Hate speech no longer part of Canada’s Human Rights Act
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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.”

It was a poorly-written piece of legislation in the first place “(Section 13) had actually stopped being used as a shield, as I think it was intended, to protect civil liberties, and started being used as a sword against Canadians, and it’s because it was a poorly-written piece of legislation in the first place,” he said.

Various human rights lawyers and groups such as the Canadian Bar Association say Section 13 is an important tool in helping to curb hate speech, and that removing it would lead to the proliferation of such speech on the Internet.

But critics of Section 13 said it enabled censorship on the Internet, and are calling its repeal a victory for free speech.

“We’re pleased with the repeal,” said Cara Zwibel, director of the fundamental freedoms program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), who testified before a Senate committee on the topic.

(2013-06-28/nationalpost)