The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - Bill C-9 wasn’t about fighting hate.

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome once again to The Blueprint. This is Canada's Conservative Podcast. I'm your

00:00:14.060 host, Jamie Schmael, Member of Parliament for Halliburton-Caworthalakes, with new content for

00:00:17.860 you every single Tuesday, 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe,

00:00:22.220 and share this program, because on today's show, we are talking about C9, the Government's so-called

00:00:27.680 Combating Hate Act. To give us the details and a bit more into it, we bring on Robin Baber,

00:00:33.480 the Member of Parliament for York Centre. Thanks for coming on the show.

00:00:36.260 Good to be with you.

00:00:37.180 All right. C9 has become law. So maybe you can tell us what C9 is and we'll get into some of

00:00:44.200 the concerns as well.

00:00:45.060 For sure. Government brought that as its first piece of justice legislation. So it tells you

00:00:52.380 where their priorities are. Instead of fixing bail, instead of fixing sentencing and the revolving

00:00:56.920 door we have in in canada's courts and jails uh they bring this anti-hate bill where basically

00:01:04.280 they do the following number one they create a new hate motivated offense so if an offense is

00:01:14.100 motivated by hatred then that would be an additional standalone criminal offense the

00:01:21.480 concern is the offense would apply not just to criminal offenses but to any statute prescribed

00:01:30.320 by parliament so if you have a civil offense like an offense against a labor relations offense

00:01:38.420 or an elections canada offense and it is motivated by hate then that otherwise civil conduct could

00:01:47.960 to track criminal prosecution.

00:01:50.960 So how does the government define hate?

00:01:54.020 Good question.

00:01:55.120 It's not the government that defines hatred.

00:01:57.720 It was the Supreme Court in a decision 40 years ago

00:02:01.860 called Kickstra, that the Supreme Court said

00:02:05.960 that you have to meet a very high threshold

00:02:08.020 in order to convict of hatred.

00:02:10.100 You need an emotion that is intense and extreme,

00:02:14.160 that brings about detestation and vilification

00:02:19.300 of an identifiable individual or group of people.

00:02:23.040 What the liberals tried to do in C9

00:02:25.020 is they wanted to codify that definition,

00:02:26.940 but they came up with a much diluted definition.

00:02:29.720 They removed the requirement for an intense and extreme emotion

00:02:33.040 and they made the definition disjunctive.

00:02:36.740 So either extreme, sorry, either vilification or detestation.

00:02:42.720 I brought an amendment, Jamie,

00:02:44.160 And thankfully, the liberals accepted my amendment to return to the original language of hatred.

00:02:51.780 And so we were able to fight that off.

00:02:54.160 And the standard articulated by the Supreme Court still remains.

00:02:58.800 Very quickly, they codified, they clarified two additional offenses.

00:03:04.860 In response to concerns from the Jewish community, supposedly, I'm a member of the Jewish community.

00:03:09.260 I don't support the bill, nor do I believe that it actually does anything meaningful.

00:03:13.200 they have added additional offenses for obstruction and intimidation of entry to places.

00:03:22.260 So sometimes people protest around synagogues or Jewish schools.

00:03:27.200 That is not required.

00:03:29.960 It's already an offense to obstruct me from entering a synagogue.

00:03:34.140 It's called assault.

00:03:35.580 And it's already an offense to intimidate someone from doing something that they have a lawful right to do.

00:03:40.880 It's called intimidation.

00:03:41.780 Contrary to Section 453, and that's basically, there was, they wanted to eliminate the requirement for the consent of the Attorney General to bring hate-related prosecutions.

00:03:52.140 You need consent of the Attorney General so people don't sparingly exercise that.

00:03:56.500 They walked that back.

00:03:58.760 They actually understood how bad the bill is.

00:04:02.440 And just when it seemed that it's not going to pass, because it's a bad bill and not required,

00:04:09.140 they did a deal with the Bloc Québécois to give the Bloc what they wanted,

00:04:14.020 which is probably what some of our viewers want to focus the most.

00:04:17.240 And that's the repeal of what is known as the religious speech defense.

00:04:24.480 Maybe I'll let you get an award.

00:04:26.440 Yeah, no, that's great. Actually, that's exactly where I wanted you to go,

00:04:28.960 because we have a clip here. Let's keep up one. 0.96

00:04:30.860 This is Liberal MP Leslie Church kind of talking about what you just ended on.

00:04:37.000 Play Cut One.

00:04:38.240 National Council of Canadian Muslims were deeply concerned that the bill could undermine civil liberties

00:04:42.200 and disproportionately impact already marginalized communities.

00:04:45.300 The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops writing in a letter to the Prime Minister,

00:04:48.780 removal of this provision risk creating uncertainty for faith communities, clergy, educators,

00:04:53.260 and others who may fear that the expression of traditional moral or doctrinal teachings

00:04:56.880 could be misinterpreted as hate speech.

00:04:59.140 These aren't just conservatives who are saying this.

00:05:01.460 These are religious groups in this country.

00:05:03.380 Again, if it has never successfully been used, why do what you did?

00:05:07.440 Well, I hope that the message that we are sending to all groups and all Canadians right now

00:05:12.580 is captured by an amendment that we put in for greater certainty.

00:05:17.840 Religious teachings, texts, prayers, scripture are protected.

00:05:22.620 Your religious freedoms are protected.

00:05:24.320 I mean, the whole heart of this bill is about ensuring that Canadians can pray safely and in peace and proudly at the synagogue, temple, church of their choice.

00:05:34.260 How do you respond to that?

00:05:36.840 I want to try and explain the amendment.

00:05:39.740 So when the Supreme Court considered hatred, the ability to charge and convict someone of hate speech, they looked at the proposed legislation at the time and they said, look, you need some sort of a democratic safeguard in order to not criminalize what should otherwise be free speech.

00:06:08.480 So the criminal code codifies various defenses to hate speech.

00:06:15.260 Truth, if something's said in the public interest or in an academic discussion, and it's in good faith.

00:06:25.020 And the other one is quoting a religious text or expressing a religious opinion if it's done in good faith.

00:06:31.900 And it's because these safeguards explicitly exist in the criminal code that the Supreme Court said certain forms of speech, hate speech, might be criminal because we have these safeguards.

00:06:48.500 The Bloc Québécois insisted that the religious defense should be eliminated.

00:06:53.860 they've done that by citing an islamic cleric who wished death upon all the enemies of gaza 0.51

00:07:03.640 and they said because he's an islamic cleric essentially

00:07:07.560 that he wasn't charged on the basis of the fact that he could avail himself defend himself with

00:07:16.180 this religious exemption. Nonsense. The religious defense only applies if the religious opinion

00:07:25.080 or the text is communicated in good faith. And that means that you don't genuinely mean any harm.

00:07:31.440 So if you wish for someone to be extinct or death, then you don't say that in good faith.

00:07:39.980 And the other element is the religious defense does not apply to incitement to violence.

00:07:48.880 If you meet the intent requirement and you genuinely incite people to violence, then you cannot cloak yourself, defend yourself with a religious defense.

00:08:00.400 And a lot of this already exists in the criminal code now.

00:08:04.580 Absolutely.

00:08:04.920 And so, yeah, the police decided not to charge this cleric, Cherkawi, because in order for you to be charged with incitement, the incitement has to be against an identifiable group of people.

00:08:22.180 And the court said enemies of Gaza, sorry, and the prosecution thought that enemies of Gaza is not identifiable enough.

00:08:28.640 Yeah, too broad.

00:08:30.380 The fear is that, look, we still have charter protection to religious speech, thankfully. 0.76

00:08:39.820 But the question is how this is going to be, the elimination of the defense, how is this going to be interpreted?

00:08:45.860 And all of this came into focus because the chair of the Justice Committee at the time, Mark Miller, who is now the Heritage Minister,

00:08:52.960 he basically said well how can you have a situation that you have some verses in the

00:08:59.420 bible that are not hateful they in and of themselves have to be hateful

00:09:05.260 presumably referring to people's lifestyles presumably referring to certain ancient

00:09:12.480 understandings of how life used to be and this is where we the conservatives raised the flag

00:09:18.760 and said, wait a minute, you can't tell me that if I just quote a religious text,

00:09:24.460 that that would result in a criminal proceeding or a criminal offense,

00:09:29.940 especially when you don't meet any harm.

00:09:33.600 And that's, I think, where a lot of this confusion and issue came from,

00:09:39.780 in that the heritage minister says, well, no,

00:09:43.660 if you just quote a text that we believe isn't in itself helpful,

00:09:48.340 uh hateful then that would amount to a criminal offense that is not how hate speech works

00:09:54.500 you have a fundamental right to refer to religious text and if you don't incite to violence

00:10:03.440 and if you don't intend to utter hate speech then any suggestion that quoting a religious text

00:10:11.620 would be criminal, is wrong at law, deeply offensive, and dangerous.

00:10:17.200 Isn't it dangerous too in this country what the government tends to do with C9 is to take away

00:10:22.660 a defense? Like that is so extremely rare that I can think of when the last time a government said

00:10:30.360 no no you can't use this at defense if this goes to trial. Right on and it's not just because it's

00:10:37.360 both wrong vis-a-vis our democracy. We should strive towards greater free speech rights,

00:10:45.240 more right for speech, not less rights to speech. But it's also very dangerous vis-a-vis the law,

00:10:52.100 because as I mentioned, part of the reason for the existence of the defense is so hate speech

00:10:58.760 remains criminal. The offense of hate speech is only constitutional because you have these

00:11:07.140 defenses. And so by taking away

00:11:09.300 this defense, you're actually

00:11:11.280 risking more harm

00:11:13.320 to people if someone

00:11:15.120 incites to violence or

00:11:17.060 to hatred against the Jewish community, for

00:11:19.220 instance. This is very, very

00:11:21.140 misguided on the Liberals' part.

00:11:23.060 So as the legislation made its way out of

00:11:25.200 the House, let's queue up cut two, it went

00:11:27.160 to the Senate and Canadians

00:11:28.800 knew this was kind of the last

00:11:31.040 chance they can, everything

00:11:33.160 they can throw at it to try to

00:11:34.940 to get senators aware of what they were about to do. But what we'll say in this clip, those pieces

00:11:41.040 of mail did not make it to those senators. This is our friend and colleague Andrew Lawton here

00:11:46.920 exposing that play cut to. Over 240,000 people from across the country sent postcards to their

00:11:55.180 senators telling them how much they oppose Bill C-9. You can see the scale of them here. I believe

00:12:01.860 there are 133 boxes of these postcards in here. Each one has about 1,600 sent by Canadians across

00:12:09.320 the country. But here's the thing, they haven't actually been sorted to the senators that they're

00:12:14.420 supposed to go to. So far, they haven't made their way to the senators, and I don't know if they will.

00:12:19.720 That means they're trying to look away. They don't want to understand how many Canadians

00:12:23.200 are vehemently opposed to Bill C-9 and what the government is trying to do.

00:12:27.480 So was the government that desperate for this to pass that they needed the help of the bloc,

00:12:31.480 which proposed this amendment that got us to this point we're at now,

00:12:34.980 was it really that important to them?

00:12:37.440 Clearly it was, but there were other ways.

00:12:40.200 Were we not working with the Liberals to try to make that bill, C-9,

00:12:44.460 in its original form better so that we could get multi-party support?

00:12:49.620 That was already in the works.

00:12:50.760 Well, we're actually working in good faith.

00:12:53.160 We were able to come to consensus that we'll fix the definition of hatred,

00:12:56.620 but we'll not dilute it.

00:12:57.580 they actually entertained a prospect of including my private member's bill 257 to criminalize the

00:13:06.320 willful promotion of terrorism. If you're promoting Hamas or Hezbollah, then that would

00:13:13.280 be a criminal offense because that in and of itself is incitement to violence. 0.75

00:13:18.580 There was an option to fix this, but instead they decided to ram it unilaterally. And the

00:13:26.740 block was going to give it to them provided they gave the block the elimination of the religious

00:13:32.400 defense and they actually u-turned on it they flip-flopped on it three times initially when

00:13:37.600 the justice minister came out with it the prime minister's office said he did this without our

00:13:41.980 approval and then they try to say well maybe we will rethink it because they heard from a lot of

00:13:47.120 communities but i want to talk about the clip we just saw this is astonishing because we are served

00:13:54.200 by Canada Post and the bureaucracy inside the House of Commons,

00:13:57.700 and they're supposed to be neutral, not partisan.

00:14:01.360 And the fact that mail was not delivered,

00:14:05.360 clearly, intentionally, the postcards opposing C9

00:14:08.840 were segregated in different boxes,

00:14:11.220 and the mail did not make its way to its destination?

00:14:17.940 This is incredibly concerning.

00:14:20.420 It might be a violation of our privileges, parliamentarians.

00:14:23.240 senators have privilege, can't withhold their mail. It's not even legal for you to detain someone

00:14:30.440 else's mail if it belongs to someone else. How is it that something like that has happened

00:14:36.520 in the Senate is unthinkable. I hope there is a serious investigation into this.

00:14:42.840 So now that it's made its way through, what's the next step? What can Canadians do?

00:14:49.320 You and the team are doing a fantastic job pushing back. And the Liberals have given

00:14:52.760 you lots to work with. It's unbelievable some of the pieces of legislation that they are pushing

00:14:57.240 through that encroach, infringe on civil liberties. It's absolutely incredible. So what's the next

00:15:03.560 steps in regards to C9? I know it's law, but what can they do? We'll see. We'll see if you'll have

00:15:10.920 an ambitious prosecutor who's very liberally minded who thinks that certain passages of the Bible

00:15:20.280 bill should be criminal. I don't suspect that we're going to see some sort of a fundamental

00:15:27.200 landscape in terms of religious speech in Canada. But I do anticipate that there is a possibility

00:15:32.980 that a very motivated, very left-wing prosecutor will decide a test case. And of course, there

00:15:42.040 will be litigation. All of these bills, thankfully, we still have the courts. I believe in the rule

00:15:47.780 of law i know that there's been some questions in the judiciary especially in the last few years

00:15:55.860 as um we do get a lot of decisions that seem to be more on the political side than

00:16:02.980 on the legal side i say this with respect to all courts but there will be litigation

00:16:09.060 to work this through hopefully we will not need to defend folks that articulate religious texts

00:16:17.640 or a religious opinion, or quote, a religious text in good faith.

00:16:21.480 It feels like sometimes for those on the opposing side, for conservatives especially,

00:16:26.780 or even just the kind of the libertarians as well,

00:16:29.820 it just seems that Canada seems to be, with this liberal government over the last 10 years,

00:16:34.220 like a lobster in a pot, right?

00:16:36.000 It's slowly starting to boil.

00:16:38.120 Censorship legislation after censorship legislation,

00:16:41.580 controlling what you can see, watch, hear on the internet.

00:16:44.740 Like one, you know, the media not being able to put their, especially local news on certain platforms.

00:16:52.100 It's just one step after another, it seems.

00:16:54.780 I agree with you.

00:16:56.340 The Liberals started with C11, which allows the CRTC to appoint folks to not necessarily regulate, but figure out the algorithms of what you see online.

00:17:07.060 Then they went to C18, which compels social media companies to pay media and news companies for their content.

00:17:17.400 What that resulted in is the elimination of news from Facebook and Instagram, from Meta, and de facto censorship.

00:17:29.580 That I cannot post a news story on Facebook.

00:17:33.800 Are you kidding me?

00:17:34.440 and then they tried online harms the initial version of justin trudeau's online harms where

00:17:42.900 they bring they brought back old section 13 that basically if someone's offended at something you

00:17:47.920 said online they can take you to the human rights tribunal thankfully that didn't pass

00:17:51.860 and then comes along mark carney he campaigns on building canada on on energy on restoring

00:18:02.140 normal trade with the u.s today is the last day of our spring session and a year later

00:18:09.380 he accomplished none of what he promised and the only thing he did try and partially accomplished

00:18:17.280 is continue down the same path of censorship

00:18:20.860 and an erosion of speech typically you only have to look at history to know that the guys that try

00:18:32.680 to police police speech and censor are typically the bad guys they don't need to be afraid of truth

00:18:39.940 i have a unique perspective on this jamie as someone who was born in the soviet union

00:18:46.800 where policing speech was the government's most important commandment so you don't speak out

00:18:56.520 against the government or understand that there is an alternative to communism to to communist

00:19:02.080 hell um here in the west we're blessed with rights and we're blessed with the charter even

00:19:10.800 though some folks might disagree as to where it's going or how it is applied but the right to free

00:19:18.080 speech is the holiest right of them all because through free speech we defend all other rights

00:19:24.840 and all other people and if a government is intent on seizing rights on limiting or usurping rights

00:19:35.320 then the first right they will attack

00:19:38.900 is the freedom of speech.

00:19:40.780 And that is what we're seeing

00:19:42.120 from the smart card in government.

00:19:44.040 Roman, I love what you're saying

00:19:45.360 and I appreciate all the work you're doing.

00:19:47.080 And you're right, the solution to a tough topic

00:19:49.500 is more speech, not restricting it.

00:19:51.360 Exactly.

00:19:51.840 That always has the opposite effect.

00:19:54.160 And I love what you're doing for civil liberties,

00:19:56.880 not just for the party, but for your country as well.

00:19:59.780 As you may know, the guests always get the last word

00:20:02.160 because unfortunately I have many questions,

00:20:03.800 but we are out of time.

00:20:05.280 The floor is yours.

00:20:06.220 Please close us out.

00:20:08.060 Thank you for your kindness,

00:20:09.240 for your friendship,

00:20:09.740 but for allowing me to speak to your viewers.

00:20:11.740 We have to remain optimistic.

00:20:14.360 We have to remain optimistic

00:20:16.220 that we live and still live

00:20:20.160 in the greatest country in the world

00:20:21.280 and we may be one election away

00:20:25.220 from bringing it around.

00:20:28.700 Pierre Polyev campaigned

00:20:29.880 on making Canada the freest country in the world.

00:20:33.800 I'm hopeful that we will accomplish that.

00:20:38.820 Better days are ahead.

00:20:40.180 Stick around.

00:20:41.240 I love it.

00:20:42.200 Roman Boehmer, Member of Parliament for York Centre.

00:20:44.520 Thank you for your time.

00:20:45.720 Thank you for yours.

00:20:46.960 Don't forget, new content for you every single Tuesday,

00:20:49.380 1.30 p.m. Eastern Time, even throughout the summer.

00:20:52.040 Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe,

00:20:53.640 and share this program.

00:20:54.680 Tell your friends to download it on platforms

00:20:56.860 like CastBox, iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify.

00:20:59.260 You name it, it is out there.

00:21:00.700 I guarantee you it's a message you are not getting

00:21:02.680 on the mainstream media.

00:21:04.280 And so until next week, remember low taxes,

00:21:06.580 less government, more freedom.

00:21:08.180 That's the blueprint.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - July 07, 2026

Bill C-9 wasn’t about fighting hate.

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