Tag Archives: Joanna Baron

Canadian Constitution Foundation Warns: Liberal Hate Crimes Bill (C-9) Raises Free Speech Concerns

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Canadian Constitution Foundation Warns: Liberal Hate Crimes Bill (C-9) Raises Free Speech Concerns

The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) is concerned that key aspects of the Carney government’s proposed hate crimes legislation would unduly infringe on freedom of expression. 

Among other changes to the Criminal Code, Bill C-9 would establish a standalone hate crime provision that would allow for up to life in prison for committing an act motivated by hatred, would create new intimidation and obstruction crimes related to buildings used for religious worship or primarily by identifiable groups, and would establish a new crime of wilfully promoting hatred by displaying certain symbols such as terrorist flags or Nazi swastikas in a public place. [But not the communist hammer and sickle or the Israeli flag.]

The CCF has identified the following concerns: 

  • Overbreadth of the hate-symbol provision (s. 319(2.2)): It could chill legitimate speech in cases where it is unclear whether a symbol is “principally associated with a terrorist group” or “resembles a symbol” outlawed under the provision;
  • Extreme sentencing under the new hate crime offence (s. 320.1001): A person who commits mischief against property motivated by hatred could face up to seven years in prison, rather than the current two years;
  • Removal of Attorney General oversight: The bill would allow police to charge a person with hate speech without receiving the Attorney General’s consent, which is an important safeguard for freedom of expression that has been part of Canada’s law for decades; and
  • Lowering the threshold for “hatred”: The definition of “hatred” added as a new section 319(7) appears to lower the bar for hate speech set by the Supreme Court of Canada in cases like R v Keegstra and R v Whatcott, which could chill speech and public debate.

CCF Executive Director Joanna Baron questioned the need for parts of the bill considering Canada already has “robust hate propaganda laws. Creating new offences for hate-motivated crimes and lowering safeguards like Attorney General oversight is unnecessary and invites excessive prosecutions,” she said. ‘The new hate symbol offence only targets displays done with the intent to promote hatred, but without Attorney General consent as a safeguard, there is a real risk that people using these symbols in art, journalism, or protest will be charged first and vindicated later,” Baron added.

“I’m also very wary that banning hate symbols could be a slippery slope,” Dehaas said. “In free countries, we ought to criminalize violence, not speech, so this sets a worrying precedent.” (Canadian Constitution Foundation, September 19, 2025)

The charter that defends rights, but also tells government how to quash them http://cafe.nfshost.com/?p=7550

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The charter that defends rights, but also tells government how to quash them

Not everyone is inclined to cheer the charter as a bulwark of liberty. ‘We are less free today than 40 years ago,”’ said John Carpay, president of the JCCF Author of the article: Tristin Hopper Publishing date: Apr 15, 2022  •  April 15, 2022  •  7 minute read  •  91 Comments

The notwithstanding clause is how provincial governments can consistently maintain legislation, such as Quebec's Bill 21, that are a pretty obvious curb on fundamental freedoms.
The notwithstanding clause is how provincial governments can consistently maintain legislation, such as Quebec’s Bill 21, that are a pretty obvious curb on fundamental freedoms. Photo by Darren Makowichuk/Postmedia/File
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The decision was a surprise to Canadians, where any number of similar challenges had failed.

Time after time during the COVID-19 pandemic, Canadian governments imposed extraordinary public health measures that seemed to be naked infringements on Canadians’ charter rights. Mandated church closures that violated protections on “freedom of religion.” Bans on gatherings that curbed “freedom of association.” Border and travel strictures that undermined charter guarantees on mobility rights.

But the courts didn’t care. Whenever a pandemic case hit the docket, courts “erred too far on the side of deferring to government,” Joanna Baron, the executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, told the National Post.

Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of Canada repatriating its constitution, a process that included passage of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The charter has often been praised as one of Canada’s leading modern accomplishments and its “gift to the world.” But it’s also one of the world’s only constitutions that explicitly gives the state a roadmap on how to quash the very “fundamental freedoms” it cites. It’s why, four decades in, not everyone is inclined to cheer it as a bulwark of liberty.

“I cannot think of any freedom … that the charter has brought to us,” said John Carpay, president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a group that has been particularly active in challenging pandemic mandates and defending the organizers of Freedom Convoy. “We are less free today than 40 years ago,” he said.

If governments are looking to do an end-run around charter-enumerated rights, there are two primary sections of the document they turn to. Section 1, which is literally the first line of text in the charter, explicitly states that rights and freedoms are protected in Canada only to “reasonable limits.”

According to an official government of Canada guide to the charter, the purpose of this section is to remind Canadians that “rights can be limited by law so long as those limits can be shown to be reasonable in a free and democratic society.”

The notwithstanding clause allows provincial governments to knowingly pass legislation that treads on a fundamental freedom.

If such a legislative override had existed in the U.S. Constitution, many of the most iconic Supreme Court decisions of the civil rights movement might not have mattered. Brown vs. Board of Education — the 1954 decision that struck down school segregation — could simply have been ignored by states invoking the notwithstanding clause.

In Quebec, it’s how provincial governments can consistently maintain legislation that are a pretty obvious curb on fundamental freedoms. Bill 21, a provincial law passed in 2019, bars government employment to any Quebecer who wears religious garb such as turbans or hijabs. Any charter challenge against Bill 21 would likely be a slam dunk on the “freedom of religion” clause, but Quebec would simply be able to soldier on with the law by invoking the notwithstanding clause.