Archbishop Shane Parker, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, has written an open letter asking the Canadian government to reconsider an amendment to an upcoming bill that would remove religion as a defence against hate speech charges— while other critics describe the bill itself as an attack on free speech.
The primate otherwise expressed his support for Bill C-9, which he described as intended to address a growing number of incidents involving hateful speech or conduct, including antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Parker said his concern is that removing protections for speech grounded in opinions on or interpretations of religious texts will introduce uncertainty about the legal boundaries of religious education and practice. It may also unintentionally “deter the kind of open and healthy discourse that is central to spiritual and religious communities—including some of the communities the Bill intends to protect,” he added.
Bill C-9, introduced by the minority Liberal government, proposes four new criminal offences that the Liberals say are designed to address hate-motivated crimes and protect access to religious and cultural spaces.
These offences criminalize intimidating behaviour intended to provoke fear and impede the target’s access to a place of worship or a building associated with a religious, cultural or other identifiable group; the intentional obstruction of such a site; and the display of certain hate or terrorist symbols in public for the promotion of hate.
The bill also creates an offence for hate crime, to be appended to charges for other crimes in cases where they are judged to be motivated by hate. It includes a definition of hate to be used in determining which offences would be subject to the additional charge.
Section 319 of The Criminal Code of Canada outlaws the promotion or incitement of hatred against any identifiable group of people and lays out acceptable defences against such charges. Among these is a clause that states, “No person shall be convicted of an offence … 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.” The Liberal government agreed to remove the religious defence as part of a deal to gain support for the bill from the Bloc Québécois.
Parker asked the government to reconsider the amendment and retain the defences currently laid out in the code. Bill C-9 has drawn criticism from both religious and secular organizations, including the Canadian Labour Congress, the Coalition for Charter Rights and Freedoms and Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV). The latter, a Jewish organization that frequently criticizes Israeli policies, wrote its own submission to Parliament in October.
Much of the discussion of the bill has described it as aimed at addressing antisemitism, the submission says. But IJV argues that many of the Jewish organizations MPs have cited as supporting the bill label almost any criticism of Israel as antisemitic. They use the accusation to scare and silence potential critics, IJV says.
The IJV submission uses the example of disagreements over what did or did not constitute antisemitic expression at the University of Toronto’s Palestine solidarity encampment to illustrate how the expressions Bill C-9 seeks to limit are not clear-cut.
Removing defences and further limiting criticism of religious institutions puts too much discretion in the hands of government and law enforcement to decide what constitutes prosecutable speech, it says.
Parliament’s Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights remains in the process of considering Bill C-9.
