Lynne Cohen is an author and non-practicing lawyer based in Ottawa. The original and longer version of this story first appeared in C2CJournal. The history of Judaism can be said to be the history of the power of free speech. Going back thousands of years, ancient Jewish scholars debated everything under the sun — from criminal and civil law and theology to astronomy, mathematics, geography, ethics, and science. No topic, regardless of how controversial or obscure, was off-limits to these great thinkers as they probed the depths of human, physical, and metaphysical nature. Their debates and arguments were codified in the Talmud, which Orthodox Jews still study intensely to this day. Today, with the federal Liberals currently seeking to place ever-greater limits on what Canadians can say or think, it seems beyond puzzling that many prominent Jewish groups have lined up in support of Ottawa’s campaign of official censorship. This is not how religious Jews see the world.A variety of new legislation, much of it recycled from the Justin Trudeau era, has been enacted or proposed by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government to allegedly stamp out hatred in Canada. This includes the Combatting Hate Act (given royal assent this summer) and what was once called the Online Harms Act, now retitled the Safe Social Media Act (currently awaiting debate in the House of Commons). Many secular Jewish groups, including B’nai Brith Canada and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, have been vocal in their support of these bills. In fact, they frequently clamour for even more restrictions..The fact that Jewish groups are upset with the status quo is understandable. With the Holocaust still a living memory for some, many Jews have understandably assumed a collective victim mentality. This intensified following the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in Israel and the subsequent surge in anti-Semitism worldwide. Since that massacre, Canada has experienced multiple attacks on Jewish synagogues, schools, and individuals.Jews may be right to feel threatened. But is the solution to create more laws that limit what Canadians can say? Definitely not. Efforts to regulate and punish speech will end up making things worse for everyone by weakening Canadians’ fundamental freedoms. The right to free speech has always been hard to define. We should be clear, however, that incitement to violence or terrorism is and has always been illegal. There is a huge difference between criminality of this kind and the expression of legitimately held, if controversial, viewpoints. Real crimes should be investigated and punished. Not thought crimes. We must also keep in mind that the current spate of hate crime legislation is not Canada’s first brush with trying to regulate speech. Canada has criminalized hate speech beginning in 1970, and since then, various governments have gone after public figures who promoted anti-Semitism, such as Bill Keegstra and Ernst Zundel. Then, in 2022, Holocaust denialism was also made illegal. Now, the Carney government is planning further speech restrictions.Yet according to Kenneth Grad, a law professor at the University of Manitoba, there’s little evidence to suggest any of Canada’s previous hate-speech laws or prosecutions served their stated purpose. As Grad observed in a study he wrote: “Hate speech prosecutions work in theory, but not in practice.” He argues they fail to protect vulnerable communities, do not serve the criminal justice system, and impede the search for truth..This is not just a problem in Canada. “There is a worldwide trend in favour of increased use of the criminal law to combat hate speech,” Grad noted, citing examples from the past two years, including Australia, South Africa, Scotland, Sweden, Ireland, and Nigeria. Troublingly, while all these efforts have been presented as targeted strikes against “hate” speech, Grad observed that most have eventually turned into broader-based attacks on free expression and political speech.The belief that further changes to hate speech laws will significantly reduce anti-Semitism in Canada is sheer folly. Nonetheless, it has become a matter of fundamental belief for many large Canadian Jewish groups. The vast number of letters, press releases, reports, and documents published by such groups on a weekly basis attest to that.Difficult as it may be, a democratic country such as Canada must find ways to protect free speech while punishing overtly criminal acts. That means learning to live with speech that may be “lawful but awful.” We can consider that to be the price of living in a free society. And no one should appreciate the importance of protecting freedom more than Jews, the most persecuted group in history.When it comes to present-day threats to our most important individual freedoms, Jewish organizations should be leading the fight to protect our basic rights, not cheering on Big Brother. Lynne Cohen is an author and non-practicing lawyer based in Ottawa. The original and longer version of this story first appeared in C2CJournal.
