Quebec Human rights Commissioner Jacques Frémont has proposed a law to prevent and combat hate speech and any speech inciting violence. The law would allow Quebec’s Human Rights Commission or members of the public to initiate a ‘hate speech’ lawsuit against anyone who makes a statement considered discriminatory against a group.
The bill would also authorize the commission to investigate people alleged to have uttered hate speech. Those convicted of promoting hate would be fined up to $20,000 and their names would be made public and posted indefinitely online.
The bill is in response to Muslim complaints of “Islamophobia” and anti-Muslim hate speech. The bill pertains to personal, subjective, emotional responses that an individual has to something that he reads, hears, or encounters. It is aimed at individuals, not groups and fails to define what “hate speech” is, thereby having no standard by which it can be measured. The bill leaves the door wide open for prosecution.
Though the bill is defended on the basis that it would protect democracy against terrorism, critics say the bill flies in the face of the most basic human and civil rights, and the sanctity of free speech. Plus it is actually a threat to democracy and Western values. Public interest, the truth, facts or even intentions are no defense.
Even worse, the decision for conviction is left up to the Human Rights Commission tribunal, overriding federal laws that require a determination of guilt “beyond reasonable doubt.”
Canada’s federal criminal code already calls for imprisonment (up to two years) for anyone who incites hatred against any identifiable group. Moreover, the Code defined “hate propaganda” as advocating or promoting genocide, inciting hatred against an identifiable group [that is] likely to lead to a breach of the peace,’ or ‘willfully’ promoting hatred against such a group… And an accused can’t be convicted ‘if the statements were relevant to any subject of public interest, the discussion of which was for the public benefit, and if on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true” But the new bill makes no such provisions.
Placing convicted individuals on public record could be dangerous should anyone seek retribution. There have already been thirteen honor killings in thirteen years in Canada.
Opposition to the bill is growing and the measure seems to have little chance of passing. But “it’s fair to expect that it will be amended to answer the objections of many opponents,” says Pierre Trudel, a lawyer and professor of law at the University of Montréal.
If the bill is passed, it will have a significant chilling effect on speech. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
Every principle of freedom will be eroded and repudiated in the last days. See Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, page 451
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