to the way the school is being run.”
In spring 2025, Horsman tried to have the school council debate and vote on opening council meetings with land acknowledgements.
Instead, he was referred to the school’s principal, who said the school board mandated land acknowledgements and referred him to the board.
The board also told Horsman that land acknowledgements are mandatory, court documents say. Debating these land acknowledgements is not part of school council business, the board told Horsman.
The Waterloo Region District School Board declined to be interviewed for this article, saying it would not comment on an ongoing court case.
‘Credal recitations’
Horsman, a biochemistry professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, says Indigenous land acknowledgements force him to participate in something that violates his conscience.
“[Land acknowledgements] are almost credal recitations of belief that are analogous to the prayers and recitations of belief that have been previously held to be unconstitutional because they’re the imposition of one system of beliefs,” said Kheir.
Horsman’s situation is similar to previous cases where nonreligious individuals objected to mandatory prayers at city council meetings, says Kheir.
In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada said mandatory prayers at city council violates individuals’ freedoms of religion and conscience to sit through prayers with which they disagree. It further said that asking individuals who disagree with these prayers to leave those meetings is not an acceptable remedy.
Kheir says the same principle should apply to Horsman’s situation, even though his beliefs about human equality are not religious.
“Mr. Horsman’s belief about human dignity and the equality of persons is as fundamental to his worldview as a religious person’s beliefs are to their worldview, and so it should be afforded the same protection,” says Kheir.
Little case law
Freedom of religion and freedom of conscience are listed together in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
However, there is very little case law in Canada that examines freedom of conscience on its own, separate from freedom of religion, says Howard Kislowicz, a law professor at the University of Calgary.
“We don’t actually have a significant case law on freedom of conscience,” he said, adding that few cases that argue a violation of conscience, without a violation of religion, succeed.
“The idea of conscience is unsettling to a court because it’s potentially very expansive, whereas religion seems to have more clear borders.”
Kislowicz says he can understand why someone may try to make a legal argument that mandatory land acknowledgements are similar to mandatory religious prayers in terms of their function at meetings.
But the analogy can only go so far, he says.
“A prayer is not a land acknowledgement, and a land acknowledgment is not a prayer,” he said.
The Supreme Court has upheld the importance of the state being religiously neutral when ruling on mandatory prayers. But that may not apply in this case, he says.
“We don’t have any evidence that [mandatory land acknowledgements] is a religiously inspired practice, and, at least in the case law now, there’s no duty for the state to be conscientiously neutral,” he said.
The Ontario court will give its decision at a later date.
