This result is quite unexpected. It will end up at the Supreme Court. My own take is the decision is right -- there are Criminal Code provisions and they are sufficient.
Hate speech law unconstitutional: rights tribunal
Joseph Brean, National Post
The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal on Wednesday ruled that Section 13, Canada's much maligned human rights hate speech law, violates the Charter right to free expression because it carries the threat of punitive fines.
The shocking decision by Tribunal member Athanasios Hadjis leaves several hate speech cases in limbo, and appears to strip the Canadian Human Rights Commission of its controversial legal mandate to pursue hate on the Internet, which it has strenuously defended against complaints of censorship.
It also marks the first major failure of Section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an anti-hate law that was conceived in the 1960s to target racist telephone hotlines, then expanded in 2001 to the include the entire Internet, and for the last decade used almost exclusively by one complainant, activist Ottawa lawyer Richard Warman.
Mr. Warman's first big loss is a victory for the respondent Marc Lemire, webmaster of freeedomsite.org and a prominent figure in the Canadian far right.
Typically for the messy state of Canada's perennial hate speech debate, public reaction to the ruling yesterday was polarized, running the spectrum from glowing praise for the "bold" Mr. Hadjis, to criticism that his "outrageous" conclusion is "vulnerable on judicial review."
James Morton
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2 comments:
At issue though is probably not S13 itself, which Hadjis argues was itself constitutional, but the penalty provisions in s54 (in conjunction with 54). So what would get appealed would not be s13but 54. The law operates fine without that section.
Wouldn't an appeal of s. 54 alone be dismissed as moot given the fact that the offensive material has long since been removed from the website?
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