Hate speech is a problem, but threatening religious freedom is the wrong solution

The governing Liberals, allied with the Bloc Québécois, have moved to eliminate religious exemptions from Canada’s hate-speech laws to help pass Bill C-9 targeting hate and terror symbols.

This move is not only ill-informed it also threatens religious freedom in Canada. Just as importantly, it would also reveal a completely flawed understanding of hate, of reasonable limits on freedom of expression, and even of personal responsibility.

The Bloc’s amendment to Bill C-9 poses a threat to religious freedom, but not because removing exemptions from hate-speech laws would effectively “ban the Bible,” as some critics have claimed. It’s subtler than that, though no less serious. Those exemptions are what keep the government in its place. Without them, government, which neither understands religion nor sacred texts like the Bible, can end up being the ultimate arbiter of religious speech, deciding on whether it is acceptable to express it. Religious teaching and worship, whether public or private, must remain beyond the reach of government. This has been the constitutional understanding at least since the first Magna Carta in 1215.

More fundamentally, Canada has ended up in this debate because we seem to have largely lost a proper understanding of what hate is. The essential difference between views informed by earnestly held, peacefully expressed beliefs and hate speech is intent. The first type of public expression has an honest intent. It can be atheistic or theistic, theological or philosophical, politically partisan or politically neutral. In Canada, we encounter daily a seemingly endless array of beliefs and ideologies. We ascribe to some, are indifferent to some, and with some, we likely disagree deeply.

Hate speech is very different. Its motivation is not honest, but malicious. At its most potent, the goal of hate speech is to harm fellow human beings, often members of an identifiable group, through violence or threat of violence. At a minimum, hate speech seeks to denigrate targeted persons so that they face public scorn, marginalization, and dehumanization. Hate is the failure to see our shared humanity. It is a denial of the inherent human dignity we all possess. Hate places you above, over, and against your neighbour, your fellow citizen.

Unchecked, hate can burn like wildfire through our society and contribute to its self-destruction. We need only look to numerous examples in human history to understand that frightening trajectory.