Canada’s major newspapers have almost unanimously agreed with the main recommendation of a recent report—namely, repealing a controversial section in the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA). The report arrives on the heels of a 2007 controversy involving Maclean’s writer Mark Steyn, and four Osgoode Hall Law School students who filed a complaint with the Canadian, BC, and Ontario Human Rights Commissions. They claimed that the magazine, in publishing the article, was involved with the dissemination of Islamophobia and hate speech. While the well-known conservative’s article served as the immediate cause of the complaint, the students also compiled a list of 22 other Maclean’s articles published over the course of two years, claiming they constituted hate speech under Canadian Law.
Initially, the students approached the magazine proposing that it publish a “representative response, from a mutually acceptable author, of adequate length.” They were told by editors that Maclean’s would rather “go bankrupt” than publish a counterview, at which point the students filed their complaints. Several prominent conservative writers (including Barbara Amiel, Margaret Wente, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant) framed the issue in terms of free speech rather than discrimination. Writers at the National Post and other Western publications claimed that the attempt to force Maclean’s to publish a counterview article amounted to interference in the magazine’s internal editorial decisions, and therefore press censorship. As the issue caught steam, the Ontario and Canadian Human Rights Commissions refused to hear the case against Maclean’s, ostensibly for legal reasons, although many suspected that they had caved due to conservative pressure.
The BC Commission decided to hear the case, despite the political risk associated with taking on the conservative base at a time when the Harper Tories were in power (and could conceivably attack human rights commissions, compromising valuable work that they do in other areas). Despite the commission ruling in favour of Maclean’s, largely due to the lack of sociological evidence showing that the articles exposed Muslims to hate, the magazine objected to the admission of Internet hate speech as evidence. After the BC hearing, it pressured the Canadian Human Rights Commission to review its policy on admitting Internet hate speech. The Commission appointed Richard Moon, a constitutional law expert at the University of Windsor, to review and advise the CHRC on section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act. The act legally defines Internet hate speech as discrimination and a matter of federal jurisdiction.
The Moon report’s chief recommendation calls for the repeal of section 13 on grounds that defamation, stereotyping, and otherwise unfair characterizations of a group do not constitute hate speech and should be protected as free speech. Moon argues that in order to uphold freedom of expression, hate speech should be limited to speech that threatens, advocates, or justifies violence. (The report recognizes that there may be less overt forms of hate speech that attempt to unfairly characterize a group). The students charged that 22 Maclean’s articles “represented Muslims as a violent people incapable of living in their host societies, cast suspicions on Muslims at large as potential terrorists, attempted to import a racist discourse and language into Canadian discourse, attacked multiculturalism and religious freedoms, attacked laws that provide protection to identifiable communities from discriminatory journalism, and condemned any and all attempts by politicians, law enforcement and media to reach out to Muslim communities and exercise sensitivity.” The Moon report argues that these kinds of defamation and stereotyping should not be tried as hate speech.
“A Victory for Free Speech” reads the title of an op-ed by Ezra Levant in the National Post, highlighting the success of the conservative campaign to brand the students as enemies of freedom of expression. Levant himself had a human rights complaint brought against him (and eventually dismissed) the same time as the BC case for publishing the infamous Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad in the Western Standard. In this particular case, the students were never seeking to “censor,” block, or forbid Maclean’s in any way. What they sought was an opportunity to respond to what they said was a prolonged, unfair portrayal of Muslims in the largest weekly magazine in Canada.
If you feel that the group to which you belong is depicted as dangerous, hostile, and incapable of living peacefully by a national publication with a readership of 2.5 million, do you not have the right to act? Moon says that in order to address these forms of hate speech, “all major print publications should belong to a provincial or regional press council“ with the authority to take complaints, decide if the publication is discriminating against a group, and, if needed, order the publication to print the press council’s decision. Maclean’s is not currently a member of the Ontario Press Council, and neither is the National Post. If any action is taken towards implementing Moon’s recommendations, there should be an avenue to address concerns of unfair discrimination by the mainstream press. “A newspaper is not simply a private participant in public discourse,” Moon writes, “it is an important part of the public sphere, where discussion about the affairs of the community takes place. As such it carries a responsibility to portray fairly and without discrimination the different groups that make up the Canadian community.”
