Bill 16 explained in plain English
Sacred Spaces, Safe Places Act, 2025
Ontario legislature bill summary, status, timeline, sponsor, votes, and official sources.
At a glance
Official Legislative Assembly of Ontario snapshot for 44th Parliament, 1st Session. Representative vote breakdowns appear when the Assembly publishes an Ayes and Nays page for the bill.
Our plain-language take, written for civic education.
Source: By PoliticalData.ca
The Sacred Spaces, Safe Places Act, 2025 creates protected 'access zones' around religious institutions and prohibits actions that dissuade people from accessing them, with penalties and enforcement measures.
The Sacred Spaces, Safe Places Act, 2025 aims to protect access to religious institutions by establishing 'access zones' around them. Within these zones, it prohibits certain activities intended to dissuade people from entering, such as persistent requests, intimidation, or threatening conduct. The Act also allows for legal action, injunctions, and arrests without a warrant under specific circumstances. It specifies penalties for offenses and requires that individuals have knowledge of the access zone's location to be convicted.
- Establishes the purpose of the Act as protecting access to religious institutions.
- Defines what constitutes a 'religious institution' and its 'property'.
- Prohibits specific activities within an 'access zone' around a religious institution that aim to dissuade people from accessing it.
- Establishes 'access zones' extending 150 metres from the property boundaries of a religious institution.
- Sets out offences and penalties for contravening the prohibitions.
- Includes a requirement for knowledge or notice of the access zone's location for a conviction.
- Grants a right to sue for damages resulting from contraventions.
- Empowers the Superior Court of Justice to grant injunctions to prevent contraventions.
- Allows police officers to arrest individuals without a warrant if they believe an offence has been committed or is being committed.
- Specifies that the Act comes into force on the day it receives Royal Assent.
- Religious institutions (defined as buildings or structures primarily used for religious worship, including churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, or cemeteries).
- Individuals seeking to access religious institutions.
- Individuals who may engage in activities around religious institutions.
- Police officers.
- The Superior Court of Justice.
- Individuals are prohibited from certain activities within a 150-metre access zone of a religious institution, such as advising people to refrain from accessing the institution, persistently requesting them to refrain, observing the institution or people entering/leaving to dissuade them, physically interfering with them, intimidating them, repeatedly approaching/accompanying/following them, or engaging in threatening conduct.
- Individuals are prohibited from repeatedly communicating by telephone, fax, or electronic means to dissuade someone from accessing a religious institution after being asked to stop.
- Individuals who suffer a loss due to a contravention of the prohibitions have a right to sue for damages.
- Individuals may be arrested without a warrant by a police officer if the officer believes, on reasonable and probable grounds, that an offence has been committed or is being committed under the Act.
- The Act comes into force on the day it receives Royal Assent.
- Individuals found guilty of an offence face fines: up to $5,000 or up to six months imprisonment for a first offence, and between $1,000 and $10,000 or up to one year imprisonment for a second or subsequent offence.
- Contravention of section 3 (prohibitions in access zones) is an offence.
- Penalties include fines and/or imprisonment, with escalating penalties for subsequent offences.
- The Superior Court of Justice can grant injunctions to restrain contraventions.
- Police officers have the power to arrest without a warrant individuals believed to have committed or be committing an offence under the Act.
- A person cannot be convicted of an offence unless they knew, or were given notice of, the location of the relevant access zone before the contravention occurred.
- The specific details regarding how 'notice' of an access zone will be provided are not detailed in the bill.
- The bill does not specify the exact nature of 'threatening conduct' or 'persistent requests' beyond the examples provided.
- The bill does not specify which police forces or authorities will be responsible for enforcement, beyond granting general arrest powers.
The Act will come into force on the day it receives Royal Assent.
Source: Section 10
Generated using AI from official bill text. Not legal advice. It is written by PoliticalData.ca for civic education, automatically checked and spot-reviewed before publishing.
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Vote Summary
This bill is still active. We only show vote counts after the legislature publishes a recorded division.
No published representative vote breakdown
This bill is still moving through the process. When a recorded division is published, representative positions can be listed here.
Official sources
Status, sponsor, votes, and timeline on this page are drawn from these official legislative sources and public records. Each summary above is attributed to its own source.
How this data is sourced