Thursday, November 17, 2011

Government To Strengthen Hate Speech Provisions In Criminal Code



The clip is Brian Storseth's introduction of Bill C-304 to repeal Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.  The most interesting part is the last half, in which Minister of Justice Rob Nicholson asks the HOC to get behind the government's "forthcoming amendments to strengthen the hate crimes provision of the criminal code".  Shades of The Moon Report, which suggested transferring some powers from the CHRC to the police when it come to fighting hate crimes?

A few years back I wrote about what might happen if that report was implemented in full:

What would happen is that complaints dealing with the kind of material now handled by the CHRC under section 13 would go to the various police hate crimes units (whose workload, Moon suggests, would almost certainly increase). So, while nowadays Connie and Mark, or Mr. Boisson, might get a letter from a government bureaucrat, under the new regime they would most likely get a call from a nice policeman, and this would occur just as their websites (via section 320.1 of the CC) disappeared until said policeman could decide whether its contents met the standard. Since Freedominion occasionally hosts calls for Muslim genocide in its forums, it is almost certain that they would be getting such phone-calls, and might wind up looking at jail-time rather than a fine and rebuke.

And now maybe we'll see it happen.

Also of note, Tarek Fatah and his gang (the MCC) have apparently come out in support of C-304.

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