Hate Speech
What does it look like ?
Sections 318 and 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code - make it a criminal offence to publicly incite hatred and willfully promote hatred against an 'identifiable group.'
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Bill C—63 was introduced and passed its First Reading on February 26, 2024 contains various measures to address harmful content online and hate speech both online and offline.
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Part 3 of the Bill contemplates further regulation of social media services by permitting recourse to the Canadian Human Rights Commission against individual users who post hate speech on services and other online platforms.
This Bill will introduce new legislative and regulatory framework to reduce harmful content on social media platforms.
Let's talk about what constitutes hate speech
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Expressed in a public forum
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Targets a person or a group with protected characteristics such as race, religion or sexual orientation;
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Uses extreme language to express hatred towards that group or person because of their protected characteristics.
Some examples of the content of hate speech
Describing group members as subhuman or genetically inferior;
Denying, minimizing or celebrating past persecution or tragedies that happened to group members;
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While there is freedom of speech, this is not an absolute right, and reasonable limitations exist, and laws prohibit the "wilful promotion of hatred" and ' public incitement of hatred.'
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Noteworthy case law:
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R v Buzzanga and Durocher (1979) CanLii (ON CA)- one of the first cases to consider the offence. The accused were both French-Canadian during a heated debate in their Municipality about the construction of a school to be operated in French; they circulated a pamphlet containing anti-French-Canadian statements. Upon being charged with the offence of wilfully promoting hatred, their defence was that they circulated the pamphlet to expose prejudice in the community against French- Canadians. The Ontario Court of Appeal held it was not clear if they had 'wilfully' intended to promote hatred.
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R v Keegstra [1990] 3 SCR 697 - Major Supreme Court decision on the offence of promoting hatred. The accused was a high school teacher. In his social studies class, he taught his students extreme anti-Semitic views. The students were expected to repeat this. The accused was charged and argued that this infringed his freedom of expression under s. 2(b) of the Charter. He also challenged the requirement under s. 319(3)(a) that he was required to prove the truth of his statements as infringing his presumption of innocence as guaranteed by s. 11(d) of the Charter, he was successful at the Alberta Court of Appeal. However the Supreme Court by 4-3 dismissed his constitutional challenges. The offence of promoting hatred infringed the guarantee of freedom of expression but upheld the infringement as a reasonable limit under s.1 of the Charter.
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