I'm Glenn Gilmour, legal counsel with the criminal law policy section of the Department of Justice. I work with Mr. Breithaupt.
The terms “promotion” and “advocating” are terms that have been judicially interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada. Promoting was examined by the Supreme Court of Canada in the well-known case of R. v. Keegstra. Advocacy was looked at by the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of Sharpe, which I think dealt with obscenity.
In both of those, the Supreme Court interpreted those particular terms to mean active encouragement. Active encouragement is also the actus reusof counselling. We don't see any difference between promoting and advocacy and counselling, but counselling is well known. There are very few cases involving the wilful promotion of hatred offences, for example, compared with the number for counselling offences in the Criminal Code.
It was felt that to be clearer in law and to avoid the confusion and avoid the possible misinterpretation that advocacy or promotion is broader than what counselling is meant to be, we moved to the well-known concept of counselling in criminal law in Bill C-59.