Thank you, Mr. St‑Jacques.
There is something that does not appear in Bill C‑9 that I would like to talk about.
Currently, section 319 of the Criminal Code provides that no one shall promote hatred or incite hatred. However, there are two religious exceptions, as they have been called, which specify the cases in which “no person shall be convicted of an offence,” including where “in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.”
In your opinion, is this defence based on the religious exception likely to encourage a prosecutor, whether it be the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions in Quebec or the Attorney General of another province, not to allow legal action to be taken in cases such as that of Adil Charkaoui, which you may have heard about? About a year ago, last fall, Adil Charkaoui said: “Allah, do something about these Zionist aggressors. Allah, do something about the enemies of the people of Gaza. Allah, identify them all, then exterminate them. And spare none of them!” This was said publicly in Arabic. Many of us believe that this should have been prosecuted as hate propaganda. However, this did not happen.
In your opinion, could the religious exception found in section 319 of the Criminal Code have played a role in the Attorney General’s decision not to authorize prosecution?