With friends like these Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, and Maclean’s magazine don’t need enemies
[snip]
Section 13 is not about protecting people who claim offense. It’s about protecting people from the fear that hate speech will make them a target of hate crime.
That protection should be under the jurisdiction of Canada’s criminal law, which it already is. But the rationale for Section 13 skirts the criminal justice system. How did such investigation lose its mooring to the criminal justice system? By two steps:
First, the rationale rests on the argument that certain types of language can set off hate speech when directed at a member of a ‘protected’ group (e.g., a minority), which is discriminatory. Investigation of alleged discriminatory acts falls under the jurisdiction of the human rights commissions.
Secondly, establishment of criteria for a kind of ‘quasi-language’ that is not hate speech, but might lead to hate speech against a protected group. Thus, there does not need to be a discriminatory act to file a complaint. There only needs to be an example of the quasi-language suggesting the possibility that hate speech could arise from it, and thus might lead to hate crime.
What is the quasi-language? That is completely open to interpretation on a case-by-case basis.
If you tell me that’s all gobbledygook, it was designed to be the Troll in the Forest. Go anywhere near it and you’re lunch.