American leadership on international religious freedom (IRF) has produced institutional and policy innovations, scholarship, and practical training that has paid dividends in other countries, including Canada, which has recently set up an IRF Office within its department of foreign affairs. Canada can learn a great deal retrospectively from the American experience. The single most important challenge for the Canadian Office is one that continues to persist also for the American Office: how to move religious freedom beyond a mere human rights issue and into a sustained and serious expertise on religion in global affairs at the disposal of diplomacy, defence, and development.