The 1981 Act already ended the old automatic jus soli. What follows is not a party programme. It is an account of what the statute still leaves open, of what has changed around it in the last three years, of how a restrictionist reading of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 13 and the Fathers tries to close those openings, and of why that reading is contested inside the tradition it claims. The argument is offered in the conviction that a Christian may hold a hard view of membership without pretending that Scripture dictates it, and may hold a generous one without pretending that the magistrate has no office.‍

The breathless claim that Bill C-9 “criminalises the Bible” is not quite true, and pretending otherwise will only get a well-meaning believer into trouble of a different kind. The more sober reality—that the Act removes a specific, named protection and shifts the whole question onto general defences and the discretion of prosecutors—is quite serious enough without embellishment. Sobriety here is not timidity; it is the prerequisite of useful advice.