Friday, August 15, 2014


'Hate speech' no longer part of Canada's Human Rights Act

A contentious section of Canadian human rights law, long criticized by free-speech advocates as overly restrictive and tantamount to censorship, is gone for good.

A private member’s bill repealing Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, the so-called “hate speech provision,” passed in the Senate this week. Its passage means the part of Canadian human rights law that permitted rights complaints to the federal Human Rights Commission for “the communication of hate messages by telephone or on the Internet” will soon be history.

The bill from Alberta Conservative MP Brian Storseth passed in the House of Commons last summer, but needed Senate approval. It has received royal assent and will take effect after a one-year phase-in period.

An “ecstatic” Storseth said the bill, which he says had wide support across ideological lines and diverse religious groups, repeals a “flawed piece of legislation” and he called Canada’s human rights tribunal “a quasi-judicial, secretive body that takes away your natural rights as a Canadian.”

SOURCE


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A great day for Canada free speech.

MDH

Bird of Paradise said...

Canada has taken a step in the right direction now to end all liberal speech codes here in america

Anonymous said...

Wow! That's fqntastic. Now if the liberal American press could be persuaded to stop its enforcement of political correctness.

Jerry Doctor said...

While I certainly agree that this is good news, why on earth does it take a year to "phase in" the change of the law? You don't accept any new complaints and stop on work on existing complaints. It's done. Why a year???

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately Australian politicians don't have the guts to do this. The government is depending on Muslim approval of new anti-terror laws and reneged on a promise to remove the hate speech laws and the opposition is dependant on Muslims votes in 19 of 20 electorates with significant Muslim populations. To cap it off the Jewish leaders don't want the law changed but refuse to use it to prosecute anti-Semites. We're stuffed. If you say something that offends someone you are sued and get a lefty judge who applies subjective judgement rather than objective judgement. In the only case prosecuted under the act so far the judge refused to rule on the facts but instead on his perception of intent. The case should have been appealed to the High Court but no one seemed interested. A sad reflection of the public opinion of our High Court. The only good news is that a lefty rag and journalist are being pursued using the same legislation by a couple of private citizens. Can't wait for the outcome. Either way it will be lose/lose for the lefties.