Thank you.
I think that, obviously, these are transnational and global kinds of networks. I do think, though, that many other nations have taken it upon themselves to institute policies to curtail hate speech within their domain. I was trying to share, and have done in a full brief, what the Council of the European Union has come up with as recommendations and considerations from their vantage point of how they can successfully curtail hate speech. Some of those are going to be included in the larger brief.
One of the things I want to point out from those recommendations is that they recognize that criminal prohibitions are not, in themselves, sufficient to eradicate the use of hate speech and are not always appropriate, but nevertheless, they are convinced that such use should be, in certain circumstances, criminalized.
It is important to have a national policy in Canada, one that also creates codes of conduct. This was another area that the European policy covered for the self-regulation of public and private institutions, including elected bodies, political parties, educational institutions and cultural and sports organizations, as a means of combatting the use of hate speech. They encourage the adoption of appropriate codes of conduct that would provide for suspension and other sanctions for a breach of their provisions, as well as effective reporting channels.
I think those are helpful and instructive for the Canadian context. I think also, in tandem with that, is the recommendation that they have to withdraw financial and other forms of support by public bodies from political parties or other organizations that use hate speech or fail to sanction its use by their members, while respecting the right to freedom of association and the possibility of prohibiting or dissolving such organizations, regardless of whether they receive any support from public bodies where their use of hate speech is intended—