Thank you, Mr. Jean, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to all the analysts for your appearance here today.
I must say I am concerned, and perhaps disturbed, by each of your testimonies. I believe that any sense of government-regulated free speech is antithetical in a true, free, and democratic society. I think either you believe in free speech within reasonable limits, or you don't.
I'm going to start first with Mr. Toews, from the Canadian Bar Association. You outlined that one of the premises of your group is to uphold the rule of law. I couldn't agree more. I subscribe entirely to that subscription.
My question then is how you can defend a law that states it's an offence when somebody says something or communicates something that is, and I quote, “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt”.
You don't need actual victims. In somebody's mind it has to likely be contemptuous or hateful. Truthfulness, as noted, is not a defence to the person who is caught in the crossfire of the bureaucrats who are determining what is hateful and what is contemptuous. There are no actual victims and truth is no defence. We can get into the procedure of the human rights commissions, which allow hearsay evidence and no right to cross-examine, but we'll leave that aside.
How is it defensible that something can be hateful without actual victims?