Madam Speaker, Canadians are now very familiar with Václav Havel's greengrocer, who displays a sign in his window not because he believes it but because it is what one does, what is familiar and what is required.
In Davos, the Prime Minister talked about taking the sign out of the window. Today, I want to talk about how the sign got there in the first place, because Havel's parable was a warning, a warning about how democracy and freedom degrade when we create a society where people say what they are supposed to say, regardless of what they believe, and about the problems that arise when the only acceptable speech is narrowed to what is written on signs. As many of those who have immigrated to this great country will tell us, where there are signs in windows, the signs always start out fine. The problem is that there inevitably comes a time when the people in charge change the signs, and by the time they do, it is always too late. There is no more room for dissent, and the people who helped put up the signs find that they have become prisoners in the very system they helped build.
The problem is that when the signs first go up, people like them. They are reassuring. They create a sense of moral clarity for the majority whose views are reflected in them, but that comfort comes at an unacceptable cost. When societies begin rewarding the display of approved ideas instead of the honest exchange of them, something essential begins to erode. It surprises me that the government of a Prime Minister who invoked Havel's greengrocer would be allowed to do what it is doing today. Members should make no mistake about it. This motion and the sentiments behind it, along with the bill, are a giant sign in a very small window. That is where the real risks to our society begin.
If the story of Bill C-9 were a play, we would now be in the third act. In the first act, when the bill was introduced, I raised three serious concerns in the chamber, two of which have not been fixed in committee. The first is the vagueness of the bill's definition of hate. Criminal law must be clear and precise. When definitions are vague, they create uncertainty about what speech will be criminalized, and that creates an opportunity for weaponization outside of the criminal system. The second is the reality that the laws we already have in Canada to combat hate and incitement to violence on the basis of hate are not being enforced. Where provincial governments are unwilling or unable to enforce existing words, adding more words is not going to help.
The concerns I expressed were not Conservative. They are shared by a remarkably broad coalition of Canadians. Religious organizations and civil liberties groups from across the political spectrum have raised similar alarms. Groups as diverse as the United Church of Canada, the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the Christian Legal Fellowship, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the rabbinical council of Toronto all sounded the alarm about the bill's potential impact on freedom of expression and religious liberty. A rabbi, a priest and an imam literally approached the bar of the House of Commons, and the government ignored them. Despite those concerns, we moved the bill to committee because we agreed with its stated objectives. No one in the House supports hatred or violence directed at any community. Canadians expect Parliament to confront both.
That brings us to the second act. At committee, the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois amended the bill to remove the long-standing religious defence contained in section 319 of the Criminal Code. This defence protects statements made in good faith on a religious subject based on belief in a religious text. That is where everything went off the rails.
This defence has never protected the deliberate promotion of hatred or calls for violence. It exists to ensure that Canadians can express sincere religious beliefs without fear that their words could be criminalized simply because someone else finds them offensive. It also exists so that dialogue can happen that might cause people to change those views. When the Liberal-Bloc amendment passed, it immediately revealed the danger that many of us had warned about. Within hours, people online were celebrating the change and claiming that individuals could now be prosecuted for expressing traditional religious views. That is not what the law actually says, but the reaction illustrates the chilling effect that the amendment creates. It encourages the belief that the Criminal Code can now be used to silence views that people dislike.
Canada's legal tradition has long recognized the importance of state neutrality in matters of faith. Parliament included the religious defence in the hate propaganda provisions because it understood that criminal law must not be used to police religious doctrine. The state must not edit the Bible. Our courts have recognized that balance. In the Keegstra decision, the Supreme Court upheld Canada's hate propaganda laws in part because of the safeguards Parliament had included, including the protection for good-faith religious expression that the House now seeks to remove.
Parliament has revisited these provisions several times over the decades, as new groups were added to the Criminal Code. Each time, members across party lines concluded that protecting vulnerable communities and protecting freedom of religion must go hand in hand. Removing that safeguard continues to risk upsetting a constitutional balance that has been carefully managed for decades.
Then, during the parliamentary break, something interesting happened. The government began hearing from Canadians who did not want the sign in the window. Canadians from across the political and religious spectrum were alarmed at the direction the bill has taken. One might have expected the government to reflect and reconsider, but instead it decided to shut down debate on its own bill, just a few minutes ago, which brings us to the third act.
We are now debating Bill C-9 under time constraints because the government is determined to pass it quickly, even if that means passing it in a way that restricts our ability to continue to have dialogue about these topics in society. The irony is difficult to miss. When government seeks to expand the power of the state to regulate expression while restricting debate about those powers, Parliament should pause, because the danger is not only that the law might punish the wrong people. The deeper danger is that it may change how people speak to each other in the first place.
Canada can and must confront hatred, but criminal law must be precise, restrained and grounded in constitutional principles. I return to the very arguments I stood to make in the House in September, in the first act of the discussion on the bill. If we are serious about addressing hatred, I remain convinced and reiterate that the first step is to work with the provinces and municipalities to enforce the laws we already have. The Criminal Code already prohibits the wilful promotion of hatred and the incitement of violence. Those provisions should be applied consistently and effectively.
If real gaps exist, Parliament can address them, but any changes must be carefully drafted and respectful of the charter rights that define our country. What we should not do is expand vague criminal provisions, remove long-standing safeguards for religious expression and then rush the legislation through Parliament by shutting down debate. That approach does not strengthen public confidence in the law. It weakens it, for those who feel threatened.
A free society should never push its citizens toward the greengrocer's window where the safest choice is to display the approved message and keep one's real beliefs to oneself, and Parliament should never pass a law that risks creating that pressure in the first place.