Hello Roy here, I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to the Roy Green Show ad-free on Amazon Music included with Prime. PUT DROPS, TIP-OS, FIRST PITCHES, TICK-OS, WHEN THE GAME IS ON, YOU CALL THE SHOTS, PED TO BEATWAY.CA AND BEAT YOUR WAY, MUST BE NICK AND POSS, ON TARY MOMENT, PLAY RESPONSE, In Canada, we do not have the same kind of freedom of speech or freedom of expression that Americans have. In the United States, say whatever you wish, whatever you wish, and it's okay. You are a pro-...
maybe not be okay, but you're protected under their constitution. In Canada, not so much. We do have freedom of expression constitutionally enshrined, but when I read David Butts, David Butts, I'll bet piece in the Globe and Mail, January of 2015, David writes in part, the Canadian Hate Law, still clearly curtails free expression, but the Supreme Court has not struck it down. Why?
For main reasons. First, our Constitution protects not only free expression, but multiculturalism and equality as well. So to read the Constitution holistically, we cannot permit one protected freedom, to undermine other rights and freedoms, enjoying equal status. So, David, it's great to have you back on the show.
I always get to speak with you from the lawyer in Toronto. And you point out in the op-ed piece that really when people talk about freedom of expression, it's normally limited to university professors, and it's a dry conversation that would cause most people to tune out. But not so much these days. Freedom of expression, freedom of speech, hugely important, loudly debated, and people are taking sides.
So give us a bit of a background. I talk about what I read here, out of context from your op-ed piece. But let's start at the beginning. What freedom of expression in Canada is, how it's constitutionally permitted, but where the limitations start.
Sure. It's generally speaking, almost any kind of expression is permitted. And you don't have to agree with it. You don't have to like it.
You can be offended by it. And it's still protected in Canada. There is a narrow category of speech that will be regulated. For example, obviously the libel and slander laws are still in existence.
So you can't say something maliciously false that destroys someone's reputation. And that has to do with, again, respecting the boundaries of a different person. It's sort of the verbal equivalent of saying, you can swing your fist wherever you want, but you can't swing it where it hits someone else's face. So you can talk if it comes to the libel and your slandering someone that crosses the line.
Another line, which the Supreme Court has drawn, that's what I've addressed in my op-ed piece, is what is called hate speech. So it's the deliberate, willful promotion of hatred against an identifiable group. And the Supreme Court has said that that too can be regulated. Although there's a lot of hoops you have to jump through before the government can suppress that kind of speech.
So we have very broad freedom, but with some important limitations. Okay, now the second paragraph in your op-ed piece reads this way, the discussion in Canada on freedom of expression. So far, fails to address the unique Canadian approach to freedom of expression, and thus fails to ask a crucial Canadian question. Does freedom of expression, as legally defined in Canada, provide the right tools for expressing challenges in a fragmented and largely angry 21st century social media world?
And I find that to be particularly relevant. We love to say that we have the right to say whatever we wish, whenever we wish. But we are colliding with, as you point out, increasingly angry, frustrated, polarized points of view. And that's when freedom of expression starts to cross over, and we've all seen it on social media, crosses over into what the Supreme Court would probably say, you're either crossing the line or you're very close to it.
So do we have true freedom of speech in this country? I know you said there's an asset test, and it has to be met, and all the points have to be met. We can talk about that before you can be charged. But let me actually ask you this way, is our freedom of expression being challenged?
Are we finding parameters narrowed when it comes to freedom of expression? And I think Dr. Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto will be, I guess, on the show tomorrow, who was this last weekend, who was vilified by many, considered to be a hero defending freedom of speech by others. Yes.
And I think those are really important debates, and from my perspective, at least they have to be able to unfold fully. In other words, people can't be curtailed in what they say on one side or another of important issues like that. It's also important to remember that what the Constitution addresses is government's suppression of speech. So if university students think that a professor should do acts and the professor thinks that he or she should do why, there's no government involvement there.
So the Constitution actually doesn't play much of a role because it's about limiting the government's power to charge someone for hate speech and so on. And where we get some of these more intense debates are in the non-governmental sphere. So we can talk about, for example, gender neutral pronouns, and vigorous debate on whether people should or should not be using them and so on. But what's really important to keep in mind is that there's no government, no provincial government, no federal government, no municipal government is stepping in and saying you either have to or shouldn't use gender neutral pronouns.
If they did, that would be a very serious violation of freedom of expression. So that is managed by the parties involved? Yes, yes. I'd like to say there are many speech communities.
So we have a national speech community and there are national laws that limit freedom of expression, but only to the very limited extent, for example, hate speech or libel and slander. But there could be smaller speech communities. So what is appropriate to say inside your own home? Can you drop the F bomb in your own home?
People debate that vigorously. Can you drop the F bomb in class? Again, people debate that vigorously. Can you drop the F bomb on campus?
So these are all different speech communities. And to certain extent, each one of those speech communities have to work out their own rules of how they will talk to each other. Why have people started to become careful about what they say? And I'm not talking about people who are going to say something that's clearly and obviously to intended to be hateful towards someone else?
But people are cautious because they feel that they may be politically incorrect. They feel they're like they're stepping over a line. They don't want to be corrected. They don't want to be challenged.
And my experience is that people will sometimes challenge something I say on there. And I know very well that I'm well within my rights, well within the law. I'm not violating anybody's constitutional rights by what I say. But the feeling is you must be because I disagree with you.
And so I want you not only to control what you think, but I want you to control what you say. And it goes beyond just really green or David. But I think that affects many people across this country. We police what we think.
And then we secondarily and perhaps more concerningly police what we say. Right. And my own thinking as you know, as you said, I do some writing for the Globe and speak on media. And I get reaction from that.
And to some extent, I'm like, you Roy, when people don't like what I say, they tend to say, well, I should just shut up. And that misses the point. As you well know, the important role that you play too, fostering debate about important issues in itself a good thing. So the fact of disagreement is actually a positive thing.
So many people get challenged by the fact that there's disagreement out there. Disagreement is actually a good thing. As you work through issues and see different points of view, everybody benefits. So saying things that are disagreeable to others actually is not a bad thing.
It's hateful. Sure, that crosses the line. But I think we all have to be aware of the value of disagreement itself and not be afraid of it and not try to shut it down. One of the things that I've said to people periodically and I've said to them when I say it, but I think there's merit in what I say.
When someone is attacked for what they're saying, it generally means that the person who's doing the attacking doesn't know enough about the subject to be able to debate it. That's right. And I often will share that. You know, depending on the nature of what the person says, don't shoot the messenger.
Address the message. And if you have some valid criticisms of the message, let's listen to them and let's hash those out because that's really important. But if all you're doing is shooting the messenger, you're frankly not contributing to a good productive debate at all. Now, what about this when we come back?
Well, you write this in the column. I'm jumping around in the op-ed piece. Now, the title is Canada's Law on Hate Speech is the Embodiment of Compromise. Canada's Law on Hate Speech is the Embodiment of Compromise by David Butt in the Globe and Mail on the 19th of January 2015.
The courts have said that even if a hate speech prohibition is never used, it has symbolic value. I'm going to talk to David Butt about that. When we come back on the Roy Green Show on the Corus Radio Network. Intelligence, Talk, Radio.
Intelligence, Talk, Radio. This is the Roy Green Show on the Corus Radio Network. Send your emails to Roy at RoyGreenShow.com. I'm on Twitter at the Roy Green Show.
Follow me there and tweet me your thoughts. We'll get some of them on the air. And I won't tweet you when I'm thinking from time to time. I guess there are paths or at least there are boundaries we can cross when we tweet.
Freedom of expression. Yes, certainly what the courts have said very clearly is that all kinds of public expression like that on social media, traditional media can be published expression that can lead to difficulties if it does cross legal lines. In the column in the first paragraph, you write, let me just read it, the paragraph because I have to have the context here. Freedom of expression in Canada normally is a dry legal concept, sporadically explored by law professors in dense papers and taken for granted by everyone else.
Until now, if freedom of expression got any attention at all, it was fleeting and superficial, like a bumper sticker on a passing car. The terrorist attacks in France and their aftermath changed all that, giving freedom of expression an extended tenure in the limelight and popular consciousness. So the terrorist attacks in France made the difference. Now, they were predicated, at least the terrorists argued, but they were predicated on Charlie Hebdo's cartoons.
If this were Canada, how would that scenario have played it out, not as far as the terrorist attack is concerned? But how would the courts have decided about those Charlie Hebdo cartoons? Yeah, certainly it's controversial. And I'm not saying anything about the content, which depending on your religious affiliations, you may or may not find more or less offensive.
But just strictly from a legal perspective, my own view is that those cartoons would not have been problematic legally here in Canada. A satirical cartoon is making a point about politics. A satirical cartoon also has artistic aspects to it. And what our courts have said is when you're talking about something as important as politics in a democratic state, and when you're engaged in artistic expression, the boundaries are broader.
And we have to be very careful before we start curtailing either political or artistic expression. So therefore, the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, even though they would be offensive to many, would not be illegal in Canada. That's a little complicated. Yes, it does.
To understand. Yes, and there's so many different ways of expressing yourself. And depending on what you're saying, the courts will be more or less tolerant of it. For example, again, to use the notion of a common swear word, nobody's going to be prosecuted for hate crime for using a common swear word, but you sure can't say it on the radio.
So depending on the context and what's going on, speech may be more or less tolerable. So you wrote this. And so now, of course, I'm looking for the... Here it is.
The line. That even if a hate speech prohibition is never used, it has symbolic value. Yes. And the court said that in case in which the person prosecuted was disseminating anti-Semitic, not the kinds of propaganda.
And what the court said is we have learned historically, coming through the terrible 1930s, and 40s in Europe, that if we don't take steps to regulate how civilly we treat each other, including how we talk to each other, extremes can unfold, as did in mid-20th century in Germany. And so sending that message, the symbolic value of hate speech, is that we're not going to go down that road again. And even if they never use it, that message is out there because it's embodied in our laws. So there can be some really important symbolic value of tolerance and inclusiveness in Canada as framed by our laws.
David, can you give me an example or give us an example of a sentence or an expression that would not be hate speech unless you add one or two words. And maybe that may not be fair to ask you that. What I was thinking was you could say to someone, and be within the bounds of the law, or freedom of expression, and not violate the hate speech aspect. If I were to say so and so and so, it's an absolute blankety-blank, blinkety-blank, blump.
And that's okay. But if I say so and so and so and so, it's an absolute blinkety-blank, blump, blump, blump, and then add a cultural, an ethnic, a religious component in my attack at insult, that's when I've crossed the line. Is that correct? Yes, the law is directed at the willful promotion of hatred of identifiable groups.
So whether those would be groups defined by gender, so hatred of women as a group, particular religions, whether it be Jewish people or Muslim people or Christian people or the law is really focused on generating discriminatory hatred against people of an identifiable group. So if you're just venting about, you know, my next door neighbor is a so-and-so. You're not engaged. How do you know my next door neighbor?
No, I understand. I understand. I get it. David, it's always great speaking with you.
Thank you so much. Freedom of expression, freedom of speech in the United States, freedom of expression here, differently applied but fundamentally the same idea. Thanks, David. My pleasure.
Take care of David Butts from a lawyer in Toronto. And Canada's law on hate speech is the embodiment of compromise as the columnist. It's early alphabet piece. It's a good read.
It means a good read. And tomorrow we will talk again with Dr. Jordan Peterson about the issue of freedom of expression, freedom of speech. When we come back, it's Catherine Alinda and Michelle, and give you some of the piece.
Stay with us.