VANCOUVER – Federal Court has dismissed a Buddhist man’s complaint that his right to spiritual guidance is being infringed in prison.

Kien Tan, who is serving a life sentence for murder, had made an application for judicial review of a Canadian Human Rights Commission decision.

Tan was convicted of second-degree murder in February 2011 and incarcerated at Kent Institution in Agassiz, B.C.

In December 2012, he complained that Correctional Service Canada was discriminating against him on the basis of religion after the federal government cut contracts with minority-faith chaplains.

Part-time contracts with 49 prison chaplains representing various religions were not renewed two months earlier, leaving mostly Christian chaplains to provide religious services for all inmates.

Positions for Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Wiccans and other minority faiths were scrapped, and the annual savings were estimated at $1.3 million.

The human rights commission refused to hear Tan’s case, saying in August 2013 that it didn’t have jurisdiction in the matter.

Tan was extradited in 2008 from Belgium, where he fled after his involvement in a murder in 2004. At the time, he was in Canada on a temporary visa.

The commission said Tan, who is a Malaysian citizen, is not considered “lawfully present” in Canada because he’s not a citizen, visitor or permanent resident and doesn’t have a minister’s permit.

Federal Court agreed on July 24.

“Its decision was reasonable,” wrote Justice Elizabeth Heneghan.

She found that a higher court had previously rejected the argument that status under the Human Rights Act should be granted to a non-citizen who’s legally imprisoned in Canada.

Heneghan also found no legal basis to support a charter challenge, and Tan has no further recourse for his complaint.

The minority-faith services contract was cut after a federal review spurred by former public safety minister Vic Toews, who cancelled a tender for a Wiccan chaplain after learning the position was being advertised.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version incorrectly reported agency’s name as Corrections Services Canada