Sean Feucht

American preacher-singer moves concert to Montreal after Quebec City pulls permit

Ruby Pratka, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

An American singer and preacher known for inflammatory statements against abortion, gay and transgender rights, pandemic-era public health restrictions and the principle of separation of church and state was unable to perform at ExpoCité last week after the Ville de Québec revoked a permit for the performance over hate speech concerns.

Sean Feucht, who rose to prominence in American evangelical circles in 2020 by holding crowded revivals in open defiance of COVID-19 restrictions, was supposed to hold a free outdoor event at ExpoCité on July 25 as part of a wider Canadian tour. However, the city pulled the plug two days beforehand.

“The presence of a controversial artist was not mentioned in the contract between ExpoCité and the promoter of the concert scheduled for its site this Friday. With the new information brought to its attention, ExpoCité has decided to terminate the contract and therefore the holding of the event on its site,” the city said in a brief statement.

A city official said the permit was granted to a third-party promoter who paid and signed a rental agreement to use the space, as is standard practice. They added that Feucht was not named on the rental agreement, and the city was initially unaware of who Feucht was. They said they were not in a position to comment further because the issue could end up in court. Similar concert-revivals which Feucht planned to hold on public property in Halifax, Charlottetown, Moncton and Vaughan, Ont., were also cancelled or moved to friendlier venues – often evangelical churches – after local officials pulled permits.

After the ExpoCité cancellation, Feucht moved the concert to an evangelical church in Montreal. The City of Montreal slapped the church, Église MR, with a $2,500 fine for hosting an unauthorized show. In a brief exchange with a Radio-Canada reporter, Feucht said he considered the event a church service rather than a concert, “and I don’t think you need a permit to worship inside a church.”

Feucht, a vocal supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, has referred to members of the LGBTQ+ community and those who advocate for LGBTQ+ inclusion and visibility as “groomers,” compared people who are in favour of access to abortion to “demons” and spoken out against state secularism, call- ing for the fusion of church and state.

“ExpoCité is a place where neighbourhood families gather; it’s an open space where a beautiful diversity of citizens come together to enjoy themselves in the park. Hate speech and intolerance have no place here,” said Limoilou Coun. Jackie Smith, whose riding includes ExpoCité. “The city should not make its spaces available to propaganda groups that insult our communities and seek to divide us based on our identities. We don’t want this hatred in our neighbourhoods.”

In a later interview, she acknowledged that deciding who can and cannot perform on public land according to their ideology is “an incredibly slippery slope,” but said it was important for public officials to take a stand against hate speech. “You don’t want to be accused of censorship or cancel culture, but at the same time, you want to create a public space that’s safe for everybody, so you need to make choices. Do we want to open up publicly funded spaces to allow people who are encouraging the violation of other people’s human rights?”

“As elected officials, we’re not allowed to use public spaces for partisan political activities,” she added. “This guy [Feucht] has a political message that I would describe as hateful, so the same rules need to apply to him and others like him.”

The Régroupement des femmes de la Capitale-Nationale, a feminist group that had been among the first to criticize plans for a Feucht concert on city land, said they were “not against freedom of expression” but believed the city had “made the right decision” by following in the footsteps of other Canadian cities and revoking the permit. “We invite [cities] to show more vigilance in the future.”

In a Facebook post on July 28, Feucht said he had returned to the U.S., and listed dates for events in several U.S. cities from Aug. 8-17. “Then back to Canada,” he wrote, using a Canadian flag emoji.