The Supreme Court, in the Whatcott decision, said that having a hate speech provision in the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code was one way a government could combat hate speech and so on, but it did not say that it was a necessary provision. So it's not that it's constitutionally obligatory for a government to have a hate speech provision. I would say that this is what the Supreme Court was pretty clear on.
That said, I think that even post-Whatcott, the better policy decision is to not be policing expression, even Whatcott-style expression, because it does not rise to the level of violence. It doesn't rise to the level of the types of things that have triggered this very hearing.
I do not defend Mr. Whatcott's way of expressing himself at all, but he's a person who is trying to engage in a public policy debate. He's doing it poorly, but that's what he's trying to do. Also, his engagement is particularly around political speech, and of all free speech, political speech is the most important to protect. We can quibble about whether or not the Supreme Court got it right, but I think it's playing a very fine line around that freedom of political expression.
I can share with the committee, as well, a peer-reviewed journal article I've published with a law professor from Osgoode Hall on the Whatcott decision and on how we think the Supreme Court got it wrong.