Censorship in Canada - Criticism of Canadian Censorship

Criticism of Canadian Censorship

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, prior to becoming Prime Minister, stated "Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society … It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff."

PEN Canada, an organization which assists writers who are persecuted for peaceful expression, has called on "the federal and provincial governments to change human rights commission legislation to ensure commissions can no longer be used to attempt to restrict freedom of expression in Canada."

According to Mary Agnes Welch, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, "uman rights commissions were never intended to act as a form of thought police, but now they're being used to chill freedom of expression on matters that are well beyond accepted Criminal Code restrictions on free speech."

Keith Martin, a Liberal Member of Parliament from British Columbia, introduced a motion that called for the deletion of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, arguing that it is in violation of Section Two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees each person’s freedom of expression. Mr. Martin said that hate crimes, slander and libel would still be outlawed under the Criminal Code, while his motion would stop human-rights tribunals imposing restrictions on freedom of speech using taxpayers' money. "We have laws against hate crimes, but nobody has a right not to be offended," he said. " is being used in a way that the authors of the Act never envisioned."

A group of several dozen professors from the 7,000-member American Political Science Association contend that recent free speech precedents in Canada put academics at risk of prosecution. The group includes Robert George and Harvey Mansfield, and they have protested holding the scheduled 2009 APSA annual meeting in Canada for this reason. The leadership of APSA selected Toronto as the meeting location.

There have been multiple lawsuits claiming that censorship violates multiple Basic Human Rights, such as Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which protect the fundamental freedoms of thought, belief, and opinion. These accusations have been of the violation of the rights and freedoms through certain types of censorship.