This is bad. The bill does not define "hate speech"; that's left for later administrative determination. All we have so far is “expresses detestation or vilification of a person or group on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”
Combining "detestation" ("I don't like you") with vilification ("You're evil") is a concern. The first is legitimate opinion. The second is defamation. For which truth is a defense under US law.
The committee report that fed into this bill [1] is scary. "Finding that certain expression falls within political speech does not close off the enquiry into whether the expression constitutes hate speech."[2] This is at least in part about suppressing political speech on certain issues.
YMCA of Canada proposed a definition: "integrate an intersectional gender equity lens and consider the gendered impacts of anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Xenophobia in any definition of “hate” and “online hate”". Think of trying to defend against a claim of that in court.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs proposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the one that includes some kinds of criticism of the Israeli government.[3]
This isn't classic hate speech, intended to incite people to violence. Such as "Hang Mike Pence". This is far, far broader.
I suspect anti-white speech would not be considered hate speech according to the YMCA of Canada. An "intersectional equity lens" often implies the redefinition as racism as racism-plus-power, viewing all whites as empowered and all non-whites as oppressed.
We know anti-white speech can and does incite violence, as it did last week in Daytona Beach:
>§ 15.1 Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
>§ 15.2 Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
Indeed, this is covered by the Charter. Confer with "All animals are equal/ But some etc."
The skin color of the victims is not mentioned in these cases, so I presume they were white. If anyone were to say that white lives matter, he would be branded a racist.
Agreed. There is a 1000% chance this legislation will be used to muzzle valid criticism of the rich and powerful, both in and out of government. The uncritical crowd here tends to assume anyone critical of hate speech laws just wants to toss slurs at people online, but the reality is that this represents a very real threat to free society on a basic level. Governments are ALWAYS trying to get more power than they need, so that they can abuse that power, and it's the ongoing sisyphean task of the population to push back if they don't want to end up in a dystopia.
Power to muzzle people for saying something mean is power the government SHOULD NOT HAVE. And if they get it, it WILL be abused.
Every single leader of almost each of the Canadian political parties was caught breaking their own covid guidelines and going on vacations, without masks, hugging and kissing etc. Yet not a single one of them got held accountable. Similarly in UK, the health secretary was caught having an affair the entire time he was telling people to socially distance. Not a single political will ever get held accountable.
I’m curious if you live in the US, and if this is why you feel this way?
I think it’s fairly normal that countries place a restriction on what is acceptable free speech and what goes beyond your right of expression because it infringes on others.
I moved to this country in the hope of escaping speech controls. To this day, I am not comfortable participating in (easily identifiable) social media, simply because I am worried about when someone will black bag me for (hopefully only) a few days.
I'm sure that won't happen here, but I'll be darned if this doesn't make my PTSD seem like the master plan.
Incidentally even talking about the nations/religions that I moved here to escape from, could be construed as a "phobic" response now.
I am in the same boat. I immigrated from a third world country where journalists get arrested, women have an ongoing rape pandemic and kids get exploited for labour and thrown to the streets for begging with their limbs chopped off. But a person having lesser melanin than me criticized my country in a similar way, that would be considered hate speech in Canada.
I certainly hope everyone involved understands how precarious this path they are taking is. It should be well known by now from history that this sort of thing can be very dangerous, but it seems like there is a large part of the population that is more than willing to relinquish liberties for a perceived sense of safety without understanding the potential consequences involved.
Given the current political climate, I don't have much faith in things turning out well.
Really it's left to the courts and they will do as they please - subject to the kinds of cases that are brought to the, usually by people with agendas.
Since the new Constitution, we're living in a kind of Judicial Supremacy (in other places as well) where the best legislators and lawyers in the world basically don't even know if something is legal when they make it.
It's a giant gaping hole in how our Liberal institutions were founded that's only obvious now in hindsight I suppose. There really needs to be some kind of way for the Legislative and Judiciary to work something out - maybe by presenting test cases for new proposals, advisory etc.. Because as it stands, all of the 'most important things' are decided by an un-elected and 'Council of Elders' behind closed doors, with not nearly the same level of oversight, public or media scrutiny as in Parliament.
In Canada there is a 'notwithstanding' loophole, literally meaning Provinces can just 'opt out' of something being Constitutional, which is another, weird, separate problem.
We should really err on the side of freedom of expression in the law.
YouTube is still free to have their own thresholds, which is also fair.
>Since the new Constitution, we're living in a kind of Judicial Supremacy (in other places as well) where the best legislators and lawyers in the world basically don't even know if something is legal when they make it.
Can you provide some further reading explaining this phenomenon in more detail?
> integrate an intersectional gender equity lens and consider the gendered impacts of anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Xenophobia in any definition of “hate”
... so that saying "all cops are bastards" stays perfectly legal. Unless you're talking about Israeli police, in which case you're stepping onto the shaky ground.
> Combining "detestation" ("I don't like you") with vilification ("You're evil") is a concern. The first is legitimate opinion. The second is defamation. For which truth is a defense under US law.
US law about defamation is even narrower than that. "Animats is evil" is almost certainly too vague to be taken as a provable, or disprovable statement of fact by a court. Even "Animats would steal if he thought he could get away with it" is probably too speculative.
What about the second half of that sentence? "...on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination", specifically.
"I don't like you because you're Black/gay/Jewish" is an entirely different thing from "I don't like you because you're rich". Specifically, one of these is a prohibited ground of discrimination.
> The bill defines “hate speech” as the content of a communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.
> These grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability, or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.
> In addition, the hate speech would need to be communicated in a context where it is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group on any of these prohibited grounds.
> Speech that expresses dislike or disdain, or that discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends would not fall within the definition of hate speech. This distinction is intended to reflect the extreme nature of hate speech captured by the proposed amendments.
The prohibited ground of discrimination are inline with existing definitions (this isn't them caving into the YMCA of Canada or IHRA or something...)
That references some decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. There's an analysis of those here.[1] The Court, in a 4-3 decision, did find that some pamphlets (this was 1990, when people still printed pamphlets) were "hate speech". The court didn't come up with a definition of hate speech. They merely outlined roughly how far the legislature could go in that direction.
So passing the buck to the Court here is evading the issue.
This is a criminal statute. In common-law countries (UK, Canada, US, but not France) there's a general rule of construction that "Criminal law must be clear and unambiguous, so as to give ‘fair warning’." The legislature owes its citizens a clear definition of each crime. They're evading that duty.
This point in particular makes me wonder about how it can get applied...
> In addition, the hate speech would need to be communicated in a context where it is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group on any of these prohibited grounds.
Any communication that is negative about a certain group, or even overly positive about one with the implication that it's considerably better than another's could end up contributing to this effect... Who gets to decide it's "likely"?
The right and the left really can't agree on the balance between equality/equity for who's actually vulnerable enough to need these laws to protect their human rights. This will be applied unevenly, maybe even arbitrarily.
When the government collects 16,000 dollars from every person it can fine for this, would social media even be worth the risk, for a poor person? Some rich kid with the right connections could pull some strings, and financially gut a person they disagree with who said something "likely to foment detestation" on their worst day, putting them 5 figures deeper in debt and driving them off social media. And then the ensuing storm foments hate between both groups. Maybe the poor kid gets a gofundme that won't get shut down so he doesn't have to pay it back over the course of many years, if he's lucky.
People seem to forget or not know that Canada is already in a grey middle ground where free-speech is limited, and hate speech is considered a crime. And so far, the fact that Canada doesn't take a free-speech-absolutist position on the matter doesn't seem to have led to the unavoidable-slippery-slope that free-speech-absolutists profess it should lead to.
I'm of the opinion that free speech is important but I think absolutism is a red flag, and here is a case where a pragmatic middle ground has proven to work out just fine.
It's funny how quickly forget about Stephen Harper and how he tried desperately to turn Canada into its anti-thesis.
The same laws that protect speech that you may not agree when your party is in power, protect your speech when the opposite party is in power. And the way things are going with Trudeau, I really don't expect him to survive the next election.
Looking at what goes on inside human rights tribunals (at least in ontario), I don't see how things are just fine. If anything, the tiny population size of Canada means nothing particularly exciting ever happens in Canada..
"The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs proposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the one that includes some kinds of criticism of the Israeli government.[3]" - the definition is against equating zionism with fascism and/or apartheid, and against questioning legal status of existence of Israel. The definition is obviously meant to outlaw BDS, and to push diaspora Jews towards taking sides. Other than that no one objects to criticism of Israel, its government, its defense forces, and zionism.
There is already an asymmetry codified in the CCRF, as to which groups can be (putatively) protected by this legislation, so the gov't has little to worry about w.r.t. swapping places.
> If you wouldn't be comfortable with the Trump administration defining "hate speech", you shouldn't be comfortable with Trudeau defining it either.
I disagree with this. I wouldn't trust the Trump administration with coming up with a list of human rights, that doesn't mean that the only acceptable compromise is that we shouldn't have any.
Your first sentence is solid advice, but I think you've drawn the wrong conclusion from it. It's a totally reasonable stance to be more comfortable with someone who's at least vaguely competent being in charge when discussing a complex and delicate issue.
Perhaps the point you were intending to make was that we shouldn't be comfortable with it being ambiguous enough that it's up to any particular government's definition, rather than being inherently uncomfortable with the definition itself?
"Hate Speech" is a super political term, and I would argue probably should have special protection at this point. It's not much of a leap to see this used to enforce current political orthodoxy.
We already have laws about inciting to violence as I understand it, which is justifiable. This makes it an offence to "expresses detestation or vilification of a person or group on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination".
Worth noting that Canada already considers hate speech a crime.
For example (from wiki), the two most relevant existing laws would be:
> Section 319(1): Publicly inciting hatred—makes it an offence to communicate statements in a public place which incite hatred against an identifiable group, where it is likely to lead to a breach of the peace. The Crown prosecutor can proceed either by indictment or by summary process. The maximum penalty is imprisonment of not more than two years. There is no minimum punishment.[15]
> Section 319(2): Promoting hatred—makes it an offence to wilfully promote hatred against any identifiable group, by making statements (other than in private conversation). The Crown prosecutor can proceed either by indictment or by summary process. The maximum penalty is imprisonment of not more than two years.[15]
What the planned legislation does is take the current working definition of hate speech (as set by Canada's Supreme Court) and put it into law, as well as (effectively) defining the relationship between online speech, and the public/private statements in the existing law.
Just reading what you are quoting, it sounds like 319(1) is not allowing for truth or intent as a defense.
And it raises the question of what "likely to lead to a breach of the peace" means. Hindsight is one thing. But does the law imply a proverbial "reasonable person" standard in advance?
Regarding 319(2), by saying "identifiable group", it sounds like it is covering all political groups or parties. Canadians are more polite, I know, but it seems like at this point 319(2) would cover virtually everything that passes for political discourse south of the border.
I wouldn't assume these are enforced as written, or as they appear to me to be written.
But if they were, they seem kind of extreme. Not because I'm insisting on the arbitrary standard of the US first amendment, but they do seem very broad.
You don't seem to understand the basic concept of division of power. The law is enforced by the judicial branch based on the written law + legal precedents on an impartial manner, not by the "current political orthodoxy".
If you question the judicial branch impartiality about this matter, you question the judicial branch itself because there is no reason to trust their impartial judgment in any other matter. If that is the case, I suggest that you make and argument for anarchy instead of this one.
I hate mudflinging as much as the next guy, but how would someone even engage in politics at all without statements that could be described as detestation or vilification? Politics is saying mean things about the other side in support of your side. If you don't believe the other side to be fundamentally bad in some way, why are you fighting them?
Yes yes, there's "on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination." That seems about as firm as a plastic bag blowing through a parking lot. I'm sure that category won't grow larger and larger until it's impossible to criticize the powerful or the status quo at all.
> Politics is saying mean things about the other side in support of your side.
This is not the definition of politics, this is how it is being executed in some places, there are plenty of places where this is not the default method.
> If you don't believe the other side to be fundamentally bad in some way, why are you fighting them?
This only makes sense if Twitter is your only source of political news/opinion.
You may think the other group is swell but have different opinions on how to get to the same end goal. You may have a disagreement on what an ideal world looks like or what our current one looks like (ie. different perspectives) . None of that includes "fundamentally bad".
See: all parties that have splintered off from a common one. They are still in the same corner but have adjusted their views, strategy or goals. They don't suddenly think their earlier compatriots are evil incarnate.
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
This was written in 1944, intended as the preface of the "Animal Farm". It was not published until 1972.
For another pillar of this scary new age, look at the absolute willingness of big tech to censor anything that goes against the message of those in power.
this is probably a good point to quote the article
"The proposed law would likely run afoul of the First Amendment in the U.S., but despite popular misconceptions Canada is actually its own country."
Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries.
To have a rational discussion about this when it comes to countries that don't happen to be the US, like in this case, it would probably be good to not act as if these laws were somehow conjured up out of nothing. The United Kingdom, probably having a claim to be one of the world's longest lasting liberal democracies, has laws concerning speech that in many cases go well beyond laws on continental Europe, so any discussion about speech in the Western (and even specifically Anglo) tradition probably should be had on that ground, rather than just vague pointing about slippery slopes.
The rationale behind this regulation is insincere, and in my view, it is an expression of weakness and fear by an out of touch governing class who know they have overstepped their remit, however, the effects could be interesting.
The interesting effects will be toward one of two poles: either the regulation will relieve conservative forums (if they even exist anymore) of the burden of dealing with people who abuse their tolerance with extreme behavior, which will improve their conversations and make the discourse of those forums clearer - or - the regulations will be used by a provisional group of party affiliated trolls who will flood opposition sites with "hate speech," to get them "investigated" and knocked offline using this as a pretext at key moments under the regulation.
I suspect the latter will be the case. The actual path for Canada is something much more cynical. If this sounds extreme, it's worth remembering that Canada is not the US. It is not a republic, and it's only nominally a democracy, and its charter of rights has a "notwithstanding clause," which means a government can do whatever it wants. This regulation is part of a set of enabling acts for the Davos movement to form its own country using Canada as its first host.
If that sounds like a conspiracy theory, we used to call it opposition criticism, but apparently that's not a thing anymore either. Discourse about policy in Canada is dead, and we are all but officially no longer a nation state, and so we are left to commenting on the realpolitik of our various administrators.
>“Hate speech directly contradicts the values underlying freedom of expression and our Charter of Rights,” Lametti said. “It threatens the safety and well-being of its targets. It silences and intimidates, especially when the target is a vulnerable person or community. When hate speech spreads, its victims lose their freedom to participate in civil society online.”
Just want to note the extraordinary audacity of this statement: reversing the adversely affected parties, while posturing as an affirmation of the very values it is attempting to undermine.
It is an audaciously wrongheaded statement. It puts a veneer of concern for the oppressed and their rights over a violation of the rights of those this law intends to oppress.
> Except how many people now upset at this we’re glad when Twitter and Facebook banned Trump?
I'd think that the people who were glad when Twitter and Facebook banned Trump, aren't exactly opposed to this new law, likely thinking this would never be used against them. But as we learned from the JK Rowling affair, an opinion that is progressive or PC in 2021 might not hold up to standards 5 or 10 years later thanks to the purity spiral[1].
When trump was banned, many actually did say that it would go this way and were upset due to that.
I may hate what you (anyone) have to say, it may hurt me to hear it, but i will do whatever I can to defend your right to say it! Because unlike many who cheer this on, I've lived in a country that followed this to its logical conclusion (USSR). It was not fun.
The native Americans in your population will beg to differ, specially in the light of current news, but they don't count to you don't they? That is why we got to the point were we need this law. Because no matter how horrible other are treated all is good as long it doesn't happen to you or your group. The past were you were able to abuse these groups and commit atrocities with total impunity was "so much better" and we are going down from there according to your view of the world.
Some societies used to have caste system and did human sacrifices, yet it took thousands of years for them to collapse. When they did collapse, it was due to outside invasion rather than their ideologies.
Good news: your society isn't collapsing. Bad news: it looks like it is going to shit.
Canada has some very real problems, most-recently in the headlines the atrocious ways we have treated our indigenous population through the years. In many ways, we have always been shit.
Regarding our laws protecting people from discrimination in speech and deed, however, I'm going to have to disagree with you.
This comment confuses me. There’s plenty of reasons to wring hands over a new law, and the existence of an old law doesn’t change this. It’s well known that the old hate speech laws have existed for 20 years, and also that they have been unevenly applied (not investigating extreme hate from Imams for instance), and harassing journalists for engaging in basic acts of exposition (publishing the Mohammed cartoons).
The concern is obviously that the new provisions don’t do anything to address these issues, and seem likely to exacerbate these concerns by expanding the scope and the range of punishments in a way that could chill speech, especially since the law doesn’t adequately define its terms leaving that up to unelected bureaucrats.
This law also follows on the heels of bill C-10 which similarly leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how popular youtube channels will be regulated. So Canadians hackles are already up.
The think that always worries me about "hate speech" is the lack of clarity of definition.
If you said 'Kill all X' where X is any protected group you would almost certainly fall afoul of hate speech regulation. By all metrics "Kill all X" is online vilification against a group of people because of superficial characteristics. Yet for some reason "Kill all Men" is totally acceptable in online discourse.
Because of the lack of punishment, anyone against whom "Kill all X" is acceptable finds themselves opposing hate speech regulation - as for them it is useless and does nothing to protect them.
Secondly, because of the lack of consistent (and biased) enforcement of hate speech rules, everyone should be concerned about if and when hate speech against them goes from being protected to normalised.
I would honestly like to see that challenged in court. If the Canadians truly are vying for egalitarianism, anybody saying that should be fined. If they arent, then we know its just a bootlicking law.
"The think that always worries me about "hate speech" is the lack of clarity of definition."
That is probably a bug, not a feature. Once something as nebulous as an emotion is being punished, people will stay away from controversial topics just in case.
Freedom of speech is absolute. One cannot outlaw what one does not want to hear. If you want your freedom to speak you are required to let other people speak. It's really that simple.
Hate does not go away by outlawing. It only makes martyrs of those impacted by the law.
The only way to fight bigotry is with information and enlightenment. It is a fight that will never stop and there are no short cuts.
One would have thought we, as a species, would have learned that by now.
I've heard lot of Americans defending that line as if "freedom of speech" was literally an unconditional universal right given by God to the human race.
Freedom of speech is either nonexistent or heavily restricted in most places because total freedom inevitably ends up with other people losing their own freedom/rights.
It's illegal and punishable by law to be openly homophobic in France. it's illegal and punishable by law to be openly nazi in Germany.
>I've heard lot of Americans defending that line as if "freedom of speech" was literally an unconditional universal right given by God to the human race.
Freedom of speech is an unconditional universal right given by God to the human race. The government taking away your rights does not mean those rights do not intrinsically exist.
>It's illegal and punishable by law to be openly homophobic in France.
What a lot of people don't understand is that speech has a legal definition that is especially relevant in cases of libel or incitement. Once it can be considered speech, the content of that speech in public areas is allowed to vary under the first amendment in the US.
It's not splitting hairs, because this is routinely debated in courts all over the country. As for whether or not people having the ability to speak freely leads to a loss of rights, the US has been around for some time now and is pretty quickly gaining rights for people in the grand scheme of things. The suppression of speech has not fared the same, and both sides of the aisle can (hypocritically) point to suppression of speech leading to a loss or possible loss of rights. If we want to talk about speech and history, it's much easier to find examples of control that goes too far, and often a lot more quickly.
There is no society (existing or historical) where freedom of speech was absolute. There have always been consequences for some types of speech.
The US conception of freedom of speech is basically, "Your ideological speech is safe from government censorship, but not from anyone else's." And even that has been unevenly supported by courts over time.
So while your philosophy is interesting, it seems to have little to do with the way societies actually behave.
Readit News
Combining "detestation" ("I don't like you") with vilification ("You're evil") is a concern. The first is legitimate opinion. The second is defamation. For which truth is a defense under US law.
The committee report that fed into this bill [1] is scary. "Finding that certain expression falls within political speech does not close off the enquiry into whether the expression constitutes hate speech."[2] This is at least in part about suppressing political speech on certain issues.
YMCA of Canada proposed a definition: "integrate an intersectional gender equity lens and consider the gendered impacts of anti-Black racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Xenophobia in any definition of “hate” and “online hate”". Think of trying to defend against a claim of that in court.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs proposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism, the one that includes some kinds of criticism of the Israeli government.[3]
This isn't classic hate speech, intended to incite people to violence. Such as "Hang Mike Pence". This is far, far broader.
[1] https://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/JUST/report...
[2] https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12876/inde...
[3] https://www.jta.org/2021/01/15/global/the-ihra-definition-of...
We know anti-white speech can and does incite violence, as it did last week in Daytona Beach:
https://twitter.com/gwupoe/status/1409137548899893251
It can also incite white identity politics, which to me is the much bigger problem caused by this sort of law.
>§ 15.2 Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
Indeed, this is covered by the Charter. Confer with "All animals are equal/ But some etc."
"Part of left's problem is it expects/demands blacks/hispanics to vote on ethnic basis but is appalled when whites do" (<https://twitter.com/JYDenham/status/796345533124186113>)
> Racism is bad.
> People from the same race have the same traits, guilt (or victimhood) and needs.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/german-police-say-several-kill...
The skin color of the victims is not mentioned in these cases, so I presume they were white. If anyone were to say that white lives matter, he would be branded a racist.
Dead Comment
Power to muzzle people for saying something mean is power the government SHOULD NOT HAVE. And if they get it, it WILL be abused.
But business owners, everyday people were getting arrested and fined. Kitchen chefs were getting fined $300 for not having their mask on "properly" while they operated 500 degree ovens: https://mtracey.substack.com/p/kitchen-worker-not-wearing-a-...
This legislation will get abused so easily against everyday people, I can't believe that anyone thinks this is a wise idea.
I think it’s fairly normal that countries place a restriction on what is acceptable free speech and what goes beyond your right of expression because it infringes on others.
I'm sure that won't happen here, but I'll be darned if this doesn't make my PTSD seem like the master plan.
Incidentally even talking about the nations/religions that I moved here to escape from, could be construed as a "phobic" response now.
Given the current political climate, I don't have much faith in things turning out well.
Dangerous to whom?
Not to those in power.
It’s precisely because it’s dangerous that it is so popular; the masses love the idea of their ‘enemies’ being muzzled.
The pernicious aspect is not that people fail to recognize the danger; it’s that they fail to see those in power aren’t actually on their side.
True, and it will unfortunately be weaponized.
Really it's left to the courts and they will do as they please - subject to the kinds of cases that are brought to the, usually by people with agendas.
Since the new Constitution, we're living in a kind of Judicial Supremacy (in other places as well) where the best legislators and lawyers in the world basically don't even know if something is legal when they make it.
It's a giant gaping hole in how our Liberal institutions were founded that's only obvious now in hindsight I suppose. There really needs to be some kind of way for the Legislative and Judiciary to work something out - maybe by presenting test cases for new proposals, advisory etc.. Because as it stands, all of the 'most important things' are decided by an un-elected and 'Council of Elders' behind closed doors, with not nearly the same level of oversight, public or media scrutiny as in Parliament.
In Canada there is a 'notwithstanding' loophole, literally meaning Provinces can just 'opt out' of something being Constitutional, which is another, weird, separate problem.
We should really err on the side of freedom of expression in the law.
YouTube is still free to have their own thresholds, which is also fair.
Can you provide some further reading explaining this phenomenon in more detail?
... so that saying "all cops are bastards" stays perfectly legal. Unless you're talking about Israeli police, in which case you're stepping onto the shaky ground.
US law about defamation is even narrower than that. "Animats is evil" is almost certainly too vague to be taken as a provable, or disprovable statement of fact by a court. Even "Animats would steal if he thought he could get away with it" is probably too speculative.
"I don't like you because you're Black/gay/Jewish" is an entirely different thing from "I don't like you because you're rich". Specifically, one of these is a prohibited ground of discrimination.
Quoting:
> The bill defines “hate speech” as the content of a communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.
> These grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability, or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.
> In addition, the hate speech would need to be communicated in a context where it is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group on any of these prohibited grounds.
> Speech that expresses dislike or disdain, or that discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends would not fall within the definition of hate speech. This distinction is intended to reflect the extreme nature of hate speech captured by the proposed amendments.
The prohibited ground of discrimination are inline with existing definitions (this isn't them caving into the YMCA of Canada or IHRA or something...)
So passing the buck to the Court here is evading the issue.
This is a criminal statute. In common-law countries (UK, Canada, US, but not France) there's a general rule of construction that "Criminal law must be clear and unambiguous, so as to give ‘fair warning’." The legislature owes its citizens a clear definition of each crime. They're evading that duty.
[1] http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
> In addition, the hate speech would need to be communicated in a context where it is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group on any of these prohibited grounds.
Any communication that is negative about a certain group, or even overly positive about one with the implication that it's considerably better than another's could end up contributing to this effect... Who gets to decide it's "likely"?
The right and the left really can't agree on the balance between equality/equity for who's actually vulnerable enough to need these laws to protect their human rights. This will be applied unevenly, maybe even arbitrarily.
When the government collects 16,000 dollars from every person it can fine for this, would social media even be worth the risk, for a poor person? Some rich kid with the right connections could pull some strings, and financially gut a person they disagree with who said something "likely to foment detestation" on their worst day, putting them 5 figures deeper in debt and driving them off social media. And then the ensuing storm foments hate between both groups. Maybe the poor kid gets a gofundme that won't get shut down so he doesn't have to pay it back over the course of many years, if he's lucky.
I'm of the opinion that free speech is important but I think absolutism is a red flag, and here is a case where a pragmatic middle ground has proven to work out just fine.
The same laws that protect speech that you may not agree when your party is in power, protect your speech when the opposite party is in power. And the way things are going with Trudeau, I really don't expect him to survive the next election.
When is it hate speech?: 7 significant Canadian cases: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/when-is-it-hate-speech-7-sign...
> There are only 2 genders
> Religion is stupid
> Prophet xyz was a pedophile
> Some religions are more prone to violence than others.
> Men and women are not the same.
> Covid 19 was leaked from a Chinese lab.
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Twitter considers some of those hate speech already.
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If you wouldn't be comfortable with the Trump administration defining "hate speech", you shouldn't be comfortable with Trudeau defining it either.
I disagree with this. I wouldn't trust the Trump administration with coming up with a list of human rights, that doesn't mean that the only acceptable compromise is that we shouldn't have any.
Your first sentence is solid advice, but I think you've drawn the wrong conclusion from it. It's a totally reasonable stance to be more comfortable with someone who's at least vaguely competent being in charge when discussing a complex and delicate issue.
Perhaps the point you were intending to make was that we shouldn't be comfortable with it being ambiguous enough that it's up to any particular government's definition, rather than being inherently uncomfortable with the definition itself?
Dead Comment
We already have laws about inciting to violence as I understand it, which is justifiable. This makes it an offence to "expresses detestation or vilification of a person or group on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination".
For example (from wiki), the two most relevant existing laws would be:
> Section 319(1): Publicly inciting hatred—makes it an offence to communicate statements in a public place which incite hatred against an identifiable group, where it is likely to lead to a breach of the peace. The Crown prosecutor can proceed either by indictment or by summary process. The maximum penalty is imprisonment of not more than two years. There is no minimum punishment.[15]
> Section 319(2): Promoting hatred—makes it an offence to wilfully promote hatred against any identifiable group, by making statements (other than in private conversation). The Crown prosecutor can proceed either by indictment or by summary process. The maximum penalty is imprisonment of not more than two years.[15]
What the planned legislation does is take the current working definition of hate speech (as set by Canada's Supreme Court) and put it into law, as well as (effectively) defining the relationship between online speech, and the public/private statements in the existing law.
And it raises the question of what "likely to lead to a breach of the peace" means. Hindsight is one thing. But does the law imply a proverbial "reasonable person" standard in advance?
Regarding 319(2), by saying "identifiable group", it sounds like it is covering all political groups or parties. Canadians are more polite, I know, but it seems like at this point 319(2) would cover virtually everything that passes for political discourse south of the border.
I wouldn't assume these are enforced as written, or as they appear to me to be written.
But if they were, they seem kind of extreme. Not because I'm insisting on the arbitrary standard of the US first amendment, but they do seem very broad.
Dead Comment
Which history is that?
Genuine question - I'm aware of places where speech is suppressed because the justice system is not independent of the political system.
I'm aware of cases where speech is suppressed by the threat of being sued by private individuals.
But where are the cases where hate-speech carve-outs have been abused in democracies?
If you question the judicial branch impartiality about this matter, you question the judicial branch itself because there is no reason to trust their impartial judgment in any other matter. If that is the case, I suggest that you make and argument for anarchy instead of this one.
Yes yes, there's "on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination." That seems about as firm as a plastic bag blowing through a parking lot. I'm sure that category won't grow larger and larger until it's impossible to criticize the powerful or the status quo at all.
> Politics is saying mean things about the other side in support of your side.
This is not the definition of politics, this is how it is being executed in some places, there are plenty of places where this is not the default method.
> If you don't believe the other side to be fundamentally bad in some way, why are you fighting them?
This only makes sense if Twitter is your only source of political news/opinion.
You may think the other group is swell but have different opinions on how to get to the same end goal. You may have a disagreement on what an ideal world looks like or what our current one looks like (ie. different perspectives) . None of that includes "fundamentally bad".
See: all parties that have splintered off from a common one. They are still in the same corner but have adjusted their views, strategy or goals. They don't suddenly think their earlier compatriots are evil incarnate.
Which is a nice way of saying that this is the beginnings of a new authoritarian and totalitarian age.
It should be very worrying to everyone to see speech be legally punished in the West.
Slippery slopes do exist and this is one.
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
This was written in 1944, intended as the preface of the "Animal Farm". It was not published until 1972.
"The proposed law would likely run afoul of the First Amendment in the U.S., but despite popular misconceptions Canada is actually its own country."
Contrary to popular (American) opinion laws regulating speech are in fact not a new and authoritarian invention but have existed in the so called 'West' for literally centuries.
To have a rational discussion about this when it comes to countries that don't happen to be the US, like in this case, it would probably be good to not act as if these laws were somehow conjured up out of nothing. The United Kingdom, probably having a claim to be one of the world's longest lasting liberal democracies, has laws concerning speech that in many cases go well beyond laws on continental Europe, so any discussion about speech in the Western (and even specifically Anglo) tradition probably should be had on that ground, rather than just vague pointing about slippery slopes.
Laws are political.
We seem to have completely lost the meaning of this word. Did you mean something like "controversial"?
The interesting effects will be toward one of two poles: either the regulation will relieve conservative forums (if they even exist anymore) of the burden of dealing with people who abuse their tolerance with extreme behavior, which will improve their conversations and make the discourse of those forums clearer - or - the regulations will be used by a provisional group of party affiliated trolls who will flood opposition sites with "hate speech," to get them "investigated" and knocked offline using this as a pretext at key moments under the regulation.
I suspect the latter will be the case. The actual path for Canada is something much more cynical. If this sounds extreme, it's worth remembering that Canada is not the US. It is not a republic, and it's only nominally a democracy, and its charter of rights has a "notwithstanding clause," which means a government can do whatever it wants. This regulation is part of a set of enabling acts for the Davos movement to form its own country using Canada as its first host.
If that sounds like a conspiracy theory, we used to call it opposition criticism, but apparently that's not a thing anymore either. Discourse about policy in Canada is dead, and we are all but officially no longer a nation state, and so we are left to commenting on the realpolitik of our various administrators.
Just want to note the extraordinary audacity of this statement: reversing the adversely affected parties, while posturing as an affirmation of the very values it is attempting to undermine.
It’s really easy to say you defend things when it’s theory and not “a bad man who says mean things”.
It is a slippery slope, and we’re already well down it. Too many people continuing to cheer it along until it’ll be too late.
I'd think that the people who were glad when Twitter and Facebook banned Trump, aren't exactly opposed to this new law, likely thinking this would never be used against them. But as we learned from the JK Rowling affair, an opinion that is progressive or PC in 2021 might not hold up to standards 5 or 10 years later thanks to the purity spiral[1].
[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Purity%20Spi...
I may hate what you (anyone) have to say, it may hurt me to hear it, but i will do whatever I can to defend your right to say it! Because unlike many who cheer this on, I've lived in a country that followed this to its logical conclusion (USSR). It was not fun.
Deleted Comment
Interesting... I would have normally assumed that everybody who's upset by this law would have been upset by Trump's ban and vice versa.
https://cfe.ryerson.ca/key-resources/guidesadvice/legal-rest...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_Canada
Good news: your society isn't collapsing. Bad news: it looks like it is going to shit.
Regarding our laws protecting people from discrimination in speech and deed, however, I'm going to have to disagree with you.
Dead Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_13_of_the_Canadian_Hum...
The concern is obviously that the new provisions don’t do anything to address these issues, and seem likely to exacerbate these concerns by expanding the scope and the range of punishments in a way that could chill speech, especially since the law doesn’t adequately define its terms leaving that up to unelected bureaucrats.
This law also follows on the heels of bill C-10 which similarly leaves a lot of unanswered questions about how popular youtube channels will be regulated. So Canadians hackles are already up.
Despite all the hand-wringing.
"Yet"
If you said 'Kill all X' where X is any protected group you would almost certainly fall afoul of hate speech regulation. By all metrics "Kill all X" is online vilification against a group of people because of superficial characteristics. Yet for some reason "Kill all Men" is totally acceptable in online discourse.
Because of the lack of punishment, anyone against whom "Kill all X" is acceptable finds themselves opposing hate speech regulation - as for them it is useless and does nothing to protect them.
Secondly, because of the lack of consistent (and biased) enforcement of hate speech rules, everyone should be concerned about if and when hate speech against them goes from being protected to normalised.
That is probably a bug, not a feature. Once something as nebulous as an emotion is being punished, people will stay away from controversial topics just in case.
Dead Comment
Hate does not go away by outlawing. It only makes martyrs of those impacted by the law.
The only way to fight bigotry is with information and enlightenment. It is a fight that will never stop and there are no short cuts.
One would have thought we, as a species, would have learned that by now.
Hm, where ? when ?
I've heard lot of Americans defending that line as if "freedom of speech" was literally an unconditional universal right given by God to the human race.
Freedom of speech is either nonexistent or heavily restricted in most places because total freedom inevitably ends up with other people losing their own freedom/rights.
It's illegal and punishable by law to be openly homophobic in France. it's illegal and punishable by law to be openly nazi in Germany.
Freedom of speech is an unconditional universal right given by God to the human race. The government taking away your rights does not mean those rights do not intrinsically exist.
>It's illegal and punishable by law to be openly homophobic in France.
And Voltaire would be rolling in his grave.
I disagree with both of those laws.
It's not splitting hairs, because this is routinely debated in courts all over the country. As for whether or not people having the ability to speak freely leads to a loss of rights, the US has been around for some time now and is pretty quickly gaining rights for people in the grand scheme of things. The suppression of speech has not fared the same, and both sides of the aisle can (hypocritically) point to suppression of speech leading to a loss or possible loss of rights. If we want to talk about speech and history, it's much easier to find examples of control that goes too far, and often a lot more quickly.
The US conception of freedom of speech is basically, "Your ideological speech is safe from government censorship, but not from anyone else's." And even that has been unevenly supported by courts over time.
So while your philosophy is interesting, it seems to have little to do with the way societies actually behave.
If you openly state that you hate a certain group of people that will have consequences. I still support your freedom to to so.