Evidence of meeting #9 for Justice and Human Rights in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was c-9.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Professor, As an Individual
I believe they should be maintained. My reason for saying that is if prosecutions were initiated on the basis of religious speech, I think it might very well infringe upon the guarantees of religious freedom in the charter.
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
I'll ask you another question I asked earlier.
I'll quote the words spoken by Adil Charkaoui in Montreal in October 2023: “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!”
In your opinion, does that statement promote hatred? Should such a statement be allowed on Canadian soil?
Professor, As an Individual
I think it's certainly capable of inciting hatred. I'm not positive that you can restrict the speech phrased in the form of a prayer without running into the guarantees of the charter or freedom of religion.
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I understand you correctly, such statements should be permitted under existing laws. Is that right?
Professor, As an Individual
I believe that, under the legislation in force, it would be allowed, and I think changing that would bring us into some difficult constitutional issues.
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
I have 30 seconds left, so I'll ask one last question.
Is it a good thing that the Attorney General's consent is required to institute proceedings for hate crimes? Should that requirement remain in place, or would it be better to remove it, as proposed in Bill C‑9?
Professor, As an Individual
It's a bad idea to take out the requirement that the attorney general approved these prosecutions, because they are so particularly sensitive that there should be some political accountability for authorizing them.
Liberal
October 23rd, 2025 / 4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
Professor Pardy, do you think lowering the threshold for what constitutes hate speech and the removal of the requirement for attorney general consent opens the way for potentially politically motivated prosecutions?
Conservative
Professor of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
Well, it's because you will have a criminal provision that is completely uncertain in its meaning. The people who are out there on the street will have no conception about where the line is between things that are okay and things that are not. You don't have a check on political decisions, as Professor Alford just alluded to. You basically have an open book.
If you have the political wherewithal or the means to direct certain outcomes, certain prosecutions or certain initiatives, then of course that's what you'll do. That is a poor way to construct the law. You are asking for trouble instead of trying to design the law so as to prevent the possibility of that kind of outcome.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
Professor Pardy, we had Bill C-11, Bill C-18 and Bill C-63 in the previous Parliament. Now we have Bill C-9. What do you think it is with this Liberal government, which has been in power for over 10 years now, and their general aversion to free expression and persistent attempts to restrict free speech in Canada?
Professor of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
There does seem to be a determination to make sure that the government is the one supervising people's speech. I would like to emphasize a distinction that I alluded to earlier, which is that the proper restriction on speech, in my books, is one that distinguishes between violence and speech that is not violent. It's perfectly adequate to limit speech by saying that you cannot use speech to threaten violence. That makes sense. We have those laws already. We've had them for a long time. But all these legislative initiatives, especially Bill C-63, which for my money was the worst of the lot, including Bill C-9, are attempting to cross this threshold: Even if violence is not involved, even if you are not threatening violence, you're still not allowed to say certain things, because we don't like it.
That's where you get into dangerous territory with freedom of speech. That begins to mean that your guarantee, your constitutional guarantee, of free speech is not that at all. You can just compare the Canadian state on this with the situation in the United States. I mean, in both countries we have a constitutional guarantee of free speech. In the United States, the government is not allowed constitutionally to limit speech that here would be called hate speech. Hate speech is not a thing in the U.S., because the courts have said that it is protected speech. Yet here we've ended up in a situation, in the legislation you're alluding to, where the government is trying here, there and everywhere to try to limit how people talk.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
Professor, what do you foresee as the worst-case scenario of this bill should it pass? What is the slippery slope? Could we see people being arrested for anti-social media posts? Could we see political opponents?
I have to bring up this hate speech thing. We have Liberal members of Parliament who have accused Jordan Peterson of hate speech and who have accused the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk of hate speech. By making this accusation and then putting forward a bill like C-9, are they not essentially calling for their political opponents to be jailed?
Professor of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
Yes—well, potentially, anyway. I mean, you wouldn't want to make that accusation without some concrete information, but essentially, yes, you could see happening in Canada the kind of thing that has been happening in the U.K., where the police are sent out on missions to crack down on people saying dangerous things online. That is not the situation you want in a country that claims to be free. You do not want a political role in determining what people can say. The Jordan Peterson case is an excellent example.
Conservative
Aaron Gunn Conservative North Island—Powell River, BC
Professor Alford, I have 30 seconds left for you.
You talked about the potential for this bill to violate the charter and to be struck down. I did a documentary on free speech a couple of years ago. There was a 5-4 decision that almost basically fined a comedian for telling a joke. How confident are you in the current makeup of Canada's Supreme Court to uphold free expression rights in Canada?
Professor, As an Individual
The Ward decision that you alluded to would have completely changed the framework for the evaluation of reasonable limitations on freedom of speech. It was extremely troubling to see that it was considered a close question by a number of the justices.
I would really have strong fears that, were this to come to the Supreme Court of Canada that they would re-evaluate that framework with the idea of balancing freedom of speech against some other compelling objective, it would really be fundamentally dangerous to the democratic accountability and legitimacy of the government, and indeed our constitutional state.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to jump in and say a couple of things before I ask some questions.
The first is that there's been a comment that there wasn't consultation. I know there has been substantial consultation on this bill that has been done not only by the current minister, but also by the previous minister of justice. There have been discussions with faith communities across the country, including the Muslim community. I'm not saying that there's always been sufficient consultation, but there certainly has been consultation.
I have also heard the argument about the United States. Of course, the United States, as I'm sure Professor Pardy would acknowledge, doesn't have section 1 of their charter that limits freedom of speech. The right in section 2 is limited in a way that it wouldn't be in the United States, and I think we would agree on that.
I'd also note a comment from some of the Conservatives. I think it's important to remember that last December this committee issued a report in which we recommended the significant majority of the things that are in this bill, and the Conservative Party issued a limited dissent that didn't dissent on any of these points. I just want to put things into context.
Professor Pardy, you mentioned that people should be allowed to hate and allowed to say that they do hate. In a way, as long as they don't encourage violence, I guess people can hate. As long as they don't incite, I guess they're allowed to say that they hate. I don't disagree with you. We can morally say that's wrong.
For example, one of the things you once said was:
Canadians have been sold a bill of goods. Many of them think that they have a right to equal treatment under the law. They think that discrimination is illegal. But nothing could be farther from the truth. In Canada, discrimination is lawful as long as it is committed against the right groups—and in particular against straight white men.
I think we can both agree that many people might disagree with what you said there, but I don't know that you would argue that this bill would allow anyone to decide that it would be hate speech, would you? You wouldn't imply that this bill is going so far as to criminalize that type of speech, are you?
Professor of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
I'm sorry, to criminalize what kind of speech?
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
The speech like you made. The speech where you declared that, for example, straight white men were the ones who were discriminated against in Canada. You're not arguing that this type of law would stop you from saying that, are you?
Professor of Law, Queen's University, As an Individual
I don't think I would go quite that far.
What you read from is a legal analysis. If we get to a place in this country where doing a legal analysis is criminal, then we're in really bad shape. I wouldn't have jumped to there, no.
