Juno News - Is there a double standard for hate speech in Canada？

00:00:00.000 Earlier this year, a man from Ottawa was convicted of hate speech and terrorism-related offenses

00:00:05.580 for his connection to Atomwaffen Division, a quite vile neo-Nazi group. While the terrorism

00:00:13.480 charges were justified, the implication is also that people can get sent to prison for a significant

00:00:19.800 amount of time based on their speech. I'm definitely not defending this man, but the

00:00:26.060 trend towards criminalizing speech should concern us all. Politicians and bureaucrats are using what

00:00:32.160 they understand as hate as a pretext to expand the state's power over legitimate expression,

00:00:38.420 and often, not always, if it's conservative or right-wing coded expression. Joining me to break

00:00:45.120 it down is Josh DeHaas from the Centre for Constitutional Freedoms and the co-host of the

00:00:50.000 Not Reserving Judgment podcast. Let's talk about the state of civil liberties in Canada. Who decides

00:00:55.500 what extreme means and how far the chill on speech has spread? I'm Melanie Bennett. This is Disrupted.

00:01:12.100 Josh, thank you so much for joining me.

00:01:14.620 Thanks for the invitation.

00:01:16.440 I want to talk to you about something curious. It's not something I talk about very often,

00:01:22.320 but let's talk about Nazis and terrorism. Let's just go through a little bit of what I know,

00:01:28.580 and I'd love to hear your opinion about it. So we've just found out that a man in his late 20s,

00:01:35.640 Patrick Gordon McDonald, or earlier this year, was charged with promoting hate speech, participating

00:01:41.600 in activities of a terror group, and facilitating terrorist activities. And during the trial, so basically,

00:01:50.920 this guy was called Dark Foreigner, and it was this whole Atomwaffen group, and it was this neo-Nazi

00:01:56.000 group, and all this evidence was gathered, and he was charged and convicted, I believe,

00:02:00.700 and sentenced to 10 years for hate speech for this neo-Nazi group. And you probably know a lot more

00:02:08.520 about this than I do, and I'm dead curious. So what do you know about this case?

00:02:13.000 Well, the sentencing just came down, and it's a 10-year sentence for all three of the convictions

00:02:20.640 that you just mentioned. So two, promotion and contributing to terrorism charges, which is

00:02:27.480 Section 83 of the Criminal Code, and then also a conviction on willful promotion of hatred against

00:02:35.600 an identifiable group, in this case, Jewish people, which is one of the main hate speech provisions.

00:02:42.280 It's one of the ones that's quite controversial in Canada, but that's been upheld by the Supreme Court.

00:02:50.480 And a 10-year sentence is pretty unusual, and even to have hate speech charges like this made,

00:02:58.560 never mind have a person conviction, is not very common in Canada. So this case is kind of a big deal.

00:03:05.420 It tells us a lot about when you can charge people who are making videos, as this person

00:03:11.880 has been convicted of doing, that promote terrorism, in this case through recruitment,

00:03:18.080 or that are racist Nazi videos, and in this case led to a conviction for hate speech.

00:03:27.320 So it was on the basis of the videos that he was convicted? Is that right?

00:03:32.180 Right. So what happened is he was, this is according to the court decision, was part of this

00:03:38.840 Atomwaffen group, which has become a listed terrorist group that happened in 2021. But when

00:03:46.000 these videos were made, which are essentially recruitment videos, these are videos where you have

00:03:53.640 guys in, you know, dressed up in dark clothing with Nazi symbols and carrying, you know, machine guns,

00:04:02.460 that sort of thing, encouraging people to take down the global cabal of, you know, you know,

00:04:08.400 who that supposedly runs the, the country, just the typical, you know, stereotypes that we always hear.

00:04:15.540 So they were making these recruitment videos, and that was enough to convict of the terrorism

00:04:24.320 charges. So, you know, the, the contributing to a terrorist group and the videos, some of the

00:04:32.160 statements made in the videos were what was decided to be the willful promotion of hatred. And what makes

00:04:39.460 the latter part really interesting to me is these are online videos. And when you think of hate speech

00:04:45.760 nowadays, we think about it all occurring online, but of course, when it first started, when these laws

00:04:52.080 were first invented, they're, they've been around since 1970 in Canada, there was no internet. So

00:04:58.240 there's a part of it that says private communications don't count. So if, if you're talking

00:05:04.280 privately, that's not going to be hate speech, but that left a question about whether speech on the

00:05:10.260 internet is private communications or whether that's public and courts in Quebec have in the

00:05:16.340 past found that, you know, posting hateful speech on Facebook, for example, counts as criminal hate

00:05:25.320 speech that can land you in jail, but it's really not that common outside of Quebec to be charged for

00:05:30.860 online hate speech. And here, not only was he charged, but he was convicted. So that's part

00:05:35.700 of what makes this so interesting in 2025. Yeah. Small detail from the decision. I noted that this

00:05:43.480 man in his late twenties, the, the evidence was obtained from his bedroom in his parents' basement,

00:05:50.280 which I felt, I don't know, just had to live up to a stereotype in this particular case. But it also

00:05:55.740 says in the global mail that the RCMP called, called this particular case, the first case in Canada

00:06:00.220 involving both terrorism and hate propaganda offenses laid against someone for promoting

00:06:06.140 violent far right ideology. Now, we're not a fan of Nazis. So a lot of people may go, okay,

00:06:12.880 this is a great idea. We don't want the global elite conspiracy to be propagating. And so maybe

00:06:19.180 this is a good decision. But you were telling me before that you had some concerns about free speech

00:06:25.620 in this particular case. And I thought maybe you could explain a little bit what your position is

00:06:30.460 on that. Yeah. So I think my concerns related to speech are, you know, not particularly necessarily

00:06:37.940 related to this person or his, his speech. But the idea is that when you're talking about putting

00:06:43.780 somebody in jail for, at the end of the day, what are essentially words, that is a scary proposition

00:06:50.880 because it's so subjective to try and define what words would count as hatred and what words

00:06:57.600 are not going to be considered hatred and land you in prison for, for years.

00:07:03.540 This is a problem that courts have struggled with from the beginning of these hate speech laws being

00:07:08.740 on the books in the first place, because, you know, lots of things that people say are controversial

00:07:15.320 and other people will say, well, that's, that's hateful. You know, if you criticize women for 0.96

00:07:21.180 wearing hijabs, some women will say that's anti-Islamic hate. Other people will say, well, 0.75

00:07:28.640 you know, encouraging women to wear hijabs is anti-female hate or misogyny. It's just,

00:07:34.920 it's really hard to know what is going to be considered hateful or not. And the court has said in

00:07:39.760 the past, well, we can, we can define it as the manifestations of the most extreme, sorry,

00:07:47.480 the most extreme forms of the emotion represented by the words detestation and vilification.

00:07:57.540 And then it's really hard to know what that means. So that's later gets to gets redefined and

00:08:03.740 you're told to look for the hallmarks of hatred, which can include things like, you know, there's a

00:08:09.160 global conspiracy by a group to take over the world. But, you know, in this case, some of the

00:08:15.980 evidence for what was considered hate speech, in my opinion, was pretty weak, like burning Israeli, 0.99

00:08:22.360 American and EU flags. I'm not sure how you can hate the EU, but apparently burning those flags was

00:08:29.160 part of what pointed to hate speech. Well, flying the St. George cross in the UK right now is starting

00:08:35.900 to be considered a hate symbol as well. So that's not really that surprising.

00:08:40.840 Right. And that's a perfect example of just how subjective this is. You know, people say,

00:08:46.020 well, the context of putting up the English flag is that you're a racist. And other people say,

00:08:52.040 no, I'm a patriot. And that's my only message here. Right. So once you start criminalizing people

00:08:58.540 for their words, as opposed to their actual actions, like, you know, threatening to actually

00:09:04.560 do some sort of terrorism, which is perfectly justifiable to imprison somebody for, we get

00:09:10.380 into this really difficult, slippery slope that creates a lot of free speech chill, because people

00:09:15.540 just don't know where the line is. They just don't know what they can or can't say.

00:09:20.260 Yeah, I don't know the exact date. But I'm aware that in America, free speech advocates,

00:09:25.360 I can't remember their name exactly. Sorry, it's gone over my head right this second. But on the same

00:09:31.920 basis of what you were talking about, I know that they defended these marches of, I guess,

00:09:37.680 white supremacists in Jewish areas in the United States on the basis of you needed to protect

00:09:42.940 distasteful, maybe even hateful speech to actually have freedom of expression because it was speech.

00:09:48.900 And so it's interesting in Canada that this is happening for this particular, in this particular

00:09:53.440 case. But I'm also curious, is it relevant? Or do you think it's relevant that this, the RCMP says

00:10:00.520 this is the first case like this, and it happens to be for right wing extremism? And in Canada,

00:10:08.400 we're seeing a lot of this extremism, actually on the left, and that gets ignored a lot. So I was

00:10:14.020 wondering if you, if you saw that as an important, an important detail in this at all.

00:10:20.420 I certainly thought about that, because, you know, court cases take a long time to get through

00:10:25.500 the courts. So this is about events that happened years ago, right? So we're only just getting to the

00:10:30.480 conviction and sentencing this year. But what we've seen in the past two years is a lot of people

00:10:37.680 speaking out against Israel in particular. And I think all of that speech ought to be protected.

00:10:46.600 I think any speech that is, you know, not going to cause immediate physical consequences, like

00:10:52.700 inciting a riot or inciting violence against people, or is not, you know, in some physically harmful

00:10:58.340 form, all speech should essentially be allowed no matter how odious it is. But when you see what

00:11:05.340 happened in this case, the, these were recruitment videos, so they were pretty clear terrorist activity,

00:11:11.500 but so much of what's going on with people supporting Hamas or supporting Hezbollah gets

00:11:19.440 pretty close to these lines also of, you know, aiding terrorist flags, right? We're not talking

00:11:26.020 about the St. George Cross or the European Union flag or things like that. We're talking about

00:11:29.380 the flags that represent actual terrorist groups, whether it's Hezbollah or Hamas, and we're not seeing any

00:11:35.040 action on that. The question is, are you, if you're flying the flag, are you recruiting someone just

00:11:40.740 like this person was convicted of, of recruiting people through his videos? And it's a fine line,

00:11:47.900 right? You know, you can say on the one hand, that's that speech and all speech should be allowed,

00:11:52.880 but that's not the law in Canada. I mean, those are my personal beliefs, but that's not the law.

00:11:57.340 Um, so are we going to start seeing charges for, uh, Hamas and Hezbollah supporters who are,

00:12:03.980 I think exist in Canada in pretty large numbers. I think it's clear because we do see the flags,

00:12:08.720 you know, there's a, a bumper sticker on a car driving around in suburban Toronto that is the

00:12:15.140 face of Yaya Sinwar, who is the, the leader of Hamas, um, now deceased, thankfully, but is that

00:12:22.960 promotion of, of terrorism? And the question, the, the answer is, we don't know. We, we just don't

00:12:28.460 know what a court would do, but if you're going to, um, if you're going to prosecute people for

00:12:34.020 right-wing extremism, it needs to be equally meted out, um, when it comes to left-wing extremism or,

00:12:41.000 uh, you know, Hamas or Hezbollah, I don't know if you would label that left-wing, but I think you know

00:12:46.760 what I mean, it has to be, it has to be equal. It's not, but it has been adopted by people who would

00:12:52.180 often consider themselves to be progressive or leftist. And so that's why I kind of put it into

00:12:57.060 that category because there seems to be this alliance going on, uh, between these particular

00:13:02.000 groups for that particular matter. But going back to the focus on speech and, uh, criminalizing

00:13:09.500 speech when it comes to political views, uh, I, I'm going to change the subject just slightly

00:13:15.180 because you've, uh, mentioned, uh, uh, Sean Foyt and the situation with Sean Foyt and how

00:13:20.820 he's being targeted. Um, admittedly, this is not somebody who's been a criminally charged or

00:13:27.580 anything like that, but you sort of see the same dichotomy with the Sean Foyt situation where this

00:13:32.920 preacher, this American preacher supported the American president, came to do shows. He'd been to

00:13:37.580 Canada many times before. He did this tour this summer and the media just absolutely had a field

00:13:43.760 day on. I mean, it got canceled all over the place. And this was happening at the same time

00:13:48.360 as another preacher, an Islamic preacher who has been linked to curious things, uh, that I reported

00:13:55.400 on and not a peep about any of that whatsoever. And so you, you do see it. I find it concerning that

00:14:02.180 you see an attack on speech for a particular worldview, but not others. Do you want to talk a

00:14:08.500 little bit about Sean Foyt? I, yeah. So I think that's a really astute point. This is the problem

00:14:14.060 is when you start, uh, letting the government and the courts decide what words you can and cannot say,

00:14:19.780 which people are allowed to speak or not speak, then these are the things that happen, you know,

00:14:25.200 certain viewpoints. And it's usually the minority viewpoint, uh, gets completely silenced and, um,

00:14:32.040 other viewpoints are allowed to go ahead. So, you know, Sean Foyt, I'm sure your listeners know,

00:14:36.420 is, uh, a Christian singer. He's associated with, uh, the MAGA movement. Um, and he had,

00:14:44.220 I believe it was nine shows either have his permits revoked or, uh, not granted in the first place in

00:14:51.200 different cities and, uh, parts of Canada. And this was because people didn't like things he had said

00:14:58.220 online. Uh, most of them were about LGBTQ issues. Um, but none of them, in my opinion,

00:15:06.020 came close to hate speech, except perhaps one comment, um, which was about, uh, what basically,

00:15:13.180 look, basically what happened was, uh, somebody posted a video of a protest against a hospital

00:15:18.380 in New York that had stopped, uh, giving gender, uh, reassignment surgeries to minors. At least 0.87

00:15:26.100 that's how Foyt described it. And he said that the Bible has something to say about this,

00:15:30.840 the word millstones. And he quoted a Bible passage. So on our very unclear free speech law in Canada,

00:15:37.920 it's possible. You could argue that that's hateful and discriminatory. I don't think that would get

00:15:42.820 very far in court at all. And certainly you can't, you know, preemptively cancel people's concerts

00:15:49.340 because you think they might do a hate speech in the future, which is essentially what happened here.

00:15:54.600 So I think this is one of the most egregious periods for free speech in Canada this past summer,

00:16:00.240 just seeing cancellation after cancellation and very few people standing up and saying,

00:16:05.560 wait a minute, this is wrong. You know, if you can cancel Sean Foyt, because he's said some things

00:16:10.760 on Twitter that, um, progressives don't like, you know, progressives should, should realize that this

00:16:16.440 will come back and bite them too, because, you know, we could have a pretty far right government in

00:16:21.880 the future that says, uh, drag queen story hours should not happen in public spaces or, you know,

00:16:28.800 controversial rappers shouldn't be allowed to perform or, um, the imam case is a great one because 0.88

00:16:36.000 as much as we might not like what, uh, he has to say, as much as we might find that homophobic,

00:16:41.660 um, he should be allowed to, to speak, uh, speech itself should never be a crime.

00:16:48.860 Yeah. And that's, I, I often wonder how I feel about that too, because when it's something that

00:16:55.000 you feel strongly about, then maybe you think, yes, that person should be stopped from saying

00:16:58.520 those things. And so it's, it can be difficult to, uh, extend the same courtesies to others when

00:17:04.420 you have very strong views about those particular things. So now we've talked about the diagnosis

00:17:09.540 of the issue, obviously there's a speech issue, but what's the prognosis in terms of, uh, the,

00:17:15.380 the legal, the legal system in Canada, where are we going? Um, it's really hard to say. So legally,

00:17:22.400 the, uh, bad free speech jurisprudence really started in the 1980s, um, and Keekstra. So this is

00:17:30.240 the case of, uh, an Alberta teacher who was, um, also an antisemite, um, a theme of in today's show

00:17:37.400 had been teaching his kids, you know, antisemitic tropes and, um, obviously he should have been 1.00

00:17:42.400 fired. But the question was whether his free speech could prevent him from actually going

00:17:47.360 to jail for, um, at the end of the day, what were just, just words as awful as they were. Um,

00:17:54.820 in that decision, the Supreme court upheld the government's free speech or sorry, the government's

00:18:00.100 hate speech law, the same one that, um, we were just talking about earlier with this, uh,

00:18:05.780 new person convicted. And so we know in Canada that these, these, these laws will be upheld now

00:18:11.940 over the past couple of decades, there have been some improvements in the law. For example,

00:18:17.120 the Mike Ward case, the case of a comedian who was, um, forced to pay money originally to

00:18:25.500 the mother of a boy and a boy with a disability for making fun of them. This is a, you know,

00:18:31.620 a famous, uh, boy just, just making fun of them in a comedy routine. He was supposed to pay them

00:18:36.640 $42,000. And the Supreme court said, actually, no, you can't find people that much money for,

00:18:43.320 uh, for jokes. You know, people can handle a joke. Yeah. Very slim margin. So, you know,

00:18:51.620 the Supreme court has changed since then. That was a five, four decision. It could easily go the other

00:18:56.480 way five, four in the next free speech case. And it could be the end of, of free speech. So, um,

00:19:02.740 things are, are not looking great in the courts. Um, it's also worth noting that, you know, the,

00:19:08.120 the person who appointed most judges in Canada over the past decade was Justin Trudeau. And he was not

00:19:14.820 well known for, um, preserving free, free speech. He introduced several laws that implicated free speech,

00:19:23.480 some in quite serious ways. And they didn't all pass, but they could come back now that we have,

00:19:28.920 uh, another new liberal government that may or may not make shutting down, uh, what they see as

00:19:35.660 discriminatory speech online, a priority. So, uh, not looking good in the courts and also not looking

00:19:42.220 great, uh, from a political democratic point of view. Well, while I've got you here, I want to ask

00:19:47.960 your opinion on a relevant, but slightly adjacent issue. And that's the Quebec prayer ban that's

00:19:56.260 being proposed because there's a lot of opinions going around about that. A lot of people are very

00:20:00.540 supportive of this because basically what's happened is you have these, uh, groups of Muslims praying in

00:20:05.820 front of, uh, various places, but also in Toronto, it's on the streets, but the ban is in Quebec. And,

00:20:11.660 um, I, I know what my feelings are about this, but what, what's your opinion on the prayer ban?

00:20:19.240 Well, you were talking earlier about how it can be really hard to be principled on these things

00:20:23.840 because, you know, when there's somebody that you see as hateful, uh, or harmful, you want to shut

00:20:30.220 down your instinct is to try and shut down their speech as well. And I don't think there's anything

00:20:34.880 wrong with that. As long as it's not the government doing it, as long as it's, you know, social

00:20:39.380 approbation that's causing the speech to be shut down. Stigmatizing. Yeah. Social stigma. Like we

00:20:45.480 don't need the government to do this. And when the government decides it's a problem, but when we

00:20:49.680 decide as, as individuals or society, it's, that's how it's supposed to work. Um, in terms of the

00:20:55.400 prayer ban. So, uh, in some cases, mass prayers have been held in the middle of streets, blocking

00:21:01.240 traffic, and that is already illegal. That is. Right. And if it's on private property,

00:21:09.180 that's also illegal, that's trespassing. And these are the things that a lot of people fail

00:21:13.880 to understand is that, you know, your right to freedom of expression is, is not limitless.

00:21:19.000 And if you look at the rule I was talking about earlier, um, you can never, you should never be

00:21:24.520 able to limit ideas in a free society, but if the form is harmful, like trespass or blockading,

00:21:30.880 that's perfectly legitimate to limit. So is that included?

00:21:35.180 Nuisance noise. That's another one. If you're using your loudspeaker to do your call to prayer,

00:21:40.160 I think that is something that can be ticketed. If your noise is, uh, you know, a nuisance to other

00:21:46.600 people and we're not seeing tickets handed out for that much to my dismay, but in terms of banning

00:21:52.640 prayer, like if it's in public spaces, even if it's out outside Notre Dame, which is the big cathedral

00:21:59.840 where this has caused a lot of, um, consternation, even if you think that's a sacred place and that

00:22:06.420 there shouldn't be, uh, Muslims praying there because it's somehow, um, an assault on, uh, 1.00

00:22:13.280 Canadian society or Christian society. Even if you hold those views, um, I don't think that you,

00:22:18.880 you can constitutionally ban that because it's a content-based restriction. It's, it's about the idea

00:22:24.900 and we all have a right to gather in public spaces. We all have a right to express ourselves in public

00:22:30.300 spaces. So if that's what Quebec goes ahead and does and says, you can't pray anywhere in public

00:22:36.400 spaces, that is clearly unconstitutional. And as much as, you know, some people might think, well,

00:22:43.560 these people who are praying, they support Hamas. I'm not saying they necessarily do, but this is the 0.84

00:22:49.340 thinking people have, or these people are anti-Canada somehow, even if you think that, you

00:22:55.460 know, their rights are equal to yours and what makes Canada better than a lot of places, um, like Gaza, 0.80

00:23:02.620 for instance, is that we have these liberal values where we, where everybody's speech is supposed to

00:23:08.960 be treated equally. Um, it isn't always in practice, but we should try and stick to that principle. And

00:23:14.580 the better solution here in Quebec is just, you know, enforce the laws that actually exist. Right. Right.

00:23:21.840 Yeah. That concerns me. I'll just, I mean, I'll share my own opinion on this is it does concern me

00:23:26.040 that we have, we have laws that we can enforce. And instead it's worrying to me to see so many people

00:23:32.680 willing to go for a blunt, uh, a, a blunt weapon, like trying to criminalize people's speech when you can

00:23:40.700 actually apply all these other laws, but apply them equally, not just apply them. Right.

00:23:44.580 To some people and not to others based on their intersectional status and how many oppression

00:23:49.940 points that they have and so on and so forth. Um, so I guess I'm quite, quite similar to you in that,

00:23:55.060 in that regard for that particular topic, but, um, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so

00:23:59.780 much for joining me today. I've often asked myself whether I would defend this, the expression or

00:24:03.900 speech of people that I find despicable. And I understand the instinct of wanting to ban things

00:24:09.880 that we hate altogether, but it does worry me that more and more people appear to be championing

00:24:16.340 censorship rather than questioning what's going on. I'd love to know what you think in the comments,

00:24:21.880 especially. I'm Melanie Bennett. Thanks for watching.

Juno News - September 12, 2025

Is there a double standard for hate speech in Canada？

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