Conservatives blast removal of religious exemption in hate-speech laws as ‘assault’ on freedom of speech

2025/12/03 Leave a comment

Arguably not needed given existing laws but recent occupations, obstructions, demonstrations supporting Palestinians have veered into explicit antisemitism and harassment of Jewish communities. The exemption should not be akin to a “get out of jail” card:

Opposition Conservatives say a deal between the governing Liberals and the Bloc Québécois to remove a religious exemption from Canada’s hate-speech laws, in exchange for passing a bill targeting hate and terror symbols, is an “assault” on freedom of speech and religion….

The Conservatives on Monday slammed the removal of that exemption as an attack on freedom of religion and of free speech, with the party quickly putting together a petition, which was circulated by its Members of Parliament.

“Liberal-Bloc amendments to C-9 will criminalize sections of the Bible, Quran, Torah, and other sacred texts,” Poilievre wrote on social media. “Conservatives will oppose this latest Liberal assault on freedom of expression and religion.”

Conservative Calgary MP Michelle Rempel Garner called on all other parties to oppose the amendment.

“I think it’s an unabashed attack on religious freedom,” Rempel Garner said.

Ontario MP Marilyn Glaudu, who serves as the Conservative critic for civil liberties, in a video on X, said the proposed change amounted to an “attack on people of faith.”

Fortin, the Bloc MP, agreed that the change will curb freedom of expression. However, he argued there must be limits on speech that propagates hate.

“I think this freedom of expression needs to be limited. You’re free to do what you want until you start harming others,” he said.

The bill itself seeks to create new offences around the intimidation and obstruction of sites used by an identifiable group, such as a religious or cultural centre, as well as make it a crime to promote hate by displaying hate symbols like a swastika, or those linked to listed terrorist entities.

The proposed amendments come amid widespread criticism about the Liberals’ bill, with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council calling for it to be withdrawn, along with dozens of advocacy groups. Critics warn that the new offences create the risk of police cracking down on lawful protests, and could lead to a targeting of Muslim and other racialized groups.

When it comes to the proposed removal of religious defences from hate speech laws, Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, director of the CCLA’s fundamental freedoms program, said it raises concerns.

She pointed to how that defence is only available to criminal law dealing specifically with the wilful promotion of hatred and no other offence, even speech-related ones, such as public incitement to hatred, or uttering threats.

“The speech that needs to be criminalized in Canada is already criminalized, and there is no religious exemption applying to that,” she said.

She said the association has for years held concerns around the provision, targeting “the wilful promotion of hatred,” given how broadly it can be applied.

“The concept of hatred is subjective,” she told National Post in an interview on Monday, “so we are always worried about risks of abuse and censorship of unpopular or offensive opinions through this provision. So we fear that removing this religious exemption might gradually erode the protections and increase the scope of this provision.”

Steven Zhou, spokesman for the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said in a statement on Monday that it was “gravely concerned and surprised” about the reported deal to remove the exemption for religious beliefs, saying that doing so “opens the door to a deeply troubling censorship regime.”

Khaled Al-Qazzaz, executive director of the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in a statement that it rejects the removal of the religious exemptions, saying it considers doing so “an attack on all places of worship and religious schools.”

Derek Ross, executive director and counsel for the Christian Legal Fellowship, a national association for lawyers and law students who identify as Christian, said removing the exemption for religious opinions could lead individuals to self-censor and create an overall “chilling” effect.

The law must balance competing interests, he said, but pointed to how it must protect those who are fearful of becoming “vilified or detested” because they express viewpoints held by a minority.

Khaled Al-Qazzaz, executive director of the Canadian Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in a statement that it rejects the removal of the religious exemptions, saying it considers doing so “an attack on all places of worship and religious schools.”

Derek Ross, executive director and counsel for the Christian Legal Fellowship, a national association for lawyers and law students who identify as Christian, said removing the exemption for religious opinions could lead individuals to self-censor and create an overall “chilling” effect.

The law must balance competing interests, he said, but pointed to how it must protect those who are fearful of becoming “vilified or detested” because they express viewpoints held by a minority.

“It is a significant change to the law, and one that was not previously the subject of a great deal of discussion or debate by Parliament,” Ross said on Monday. “We hope that further consideration is given before such a move is made.”

As part of the deal with the Bloc, the Liberals are also expected to back off plans to eliminate the need for a provincial attorney general’s sign-off to pursue a hate-propaganda prosecution. The move will likely be supported by both the Bloc and Conservatives.

Fortin, Bussières McNicoll and Al-Qazzaz all said they agreed with maintaining the additional check and balance before charges are laid, which could have a cooling effect on freedom of expression.

Quebec’s Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette, who has called on the federal government for years to remove the religious exemption defence, celebrated the deal between Liberals and Bloc on social media.

Source: Conservatives blast removal of religious exemption in hate-speech laws as ‘assault’ on freedom of speech

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , , , , , ,

Girard | Une laïcité sagement bonifiée, A wisely improved secularism

2025/12/03 Leave a comment

Positive and comprehensive assessment from a former director of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (I would disagree with the “wisely” as it over simplifies the lived experiences of women):

…En droit québécois et en droit canadien, la dignité humaine est aussi protégée. Les dispositions du PL 9 concernant les vêtements religieux qui couvrent le visage semblent donc aussi conformes aux Chartes.

En plus d’être légitimes, les principales propositions du PL 9 bonifient le modèle de laïcité de l’État choisi par le Québec pour assurer sa neutralité religieuse. Cela est d’autant plus important que la laïcité de l’État est une des conditionssine qua non pour mettre fin aux inégalités qui touchent les femmes telles qu’elles sont promues par les grandes religions monothéistes. En s’assurant de la neutralité religieuse de l’État, la laïcité protège certains lieux publics de l’influence des pratiques religieuses sexistes auprès de ses citoyens.

L’autrice est retraitée de la Commission canadienne des droits de la personne. Elle signe ce texte à titre personnel.

Source: Idées | Une laïcité sagement bonifiée

… In Quebec law and Canadian law, human dignity is also protected. The provisions of PL 9 concerning religious clothing that covers the face therefore also appear to be in accordance with the Charters.

In addition to being legitimate, the main proposals of PL 9 improve the state’s model of secularism chosen by Quebec to ensure its religious neutrality. This is all the more important as the secularism of the State is one of the qua non conditions to end the inequalities that affect women as they are promoted by major monotheistic religions. By ensuring the religious neutrality of the state, secularism protects certain public places from the influence of sexist religious practices among its citizens.

The author is a retired member of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. She signs this text in a personal capacity.

Filed under Interculturalisme, laicité, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

ICYMI – Jamie Sarkonak: The CRTC’s top-down diversity mandate comes for Big Streaming ICYMI

2025/12/03 2 Comments

While some like Sarkonak find this ill-thought, there is a history behind these initiatives as many government programs overly favoured previous beneficiaries or incumbents rather than ensuring better representation. And having good or better data is a basic (the Employment Equity Act relative success is arguably largely based on public diversity reporting:

…In addition, the Broadcasting Act now states that the broadcasting system should support programming created by and for non-white communities. While it didn’t outright state that quotas and demographic tracking were now required, that’s increasingly how it’s being interpreted.

In its decision to mandate the collection of diversity statistics, the CRTC notes that some television and radio broadcasters are currently required to include statistics on the presence of women in “key production roles” and track spending on content by Indigenous and official language minority producers.

It considers those data collection initiatives a success, and thus, “the Commission is of the view that the report lends itself well to be expanded to gather information on all equity-deserving groups (specifically, racialized people, people with disabilities and individuals who identify as 2SLGBTQI+, in addition to women).”

Big online streamers operating in Canada under this new regime will have to submit these diversity statistics as part of this. The current lack of data, the CRTC complained, “results in a partial picture of production spending and representation of equity-deserving groups in the production sector.” That information is important because it helps to “monitor compliance and trends and to ensure policy goals are met, especially when it comes to representation of equity-deserving groups.”

We aren’t at the point where the CRTC is ordering Netflix, HBO and Paramount+ to spend a minimum proportion of their production budgets on “diverse” shows and production teams, but we’re awfully close. In 2022, the CRTC ordered the CBC to do just that with its budget for commissioned TV and documentary programs. This year, the English side of CBC was required to dedicate 30 per cent of spending in that category to “diverse” production teams.

Last year, the CRTC also announced that it would be taking a five per cent cut from online streamers to redistribute to industry groups in Canada whose missions include the advancement of DEI in broadcasting. And in July, the CRTC tweaked its funding formula for online news to incentivize coverage of “diverse” communities….

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: The CRTC’s top-down diversity mandate comes for Big Streaming

Filed under DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

The New Speech Wars

2025/12/02 2 Comments

Recognition that speech policing under the Trump administration and its followers is significantly worse than more organization and individual specific policing:

…Mchangama’s observation was made during a discussion about free-speech hypocrisies (also recorded as a Persuasion podcast) in which three of the four panelists had been strong critics of progressive illiberalism: Mchangama himself, Persuasion magazine founder and editor-in-chief Yascha Mounk, and Brookings Institution fellow Jonathan Rauch, whose critique of progressive speech-policing, Kindly Inquisitors, appeared in 1993. Now, he is adamant that speech-policing by the government is unequivocally worse: “I would argue it is an order of magnitude more concerning because government can yank your license, investigate you, try you, put you in jail.” We have seen, for instance, television networks being dragged into a Trump-friendly orbit through a combination of bogus lawsuits from Trump and strong-arming by the Federal Communications Commission via its power to regulate media-company mergers. Rauch expressed his dismay at “how quickly we are moving toward Hungary,” where Viktor Orbán’s ruling party has consolidated much of the media landscape in its hands through a combination of direct government control and ownership by Orbán cronies. Except that, Rauch said, America’s slide toward authoritarianism-lite has been happening “on a very fast time scale”—it is already perhaps halfway there after only eight months of Trump’s second term, compared to the fifteen years it took Orbán. It’s not creeping Orbánisation so much as galloping Orbánisation.

Other summit sessions also bore witness to the changed climate in America. The two panels dealing with higher education would once, no doubt, have focused solely on the speech-chilling effects of campus conduct codes or investigations based on student complaints over offensive language, or on the problem of left-skewed ideological uniformity. Now, the focus was also on the Trump administration’s efforts to wrestle universities into submission—including a “compact” offering expanded federal benefits contingent on the promotion of conservative viewpoints—and the danger of non-citizen students being targeted by the feds in retaliation for the expression of disfavoured opinions.

Is there room for a “both sides” argument here? In the session on challenges to academic freedom, some speakers pointed out that federal arm-twisting of academic institutions did not exactly start with Trump. Fourteen years ago, the Obama administration pressured schools to change their handling of Title IX sexual-misconduct cases in ways that weakened due process for accused students. And yet Rauch, who was also on this panel and who was also highly critical of the Title IX reform push under Obama, emphasised the difference: where the Obama administration conducted investigations and took legal action, arguably with “abuse of regulatory authority,” the Trump administration simply issues demands, makes threats, and cuts off or freezes federal funds, including money for vital medical research, to force compliance. It’s not just overreach, said Rauch; it’s “flatly illegal.”

Do universities need reform to promote more open debate and intellectual diversity? At the free-speech summit, the answer was a resounding yes. But there was an equally strong consensus that presidential bullying is not the way, and not just because of principle. Rikki Schlott, the self-described right-leaning libertarian journalist who co-authored The Canceling of the American Mind with FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff, pointed out that “grassroots organic change is the only way that’s actually a meaningful and lasting effect: what happens when the next administration has a different set of demands?” Rauch also disputed the notion that no such organic change was possible within academia until Trump rode to the rescue. In fact, he said, “campuses all over the country were adopting institutional neutrality and the Chicago principles,” which emphasise open discussion and free inquiry. And, if anything, the administration’s heavy-handed interventions “may lead to backlash in the other direction,” assuming that at some point the heavy hand will be gone.

While there is no need to pretend that past American administrations were devoted to free expression, both-sideism under Trump is unconvincing. The Biden administration’s sometimes tense and even heavy-handed interactions with social-media companies about moderating disinformation related to COVID-19 and to election integrity are a favourite “whatabout” response to criticism of the Trump administration’s aggressions against the media.

And yet, as Georgetown professor and social-media researcher Renée diResta argued on the summit’s free-speech hypocrisy panel, the comparison is entirely fallacious: it relies on uncritical acceptance of questionable GOP narratives as well as a bizarre “amnesia” that blames the “Biden censorship regime” for things that happened under the first Trump administration, such as the brief social-media blocking of links to the New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s laptop. (DiResta herself once became a target of right-wing attacks as a “government censor” because of her research on online disinformation and her past receipt of government grants. She says that while she used to support private tech-platform moderation to reduce the visibility of disinformation and extremism, she has since come to believe that giving users more control over their social-media algorithms is a far better and less antagonising solution.)…

Source: The New Speech Wars

Filed under Other, Trump administration Tagged with , ,

Allen: This was just the latest attempt to silence Palestinian voices in Canada. But these stories should be heard

2025/12/02 Leave a comment

Agree:

The recent attack by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) on the Canadian Museum for Human Rights for daring to include an exhibit on the Palestinian Nakba is the latest attempt to suppress the Palestinian narrative in Canada. It follows B’nai Brith Canada’s effort to prevent the Palestinian flag from being raised at Toronto City Hall, even though Canada recently recognized Palestine as a state. This turned a peaceful, one-day gesture of pride for Palestinians into a political storm that served only to sow further divisions between Jews and Palestinians at time when polarization is already at an all-time high.

These are not isolated incidents but rather they reflect a pattern in which mainstream Jewish organizations exert pressure on institutions and community leaders to silence Palestinians and those who support them.

The Jewish community in Canada is absolutely entitled to safety, dignity, and protection of its rights. They marched in celebration of Israel’s independence and to remember the victims of Oct. 7. This was important for the community. Why then should anyone object to the desire of Palestinians in Canada to tell their story?

…Canada must not allow itself to become a place where human rights institutions are bullied into erasing Palestinian history, or where gestures of inclusion are treated as existential threats. Museums must be free to tell the truth. Cities must be free to recognize the communities who live in them. Canadians must be free to hear every side of a story without intimidation.

Silencing Palestinians will not bring safety. It will not prevent antisemitism. It will not produce justice. Demanding equality and dignity for one group cannot come at the expense of another.

Let the museum speak. Let the flag fly. And let Palestinians — and all who stand with them — be heard.

Source: Opinion | This was just the latest attempt to silence Palestinian voices in Canada. But these stories should be heard

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

Laroche: Should high-level managers bear the brunt of public service cuts? [on government transformation]

2025/12/02 Leave a comment

By former deputy minister Yasmine Laroche. Former deputies are always more “radical” when they retire and are no longer subject to bureaucratic and political restraints:

…But creating parallel organizations without fixing the underlying system? That’s not transformation, that’s a work-around. Now, no-one asked for my advice, but if they had, here’s some of what I would propose:

  • Dramatically reduce the number of departments and deputy ministers.
  • Flatten the executive hierarchy to three levels (director → director general → assistant deputy minister).
  • Eliminate any position with the title, “associate.”
  • Institute three-year contracts for executives, to reduce unnecessary churn and to hold people to account for delivery, not just intentions.
  • Eliminate “performance pay” – it has nothing to do with performance; it is a way to top up salaries or reward DM favourites. 

At the same time, take a hard look at compensation. Some positions and job categories are seriously underpaid compared to similar positions outside the public service, while others are overpaid.

But these are just one person’s ideas. What I would love to see is the government, through the clerk of the Privy Council, invite retired public servants — deeply experienced, battle-tested, with no vested interest — to return as advisers at a symbolic rate, like the “$1-a-day” men (yes, sadly, they were all men) of the post-war era, to design real, lasting reform.

By nature, I’m not a cynical person. I believe in the public service. I believe it can evolve. It can become leaner, more effective, more accountable and more mission-driven. But only if we call for change that goes beyond cuts in headcount.

We need change that reimagines and rebuilds structures because you are absolutely right: this isn’t just about today’s budget, it’s about whether the public service is built to meet 21st-century challenges.

Source: Should high-level managers bear the brunt of public service cuts?

Filed under Government Tagged with ,

Oshiogbele: Dependants? Why Canada should recognize migrant spouses and partners with more accuracy

2025/12/02 Leave a comment

Hard to see this as a substantive issue compared to the many more pressing issues:

…This issue is not simply about accuracy in terminology, although that is essential. It is also about inadvertently classifying others unfairly, promoting gender inequality and marginalizing some migrant family members.

Most accompanying spouses and partners are women and labelling them uniformly as dependants even when they include co-providers and primary earners, reinforces outdated stereotypes. 

Migrant male spouses and partners also face their own identity struggles, despite their qualifications. 

Statistics Canada data reveals persistent gender differences in labour market outcomes among newcomers, with immigrant women having a labour force participation rate of 78.2 per cent in 2021, significantly lower than the 90.2 per cent for immigrant men. While this arguably reflects global gender norms that many migrant families bring with them, it could also be linked with their sense of identity.

Canada prides itself on being a leader in immigration policy and in creating an inclusive society. Therefore, while other long-established immigration systems across the globe may continue to use this term this way, IRCC could consider clarifying it. Currently, the dependant label may unintentionally reinforce perceptions of dependency that do not reflect the evolving realities of modern migrant families…

Goodnews I. Oshiogbele is a member of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) and the Canadian Population Society (CPS).

Source: Dependants? Why Canada should recognize migrant spouses and partners with more accuracy

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Liberal deal with Bloc means hate-speech laws will lose exemption for ‘sincerely held’ religious belief

2025/12/02 Leave a comment

This will create considerable debate and will likely lead to court challenges. A good faith or “sincerely held” clause should not be a “get out of jail” card, but in the end, it will depend on context and specifics, and would to extreme religious extremists and positions:

The Liberals have agreed to remove religious exemptions from Canada’s hate-speech laws to secure Bloc Québécois support to help pass its bill targeting hate and terror symbols, National Post has learned through a source close to the talks.

Currently, the law exempts hateful or antisemitic speech if it based in good faith on the interpretation of a religious text, but that immunity is set to be removed. Additionally, the Liberals are expected to back off plans to eliminate the need for a provincial attorney general’s sign-off to pursue a hate-propaganda prosecution.

The removal of the religious exemption is expected to come via an amendment to the Criminal Code in the form of Bill C-9 at the parliamentary justice committee that will be supported by both the Liberals and Bloc, a senior government source confirmed.

The source was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss party negotiations publicly.

“We do have Bloc partnership,” the source said. “The bill is in a place now, even with those Bloc amendments, that everyone is happy,” they added in reference to Liberal and Bloc MPs.

Bill C-9, which fulfilled a campaign promise Prime Minister Mark Carney made during the spring election, was his minority government’s first major justice bill introduced earlier this fall by Justice Minister Sean Fraser.

It seeks multiple changes to the Criminal Code to confront the issue of hate, with the Liberals citing a rise in police-reported incidents in recent years, particularly in the wake of sustained anti-Israel protests over the last two years.

Chief among the proposed changes is creating a new offence for intimidating someone to the point of blocking their access to a place of worship or another centre used by an identifiable group, as well as criminalizing the act of promoting hate by displaying a hate or terror symbol, such as one tied to a listed terrorist organization or a swastika.

The Opposition Conservatives have lambasted the current effort as censorship, saying provisions already exist within criminal law to counter hate, and that the bill’s proposal to remove the requirement for a provincial attorney general’s (AG) consent to lay a hate propaganda charge took away an “important safeguard,” according to the party.

The Liberals are now expected to accept another amendment eliminating that change from the bill entirely. That, too, was a Bloc request.

When the bill was first presented back in September, the Liberals argued that removing the AG requirement would help streamline the process of laying hate propaganda charges, while critics said it was an additional check on a charge with serious implications for free speech.

Once the amendments are passed, the Liberals and Bloc are expected to vote the bill through committee and the House of Commons. However, it is unclear when the justice committee will debate clause-by-clause amendments to the bill.

The House is scheduled to rise on Dec. 12.

The original text of the bill did not contain changes to the existing religious defences for hate speech, but the Bloc has consistently raised the need for it to be addressed.

Currently, Section 319 of the Criminal Code contains an exemption stating no person shall be convicted of promoting hateful or antisemitic speech if they expressed “in good faith” an opinion “based on a belief in a religious text.”…

Source: Liberal deal with Bloc means hate-speech laws will lose exemption for ‘sincerely held’ religious belief

Filed under Hate crimes, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

The Age of Depopulation

2025/12/01 Leave a comment

Policy makers have yet to confront the prospect and the related reality that immigration can only partially delay the inevitable:

…Prosperity in a depopulating world will also depend on open economies: free trade in goods, services, and finance to counter the constraints that declining populations otherwise engender. And as the hunger for scarce talent becomes more acute, the movement of people will take on new economic salience. In the shadow of depopulation, immigration will matter even more than it does today.

Not all aged societies, however, will be capable of assimilating young immigrants or turning them into loyal and productive citizens. And not all migrants will be capable of contributing effectively to receiving economies, especially given the stark lack of basic skills characterizing too many of the world’s rapidly growing populations today.

Pragmatic migration strategies will be of benefit to depopulating societies in the generations ahead—bolstering their labor forces, tax bases, and consumer spending while also rewarding the immigrants’ countries of origin with lucrative remittances. With populations shrinking, governments will have to compete for migrants, with an even greater premium placed on attracting talent from abroad. Getting competitive migration policies right—and securing public support for them—will be a major task for future governments but one well worth the effort….

A NEW CHAPTER

The era of depopulation is nigh. Dramatic aging and the indefinite decline of the human population—eventually on a global scale—will mark the end of an extraordinary chapter of human history and the beginning of another, quite possibly no less extraordinary than the one before it. Depopulation will transform humanity profoundly, likely in numerous ways societies have not begun to consider and may not yet be in a position to understand.

Yet for all the momentous changes ahead, people can also expect important and perhaps reassuring continuities. Humanity has already found the formula for banishing material scarcity and engineering ever-greater prosperity. That formula can work regardless of whether populations rise or fall. Routinized material advance has been made possible by a system of peaceful human cooperation—deep, vast, and unfathomably complex—and that largely market-based system will continue to unfold from the current era into the next. Human volition—the driver behind today’s worldwide declines in childbearing—stands to be no less powerful a force tomorrow than it is today.

Humanity bestrides the planet, explores the cosmos, and continues to reshape itself because humans are the world’s most inventive, adaptable animal. But it will take more than a bit of inventiveness and adaptability to cope with the unintended future consequences of the family and fertility choices being made today.

NICHOLAS EBERSTADT is Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute and Senior Adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research. Eberstadt has served as a consultant to the World Bank and to the U.S. government, including at the State Department, the Agency for International Development, and the President’s Council on Bioethics. His books include Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis and Russia’s Peacetime Demographic Crisis: Dimensions, Causes, Implications.

Source: The Age of Depopulation

Filed under Immigration Tagged with ,

Immigrants from China struggling to obtain security clearances for government jobs, senator says

2025/12/01 2 Comments

Of note and not surprising (Senator Woo tends to underestimate risks of foreign interference):

A senator told a parliamentary committee that he’s hearing of immigrants from China, with marginal connections to the ruling Chinese Communist Party or other government bodies, who are finding it difficult to obtain security clearances for Canadian public-sector jobs.

Senator Yuen Pau Woo raised the matter during a meeting of the Senate committee on foreign affairs and international trade Thursday, where he asked officials from the Department of Global Affairs to address it.

“I’ve encountered more and more cases of individuals looking to do government jobs, maybe work for a senator, or an MP, having their security clearances rejected or not responded to at all,” Mr. Woo said.

On the face of it, Mr. Woo said, it seems this is happening because the applicants “come from the People’s Republic of China and have the most tangential links to the CCP or some government organ,” he said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party, which has ruled China for 76 years….

Source: Immigrants from China struggling to obtain security clearances for government jobs, senator says

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , , ,

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