Justice Committee on May 9th, 2019

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Mr. Virani and Mr. Boissonnault, who are splitting their time, beginning with Mr. Virani.

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Thank you.

We're going to take three minutes each, so I'm going to ask all my questions at once.

I'll start by saying as-salaam alaikum and shalom. Thank you very much for being here. Your work is incredibly important.

I want to thank the witnesses from Quebec.

What you experienced in Quebec City was a disaster and a terrorist crime. Your leadership is greatly appreciated across Canada.

Your advocacy is critical. Know that. We respect your work and its thoroughness.

Know that your advocacy leads us to good places, but somewhat sad places. When you talk about the security infrastructure fund quadrupling in two years, that's a good thing, but it's a sad state of affairs if we're talking about fortifying places of worship. Know that we incorporate your work into our national anti-racism strategy development and into the $45 million anti-racism secretariat that we announced this year.

But more needs to be done, clearly, so I'm going to ask you a series of questions. If possible, try to get through them in about two minutes.

First, if section 13 isn't a perfect tool, could it be remedied simply by some sort of clause attached as a rider, to the effect that nothing in the aforementioned clauses is intended to derogate from an individual's constitutional right to freedom of expression, protected under section 2(b) of the charter? Would that be sufficient?

Second is digital literacy. Seven million dollars has already been dedicated to this, but how much more needs to be dedicated?

Third is empowering complaints. Some of you received complaints because Jews or Muslims, or black or indigenous Canadians feel more comfortable going to civil society groups of their own kith and kin, rather than going to law enforcement. How do we leverage that?

Fourth, can you supply us with a definition of hatred? You're not the first witnesses to come before us and talk about this.

[Bernie M. Farber]

I'll deal with the last question first.

The Supreme Court has already established two excellent definitions of hatred: Rothstein in Whatcott, and the Dickson definition in Keegstra, which I still think is the best. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. It's already there. Both of them say the same thing in different words. Look at it. I can't think of anybody else who's going to come up with a better definition of hatred.

On section 13, let me emphasize that I don't think there is anything wrong with section 13. I'm backed up by the Supreme Court of Canada, which found not once but twice, that it is perfectly constitutional. It may leave some people uncomfortable, but murder and hatred leave me even more uncomfortable. If it leaves a few people uncomfortable, tough luck. I think we have to have what we have to have. It's constitutional.

We spend so much time reinventing the wheel, it makes me crazy. I wake up every day wondering what the next hate act is going to be, and inevitably something shows up. I tear my hair out, because we have the tools. You've taken away some of them. Give them back to us. Give it back to society. Help protect society. Don't go tinkering.

It's okay. If the Supreme Court didn't think it was okay, they would have told you so. Twice they said it's okay. They're giving us a message here, folks. Let's bring it back.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

We're at the three-minute mark.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank my colleagues and the witnesses.

By the way, I would like to point out that I'm the first openly gay member of Parliament elected in Alberta at the federal level. For me, that's an example of progress. It should also be noted that Edmonton is the location of the country's first mosque, the Al Rashid Mosque.

My colleagues from Quebec City, how do you feel when the leader of a political party here in Canada responds publicly to a terrorist attack that killed Muslims in New Zealand, but doesn't mention the faith of the victims?

Is it important to you that political party leaders mention people and their faith in the event of these types of terrorist acts?

[Seifeddine Essid]

I don't think that the attacker's faith should be a key element, because it could lead to a generalization. We've been fighting against this ourselves.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I'm talking about the faith of the people who were killed.

[Seifeddine Essid]

Yes, I understand. However, I want to address the second part of your question. I understand the caution against concluding that the crime is a hate crime. However, we know that some people are targeted because of their sexual orientation, religious choice or ethnicity. Unfortunately, the facts support this. I think that we need to provide clear information when we clarify these facts. We must say that the crime happened in a mosque. It wasn't a shopping centre or a park, but a mosque. We must provide the context, without drawing—

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Sorry for interrupting you, but I have only one minute left.

Thank you.

Mr. Farber, we all have to be held to high standards of conduct.

I have a question for you. How do you feel, and what kind of tacit support does it lend, when a leader of a political party attends an event for whatever great intent at the outset, but an event that is well known to be infiltrated by the self-described Canadian yellow vest movement, which has promoted violence against elected officials and has anti-immigration rhetoric?

[Bernie M. Farber]

We have always stated at the Canadian Anti-Hate Network that leaders have to lead. It's as simple as that.

I have no problem with the leader of the opposition attending the convey and giving out his message. I think that it was important for politicians to do that. I deeply regret that he had an ideal opportunity, in my view, to point out and to call out the racists, and there were many. There were about 200 on the Hill. Almost one-third were involved with the yellow vest movement, and many of them were engaged in horrible racist rhetoric. They knew it. The leader knew it because we got that information to him. All we needed to hear was for him, or if it was Mr. Singh or Mr. Trudeau....

When they are confronted by racists and they know racists are around.... My father used to say that if you want to get something done, if you want to tell somebody something, you have to open a mouth. He has to open a mouth. Leaders have to open a mouth.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

And he has.

[Bernie M. Farber]

He did not then.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Mr. Farber, you're well out of time.

[Bernie M. Farber]

I'm sorry. Thank you.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the witnesses. Your testimony was very helpful.

We'll suspend for a minute and commence with the next round.

Thank you.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

I call the meeting back to order. We are going to begin with our next panel.

I want to welcome the next panel to the justice committee, continuing with our study of online hate.

As we traditionally do, we're going to go to those who are appearing via video conference first, in case we run into technical difficulties. We have one witness appearing via video conference, namely Robert Dennis, assistant professor in the department of religious studies at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Welcome. You have eight minutes.

[Dr. Robert Dennis, Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Prince Edward Island, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to the committee for the opportunity to appear this morning.

Recent events in New Zealand and Sri Lanka show how hate is not confined to the electronic world but very much that online hate can and does translate into [Technical difficulty—Editor] and real-world consequences. Sometimes the electronic world and the virtual world are not separate.

I'm a tenured member of the religious studies department at the University of Prince Edward Island, where I teach courses on the Catholic intellectual tradition, and I have, specifically, a specialization in Catholic social teaching.

I want to talk to you for a few moments about online hate as faced by Christians, particularly Roman Catholics, and give you some sense of the discord between Catholic social teaching and the liberal [Technical difficulty—Editor].

Most research shows that the majority of Canadians who identify themselves as Catholic do so as what we would call a limited identity, meaning it is one identity of many that can be other identities and the values of other identities. In short, the lion's share of Roman Catholics—Canadian Catholics—are cultural Catholics and are, otherwise, as secular as most other Canadians holding [Technical difficulty—Editor], as has been the Canadian tradition since the 1840s.

Catholics who are most affected by online hate, I would suggest, are the much smaller segment of Canadian Roman Catholics who take their faith—and I mean here, the knowledge and the tenets of Catholic social teaching—very seriously. These Catholics tend to be pro-life. They tend to hold traditional understandings of marriage, of the family, of gender identity, etc.

There are some people who may look upon these positions as, themselves, being incompatible with liberal values in Canadian society. What's overlooked in moments is that the right to conscience is a foundational value of the liberal and democratic tradition, and sometimes it's these values that come into conflict.

Let me show you, just for a moment, how this conflict can play out in the online world, whether it be through online platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, etc., or simply using electronic media. I'm going to draw an example from the U.S. context to show how this analysis relates to Catholics experiencing online hate.

In recent months, Brian Sims, a Democratic member of Pennsylvania's House of Representatives in the 182nd district, has been doxing Catholics. In many cases these tend to be people who are elderly, who tend to be teenagers, who were quietly praying the rosary outside of Planned Parenthood clinics in Philadelphia. The representative offered cash in exchange for the identities and the coordinates of these individuals who, in the U.S. context, were expressing their constitutionally protected right to assembly.

Moreover, the representative was filming these encounters and broadcasting them live on Twitter, with [Technical difficulty—Editor] threats such as “Bring it, Bible Bullies”, “You are bigots”, “You are sexist”, “You are misogynists”.

What we see in many cases is a conflict about what are deemed to be the essential values of particular systems. The liberal tradition, as you well know, is dedicated to a form of possessive individualism that privileges one's ability to control their body, their own individuality in a conceptual sense, whereas Catholic social teaching is dedicated to the family, the family being the smallest unit in society. Therefore, that brings into question questions of life, of marriage and of the family.

I would like to underscore that the health of a liberal democracy is predicated upon the ability of people of goodwill to disagree about fundamental questions. I submit here that questions of life are the most fundamental. People—in this case I'm talking about the small segment of Catholics described in my introduction—expressing opposition to dominant value systems need protection. It's healthy for a political system to have these conversations without the fear of repercussions, reprisals, online—

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Professor Dennis, you have one more minute.

[Dr. Robert Dennis]

I would underscore, first, that this group needs protection, and second, that the mere value of [Technical difficulty—Editor] are in no way forms of online hate.

Thank you very much.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much, Professor.

We'll now move to Mr. Greg Oliver and Leslie Rosenblood from the Canadian Secular Alliance.

You have eight minutes.

[Leslie Rosenblood, Policy Advisor, Canadian Secular Alliance]

Good morning. My name is Leslie Rosenblood and my colleague is Greg Oliver. We are here on behalf of the Canadian Secular Alliance. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to come before you and speak today.

The Canadian Secular Alliance is a non-partisan and registered not-for-profit organization whose mandate is to promote the separation of religion and state in Canada. Our goal today is to provide a robust defence of three core principles that are central to all liberal democracies: government neutrality in matters of religion, equality for all under the law, and free expression.

For government neutrality, people deserve protection from harm. Ideas do not warrant protection from criticism. This distinction is crucial to today's discussion and it is imperative that these are not conflated. Assaults on religious people must be deterred, prevented and prosecuted. But just as Canada's political parties can and do vigorously attack each other's platforms and proposals, criticism of religious tenets, no matter how vitriolic, must be fully permissible.

Religious beliefs are ideas and should not be treated any differently from other philosophical doctrine: political, economic, philosophical or otherwise. Attacking the ideas in a book should never be considered equivalent to an attack on the people who revere those words.

For equal protection under the law, it would be ludicrous for the law to treat two, say, burglars differently based on which party they voted for in the previous election, yet our Criminal Code today does something analogous where the wilful promotion of hatred is concerned. Religious individuals are given preferential treatment under the law.

Paragraph 319(3)(b) of the Criminal Code exempts a person who would otherwise be subject to an indictable offence, if their hate speech is “based on a belief in a religious text”. This is a clear violation of the principle of state neutrality in matters of religion. The harm suffered from vulnerable persons and groups is identical whatever the motivation of the hate monger. The Canadian Secular Alliance recommends that Canada repeal paragraph 319(3)(b) of the Criminal Code.

The majority opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada wrote last year that:

Accommodating diverse beliefs and values is a precondition to the secularism and the pluralism that are needed to protect and promote the Charter rights of all Canadians. State neutrality requires that the state neither favour nor hinder any particular belief, and the same holds true for non-belief. Either way, state neutrality must prevail.

Our legislature also recognizes that treating religious ideas as a form of thought warranting special treatment is detrimental to society and obsolete, as demonstrated by the repeal of Canada's blasphemous libel law last year. This action was a significant step forward. Our country should not retreat from its commitment to humanitarian values that apply equally to all Canadians.

For free speech, while legitimate constraints to unfettered speech exist—including libel, impersonation, threats and incitement to violence— any exceptions must be limited, well-defined and serve the public interest. Any proposal that seeks to further limit free expression must pass a high burden of proof in order to counter legitimate concerns about overreach, ambiguity and selective enforcement.

Therefore, the goal of hate speech laws must be to protect individuals from physical harm. However, they rarely achieve this aim. After studying the issue in many countries, Human Rights Watch stated that “there is little connection in practice between draconian 'hate speech' laws and the lessening of ethnic and racial violence or tension". The same conclusion was reached by the European Parliament and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The key problem with hate speech laws is that hate speech is impossible to define in such a way as to meet the twin goals of targeting a significant portion of unacceptable expression while respecting the principle of free speech.

If the scope is very narrow and specific, any new law will have a minimal impact on Canadian public discourse, but a broadly worded act would necessarily encompass much speech protected by section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Additionally, in many countries, including established democracies, hate speech laws have often been disproportionately enforced against members of the very minority groups they were designed to protect.

Overly broad hate speech laws also have a non-trivial chilling effect on all public criticism. The Supreme Court has described “hatred” as speech “that is likely to expose” people to “hatred or contempt”, “unusually strong and deep felt emotions of detestation, calumny and vilification”, and “enmity and extreme ill-will...which goes beyond mere disdain or dislike.”

How can a person know whether their strong negative opinion of a person or group will be considered “disdain”, which is permissible, or “detestation”, which is punishable? ln a dissenting opinion on the Keegstra case, Supreme Court Justice McLachlin wrote, the “sanction of the criminal law may pose little deterrent to a convinced hate-monger who may welcome the publicity it brings; it may, however, deter the ordinary individual.”

Hate speech laws leave three options for those inclined to engage in hateful, discriminatory speech: one, taking the forbidden expression underground; two, couching their ideas in more subtle rhetoric to evade punishment; or three, leaving the message unchanged or perhaps ramped up to make it even more provocative as the speakers seek the publicity that results from prosecution. Perhaps that is why Canada has so rarely invoked its existing hate speech law.

With the increasing prevalence of social media in the lives of Canadians, the CSA recognizes that the way we communicate and connect with each other has changed and new challenges have emerged. The CSA will defer to other experts for appropriate remedies. We urge the government to avoid the fallacious reasoning of “we must do something and this is something; therefore, we must do it.”

We urge this committee to maintain its commitment to crucial charter values of free speech and equality for all under the law. This can only be realized when government neither supports nor suppresses religious expression but remains neutral.

Thank you.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Rosenblood.

Now we'll turn to Andrew Bennett from the Cardus Religious Freedom Institute.

Mr. Bennett, you have eight minutes.

[Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett, Director, Cardus Religious Freedom Institute]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's a pleasure for me to appear before the committee this morning as you continue to consider how we as a society should address the growing scourge of online hate.

To begin, let me say that as a Catholic I believe that the government has a necessary and essential role in upholding public order, dispensing justice, protecting citizens, and ultimately promoting the common good, which has as its end human flourishing. Therefore, it is right and appropriate to have criminal penalties against those in society who would advocate measurable objective harm against others, including through openly advocating hatred. Additionally, the government must respect and uphold fundamental freedoms, including freedom of religion and conscience, and freedom of expression, so as to ensure that Canadians might exercise their inherent freedoms to the maximum extent, all subject to such limits that are demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The reach of online hate is extensive and its pernicious effects on targeted communities seem to increase day by day. The dissemination of online hate, whether it has its origin inside or outside of Canada, must be arrested and its capacity to incite dramatically curtailed so as to prevent further hate-inspired, violent acts.

Government, and all of us as citizens, must be able to recognize genuine hatred in which the dignity of the human person is grossly debased and physical violence is promoted, yet at the same time, such measures must bear in mind the role of government in defending and upholding genuine freedom of expression where such expression does not advocate or incite violent acts. Government must work together with communities to ensure an environment in which genuinely expressed and often profound differences in belief and opinion are countenanced and respected.

I'm aware that the committee has already heard from many expert witnesses, including those from communities who are often the targets of online hate, and has received specific recommendations on how both the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code could be amended in response to the deeply worrying trends we are witnessing. There are other witnesses more qualified than me to offer detailed recommendations on legislative changes, so with your permission, I'd like to focus my remarks to the committee today on how we as a society might understand online hate and on what needs to change at the level of our common life if we are to effectively check its pernicious spread.

We must be able as a society to distinguish between genuine hatred and those beliefs and opinions with which we profoundly disagree but which are expressed by our fellow Canadians in good faith and without any intent to violently target a particular group.

By way of illustration, last night I enjoyed some wonderful conversation with my good friend Rabbi Mendel Blum over some very fine single malt. I profoundly disagree with Rabbi Blum's rejection as a faithful Orthodox Jew of the Christian theology of the Incarnation, the Resurrection and our belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the promised Messiah, and Rabbi Blum disagrees with me.

My Christian belief is so fundamental to my entire life, it is the lens through which I see all things and this leads me to disagree profoundly with my non-Christian neighbours, but I don't hate them. Quite the contrary, I love them and I will defend until the end of my days their freedom to reject what I believe and to say so publicly, including online. How then do we continue to foster such a climate of encounter in the midst of the violent hate we see?

I'd like to use the rest of my time today to move beyond what are necessary discussions around statutory amendments.

Hate in the Internet age is especially diabolical because the hate is expressed and disseminated in an utterly dehumanizing and depersonalizing manner. Let me expand.

What is hate? Hate has been around since humanity's origins. Hate is prideful anger. Hate is the absence of truth. Hate is the absence of love. As a Christian, I believe that humanity fell from grace when through that first sin described in the book of Genesis we, in our pride, put ourselves above God and debased our human nature, leading to sin, corruption and death. I also believe as a Christian that through the message of salvation brought by Jesus Christ and through his life-giving passion, death and resurrection, that sin, corruption and death were conquered and we were restored to our true nature in Jesus Christ.

As a Christian, I believe with all the fabric of my being that every person is created, lives on this earth and dies bearing the image and likeness of God. This image and likeness is the source of our universal and objective human dignity.

At the very centre of our vocation in the world is the mission we bear to see in all people that image and likeness, and to love what we encounter there—to love the human person we behold before us. That dignity is intrinsic and not about external propriety. That dignity is borne by all, even and one might say most especially by those with whom we profoundly disagree. We must see that dignity. That dignity demands a response of love.

Beyond the necessary measures in the Criminal Code, government needs to find ways to enable and support attempts being undertaken by Canadians to build genuine community. As a society, we need to be able to distinguish genuine disagreement in belief and opinion, which can be profound, where no measurable objective harm is intended.

In accepting that genuine disagreement will exist, we must give it a broad range in the public square, and at the same time, reject hate that incites physical violence, objectively harms another person and fundamentally violates their dignity. When encountering online hate, it is absolutely imperative to ensure there is robust public dialogue between persons who hold fundamentally different beliefs, and that this dialogue is a personal dialogue, where we encounter each other face to face.

Government must make a greater effort, through an all-of-government approach, to promote and encourage public dialogue between different world views and belief systems, thereby advancing the common good and promoting human flourishing.

The Government of Canada must lead by example, through greater co-operation with faith and other belief communities, encouraging us to meet each other in the public square, to encounter one another as citizens with diverse beliefs and thereby develop a deep pluralism. The public square must not be a gated community where we push out certain genuinely held, non-violent beliefs and opinions that we disagree with. Government must absolutely refrain from any action that would marginalize people for their peacefully held and exercised beliefs.

In this context, state-sponsored legislation and measures such as Bill 21, currently before the Quebec National Assembly, are diametrically opposed to a deep and robust pluralism where difference is respected and recognized in the public square. These measures to privatize religious belief, or even non-religious belief, would actively suppress difference and generally expressed public faith, and counteract efforts to promote human dignity, which I spoke of above.

In conclusion, government must exercise both its roles in combatting online hate through robust criminal prosecution and, at the same time, by facilitating open public debate and engagement between different beliefs and opinions, thereby championing human dignity and advancing justice.

Thank you for your attention.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you very much, Father Bennett and to all the witnesses.

We'll now move to a round of questions, starting with Mr. Barrett.

Mr. Barrett, you have six minutes.

[Michael Barrett, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville—Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I just want to go back to Mr. Boissonnault's comments from the previous round. I'll read a few excerpts from Hansard from April 8 of this year.

The Honourable Andrew Scheer said:

We will always denounce those who promote hateful ideologies while we stand up for energy workers who are fighting for their jobs.