Proposed change in Bill C-9 risks silencing lawful religious expression.
TORONTO— The government has recently tabled Bill C-9 to significantly expand its state censorship powers, creating a category of "hate motivated" offences, criminalizing additional hate symbols, and redefining "hatred" to include a wider range of speech deemed hateful. TDF opposes Bill C-9 in its entirety and remains opposed to hate speech laws, generally, as impractical, superfluous and incoherent.
Currently, s.319 of the Criminal Code includes an important exemption for "hate speech:" no one can be convicted of wilful promotion of hatred if "in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text."
In a deeply troubling development, the government has now accepted an amendment to Bill C-9 from the Bloc Quebecois to remove the religious exemption for criminalized speech. While the Supreme Court in a case called R. v. Keegstra upheld the constitutionality of s.319 as a reasonable limit on speech, it stated that the religious exemption thereunder is an important feature to ensure that religious speech does not become criminalized. TDF warns that removing the religious exemption, while simultaneously broadening the definition of "hatred," will empower prosecutors to charge anyone publicly discussing controversial religious beliefs.
TDF litigation director, Mark Joseph, said: "Removing defences to speech crimes while radically expanding the definition of 'hate speech' sets the government on a dangerous path to prosecute believers such as orthodox Jews, evangelical Christians, conservative Muslims, Sikhs and religious dissidents. The threat of such prosecutions will chill religious speech so that even the public discussion of traditional religious beliefs will become legally perilous. Censorship deprives all citizens - religious and non-religious alike - of the ability to hear, discuss, criticize and form their own opinions on important ethical and religious topics."
About The Democracy Fund:
Founded in 2021, The Democracy Fund (TDF) is a Canadian charity dedicated to constitutional rights, advancing education and relieving poverty. TDF promotes constitutional rights through litigation and public education. TDF supports an access to justice initiative for Canadians whose civil liberties have been infringed by government lockdowns and other public policy responses to the pandemic.