By Elizabeth Black.
Canada’s House of Commons faces a final vote this month on a bill that would establish a hate crime offense in the criminal code. The measure would criminalize hate speech in public statements and through the display of some symbols, such as the Nazi swastika. The Canadian Senate voted 45-13 in favor of the bill on Thursday,
The House of Commons already approved the bill in March, but the Senate amended it to add the noose to its list of banned symbols. The noose represented lynching and white supremacy, senators said. If the lower chamber approves the change, Bill C-9 will take effect 30 days after it receives the formality of royal assent.
The bill also establishes criminal offenses for intimidating or impeding people trying to access certain types of buildings, including houses of worship or schools. Free speech and religious freedom advocates have expressed concerns about the bill’s wide definition of hatred—and the fact that it removes legal protections for religious statements made in good faith. Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen, a professing Christian convicted in her home country for hate speech, testified that the bill could harm religious and free speech rights.
How does the bill define hatred and hate crimes? Hatred is “an emotion of an intense and extreme nature that is clearly associated with vilification and detestation,” according to the bill’s text. The measure defines hate crimes as public statements that wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group of people.
What are Canadians saying about the bill? The Senate sponsor of the measure, Kristopher Wells, said that hate crimes had risen for the last six years and that the bill would protect a pluralistic society. He said that religious Canadians shouldn’t worry about the removal of the “good faith” protections for speech, because preaching and reading from religious texts didn’t fall under legal definitions of willfully inciting hatred.
But Senator David M. Wells argued that Canadian criminal law already contained provisions about hate propaganda, and it allowed hatred to be taken into account in sentencing for crimes. The new bill was overly vague and broad, and its enforcement would be uneven at best, he said. He also criticized the bill’s lack of clearly defined protections for religious expression.
The Assembly of First Nations National Chief denounced senators’ decision to leave out a provision that would criminalize refusal to acknowledge the history of Canada’s residential schools for indigenous children. Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak said that truth was essential for reconciliation and that the senators’ decision was a setback for survivors of the schools.
