The leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, tabled his bill C-367 on Tuesday aimed at “closing” a “complacent breach” in the Criminal Code which authorizes hateful or anti-Semitic speech when it is based on religion.
“By saying “we do not have the right to make hateful remarks, we do not have the right to incite violence, except by invoking religion”, it is practically an invitation to invoke religion to hold hateful remarks. So, we are going to level all that in order to say: “There is no exception that exists, we cannot make hateful remarks”,” declared the Bloc leader in the press scrum.
Mr. Blanchet affirmed that the conflict between Israel and Hamas has made this issue “more obvious and more glaring” while “essentially anti-Semitic” gestures have multiplied.
He wants, for example, to be able to block the legal road to the controversial imam Adil Charkaoui who, during a demonstration in support of the Palestinians at the beginning of the month, called on God to take care of the “aggressive Zionists” and to “not leave none.”
Asked to comment upon his arrival at question period, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau judged that Canada “already has very strict rules against incitement to hatred, genocide and violence.”
He said he was not able to comment on whether or not his government would support it while his team is still studying the legislative text.
“It’s an important, delicate issue, which has consequences for freedom of expression and, above all, we must be there to protect people,” he nevertheless added.
Government House Leader Karina Gould also said earlier in the day that the laws are already “extremely strong when it comes to hatred in this country.”
Without commenting on the bill, his colleague Jean-Yves Duclos, a Quebec minister, for his part affirmed that “we must continue to consider all possible methods and measures to protect people in a context of polarization, disinformation increasingly increased and more and more problematic.
On social media, the Advisory Center for Jewish and Israeli Relations gave its support to the bill, saying that “hiding behind a religious exemption to spread hatred is unacceptable.”
“Religious leaders cannot be allowed to spread hatred simply by using verses from holy books. Likewise, places of worship should never be used as platforms to intimidate and foment hatred,” the activist group writes on X.
The Bloc leader had indicated that he was not responding “at all” to a request from Jewish community defense groups or certain of their activists. “There was no solicitation of any form,” he even noted.
The office of Justice Minister Arif Virani had not responded to a request for comment from The Canadian Press at the time of publication.
Likewise, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not respond to questions on the progress of the investigation which was transferred to it relating to the comments of Imam Adil Charkaoui, on their potentially hateful nature and, in such a case , if they are covered by the exceptions provided for in the Criminal Code.