Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-9, the anti-hate bill. I will start by saying that I hate the bill. I do not know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. Actually, I try not to hold hatred in my heart for any person, but I think when one sees really bad legislation, it is okay to hate it. This is really bad legislation because it has provoked a debate that pits people who should totally agree against each other. All of us in this place, whether Liberals, Conservatives, Bloc members or New Democrats, want to see an end to hatred in this country. We all see every day the dramatic increase in acts of hatred and anti-Semitism, particularly Islamophobia. It is racism. It is despicable. We stand against it, but Bill C-9 has gotten in the way in a way that ties us in knots and is making it more difficult to use the tools we already have, such as section 319 of the Criminal Code.
I will back up and say that I looked for the most recent statement, because there have been some amendments. I appreciate the amendment that says we would need the approval of an Attorney General to prosecute under this act, but that would not remedy the many faults of the bill. I looked for the most recent press release from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association to make sure its views had not changed as a result of recent amendments. It says this very clearly, and I am going to quote from their most recent release:
Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism are on the rise. Communities across this country are worried, and they deserve protection. But Bill C-9 doesn’t solve this complex issue. Instead, it hands the government a blunt instrument that history tells us will be turned against the very people it’s supposed to help.
Let me speak to what this is talking about. I oppose Bill C-9. Yes, I am a practising Christian, and yes, I believe that the sacred texts of the Quran, the Torah or Bible are religious texts. They are not hate speech, but that is not my big problem with this bill, because I think it is very unlikely, no matter what anyone might say for partisan reasons, that anybody in the Liberal Party wants to prosecute a preacher. That is nonsense. What we are dealing with here, though, is a bill that is so unnecessary that it would create new risks, through vagueness and discretion. These could create real problems that would end up before the courts and get in the way of making sure we have the proper tools to prosecute hate crimes with the laws we already have.
Why do we have Bill C-9? Normally a bill of this weirdness would come because the courts had said something and the government felt compelled.
Excuse me, Mr. Speaker. I have to adjust. The corner I am in is really difficult. I am sorry. I did not mean to complain about the furniture in the middle of a speech.
Normally something like this that appears to be redundant, discretionary and confusing would come about because the Supreme Court has said something criticizing an existing law so that the Department of Justice tries to clarify the law with yet another law on the same subject. However, this is the opposite. The Supreme Court of Canada has already, in numerous decisions, dealt with the big problem that we have. When we are defining hate, when we say hate speech is a crime and when we say there is an identifiable group against whom this speech is directed, we might have this problem, something the courts identify and numerous people identify: What about the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, what about our right to free speech, what about our right to worship as we choose and what about the right of freedom of assembly?
I am now referring to section 319 of the Criminal Code against acts of hate. Do these criminal acts of hate conflict with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Thankfully, in the Keegstra case, in a couple of places, the Supreme Court of Canada has dealt with this. Law enforcement, lawyers and judges across the country have a pathway to know that they can prosecute hate crimes under the Criminal Code and not defy the charter. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled on this, and its rulings are clear. Unfortunately, Bill C-9 is not clear. Bill C-9 would create a whole new discretionary web of things that may or may not be criminal.
I just want to refer briefly to a personal experience I had awhile ago. It was back in 2006. I was not in Parliament. I attended a rally to decry what was then happening. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Israel was bombing Lebanon in an attempt to hit Hezbollah, and Hezbollah was bombing in Israel. I was at a peace rally in Toronto. I was on the back of a flatbed truck. I remember that Judy Rebick was standing with me. I denounced Hezbollah for shooting rockets into Israel. I also denounced the use of rockets from Israel that were hitting civilian targets in Lebanon.
After the rally, it came to my attention through social media that someone had gotten a photograph of me; I had not known about a Hezbollah flag behind me. I would not have recognized the Hezbollah flag if I had fallen into it, but as it was, it was behind me. I did not know it was there. It was clearly a hate symbol. However, not knowing it was there, I equally would not have known, standing there on the back of a flatbed truck, how close I was to a place of worship, a day care centre or a cemetery. I would have had no idea.
When I first read Bill C-9, I thought it was definitely going to impede freedom of assembly and rightful protest. It was going to be very confusing. How will law enforcement deal with a gathering in which a group of people spill onto a side street and do not realize that they might be impeding access to a church they did not know was there? As a lawyer, a civil libertarian and more than an occasional protester, I look at this bill with alarm. It is going to create a lot of confusion and potentially wrongful arrests.
It has been referenced by some of my hon. colleagues on the Conservative benches that not only does every major religious group in this country express concerns about Bill C-9, but so do the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Black Legal Action Centre. I particularly noted the brief to the committee from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, which includes groups from around the world expressing concern. We are seeing intrusions on civil liberties; they referenced particularly what we are seeing in the United States, with the U.S. administration's immigration and enforcement group, known as ICE, trampling on civil liberties. It is saying that a person was about to do something, that a person had hate in their heart or whatever. The International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group told our parliamentary committee that Canada must be very careful. We should not create offences that can be misunderstood. We should not make openings to have an overreach by law enforcement.
We are seeing, in many countries around the world, overreach by law enforcement. They are anticipating something that I hope we never see in Canada. Although I will say that the so-called industrial resource community group of the RCMP in British Columbia, which is cracking down on non-violent civil disobedience to protect old-growth forests, has frequently violated the charter. I look to them as a worrying example.
Bill C-9 would not solve problems of hate crimes, and it would not give law enforcement new tools. Not only that, but it would create a morass. I am absolutely certain that if this law passes as is, it would waste police resources, waste court time and tie people up in knots in wrongful prosecutions for things that were never hate crimes at all.
With that, I will vote against the bill.
