Justice committee  “Likely to expose” is a way of defining what's being looked at. You have to characterize the speech. What is its tendency? What is its probable effect? We can't know the effect until after it's occurred. That's what's meant by “likely to expose”. Given the speech, given an anal

Justice committee  I don't think it would be a problem to add the words. It would not be a problem to be even more specific and explicit. Chief Justice Dickson interpreted what the words mean and what they can be used to mean in order to sustain the constitutionality of the provision. He set a ver

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  That's correct.

Justice committee  I believe that the perspective is the protection of society and the protection of the targets of the speech. So there are victims, certainly, if a specific group is singled out, is dehumanized, and is portrayed as having no redeeming virtues. This is, by the way, the definition t

Justice committee  No, because I'm not persuaded that your assumptions are correct. I'm not persuaded that we are dealing here with punishment and I'm not persuaded that this regulatory provision in this legislation is aimed at redressing harm already done to victims. To me, the better analogy is

Justice committee  If we're going to confine it to that question, I think yes.

Justice committee  That's really what I was trying to get at in some of my comments. It's probably useful to think again about the distinction as to what is intended to be accomplished. In a criminal offence, we intend to punish the offender. In remedial legislation, such as human rights codes an

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, members of the committee, for affording me this opportunity. Let me start out by specifying that I appear today as an individual, but I hope as an individual with some relevant background experience. I am the immediate past president of the C