The Assault on Civil Society

There's something that bothers me about Keith Martin's motion to Private Member's Motion M-446 in a very fundamental way.

I've already stated why I think Martin's motion is fundamentally a pile of crap that should appear on the House of Commons TP supply, but I haven't quite finished sorting out why that Motion makes me so angry.

The meme has been running about the far right wing-o-sphere for some time that the concept of "hate speech" is little more than blatant censorship, and they (or anyone else) should be "free to speak their minds".

Superficially, I might almost consider agreeing with that precept - but it's far too simplistic. (Like a lot of the jingoism that comes out of Canada's CPC lately)

In many respects, the "hate speech" provisions that exist in Canada's Human Rights (and more recently, Criminal Code) are an artifact of two significant events in the 20th Century. The first is the WWII Holocaust, and the second is a reflection of the impact of the American Civil Rights Movement on Canada.

Provisions like the one that Mr. Martin is seeking to have struck from the legislation exist to constrain the ability of some (hopefully small) groups of society to use propaganda techniques such as those that Joseph Goebbels used so effectively during the Nazi era in Germany. ( I must stress here that I am not claiming that Mr. Martin and his supporters are "Nazis", but rather this is a reflection of the historical context in which Canada's human rights laws have been forged )

Let us consider for a moment the wording of the subject of Mr. Martin's motion - S. 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act:

13. (1) It is a discriminatory practice for a person or a group of persons acting in concert to communicate telephonically or to cause to be so communicated, repeatedly, in whole or in part by means of the facilities of a telecommunication undertaking within the legislative authority of Parliament, any matter that is likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt by reason of the fact that that person or those persons are identifiable on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.

The key point here seems to be the use of broadcast or electronic media to publish material that constitutes a "hate message". (I'll come back to the question of just what constitutes a "hate message" in a bit). What this basically says is that using "broadcast" media to propagate a hate message is in contravention of the CHR Act. The interpretation notes for S13 make it abundantly clear that internet communications (such as this Blog) fall under that clause.

Intriguingly, this is not really the part of the legislation that would impact cases like Boissoin, or Ezra Levant. In fact, their cases would fall squarely under S12 of the act, which reads:

12. It is a discriminatory practice to publish or display before the public or to cause to be published or displayed before the public any notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation that

(a) expresses or implies discrimination or an intention to discriminate, or

(b) incites or is calculated to incite others to discriminate

if the discrimination expressed or implied, intended to be expressed or implied or incited or calculated to be incited would otherwise, if engaged in, be a discriminatory practice described in any of sections 5 to 11 or in section 14.

One can look at both S12 and S13, and think "omigosh, that's quite a limitation on the freedom of expression!". There is, however, a huge "yabbut" to consider here.

The classic tactic of those who run afoul of S12 or S13 is an old one - namely to tell a lie, and repeat it as often as possible. (Sometimes, it is a blatant lie, other times, it may have a slender granule of truth in it - just enough to persuade a casual reader of the veracity of the much broader claims often implied.

Time and again in the 20th Century, it was demonstrated that any broadly available medium - whether it is radio, television or print media can be used as a tool to marginalize or demonize identifiable groups in society.

MP Martin's motion essentially is an attempt to claim that there is "no such thing as hate on the Internet". It is a "head in the sand" claim, indeed. Anyone with access to a search engine and a few minutes can hunt up anything from racial supremacists to anti-gay literature and goodness knows what else. While only a fraction of this material constitutes "hate" material in the formal sense, it is nothing short of breathtakingly naive to assume that it doesn't exist.

One could make the claim that the Internet, and its child technologies is in fact "the great equalizer", since there is little to prevent someone from a minority group publishing a "counter argument". But then, being heard, or read, on the Internet is not easy. My logs on this blog show a regular readership of some forty or so regular readers, and the odd occasion where I get a brief spike into the hundreds for a day or two if I managed to write something particularly interesting. In a world where countries count their populations in millions or even billions, I have few illusions about how much influence my blog really has. (But I do appreciate the readers and the often thoughtful feedback I receive!)

But, I digress. The flaws in Martin's proposal are many, but what worries me about the proposal itself is the reality underlying it that should the government ever choose to enact in legislation what he suggests, conversations such as those surrounding gay rights or minority religious populations which are barely civil today (anyone who has read either Mark Steyn or Michael Coren will recognize their writing as being filled with a near paranoid level of fear towards certain groups) The legal framework today obliges the most polar of extremes to make their points in a (relatively) reasoned fashion - one that can be challenged much more rationally than the utterly paranoid screeching that comes from groups like the Phelps clan in the United States.

Do we want to give such groups unbridled freedom in Canada?