2 days ago
Swift News
Justice Minister Sean Fraser tabled new legislation Friday introducing four Criminal Code offences, including one that would make it a crime to intentionally promote hatred against identifiable groups in public using certain hate- or terrorism-related symbols.
If passed, the Combatting Hate Act would target symbols used during the Holocaust, such as the swastika and SS lightning bolts, or associated with the government's list of terrorist entities, which includes the Proud Boys, Hamas and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
It would, for instance, make it a crime to promote hatred against Jewish people using Hamas flags or swastika signs outside a synagogue.
It would also make hate-motivated crime a specific offence and crack down on willfully intimidating and obstructing people outside places of worship and other sensitive institutions.
Multiple Canadian municipalities are currently grappling with the issue through the use of "bubble" bylaws that allow for buffer zones around certain locations, and Fraser stressed that the authority for regulating spaces "in general terms" falls with local councils — not the federal government.
The legislation also adds two further measures that would make it easier to prosecute individuals found to have wilfully promoted hatred: adding a definition of "hatred" to the Criminal Code; and removing a requirement for the consent of the provincial attorney general to prosecute a hate crime.
"This behaviour is not just morally culpable, the impact has reverberations through the entirety of the community. And, I would argue, tears at the seams of the social fabric of the nation," Fraser said in a Friday afternoon news conference.
