Your search

The public debate surrounding Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, has focused primarily on Human Rights Act and Criminal Code reforms. The Human Rights Act changes include the return of Section 13 on hate speech, which was repealed by the Harper government after criticisms that it unduly chilled freedom of expression. To help understand the history of Section 13 and its latest iteration, this week Professor Richard Moon, Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law at the University of Windsor joins the Law Bytes podcast. The Canadian Human Rights Commission asked Professor Moon to conduct a study on Section 13 in 2008 and his report is the leading source on its history and application. In this episode, we discuss that history and consider the benefits and risks of inserting it into Bill C-63.

"Constitutions are meant to endure, providing both stability and adaptability. Their public legitimacy depends on the ability of the courts and other interpreters to get this balance right. Why, then, has Canada’s constitution--only four decades old--produced so many surprises? Canada's Surprising Constitution investigates unexpected interpretations of the Constitution Act, 1982 by the courts. In this illuminating collection of essays, leading scholars reflect on these surprising interpretations, focusing on fundamental freedoms; equality, Aboriginal, and language rights; structural features of the Charter; as well as the courts’ approach to the interpretation of the Constitution. The public legitimacy of the Constitution requires that it be seen as both relevant, as circumstances change, but also true to the values it embodies. The responsibility for getting this balance right lies not only with judges but also with legislatures, executives, scholars, advocates, and public interest organizations. The thoughtful work of this volume is crucial in identifying, accounting for, and--looking ahead--anticipating potential surprises. Its thorough analysis also offers a view of the Constitution in action."-- Provided by publisher

"Constitutions are meant to endure, providing both stability and adaptability. Their public legitimacy depends on the ability of the courts and other interpreters to get this balance right. Why, then, has Canada’s constitution--only four decades old--produced so many surprises? Canada's Surprising Constitution investigates unexpected interpretations of the Constitution Act, 1982 by the courts. In this illuminating collection of essays, leading scholars reflect on these surprising interpretations, focusing on fundamental freedoms; equality, Aboriginal, and language rights; structural features of the Charter; as well as the courts’ approach to the interpretation of the Constitution. The public legitimacy of the Constitution requires that it be seen as both relevant, as circumstances change, but also true to the values it embodies. The responsibility for getting this balance right lies not only with judges but also with legislatures, executives, scholars, advocates, and public interest organizations. The thoughtful work of this volume is crucial in identifying, accounting for, and--looking ahead--anticipating potential surprises. Its thorough analysis also offers a view of the Constitution in action."-- Provided by publisher

"In The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression, Richard Moon argues that freedom of expression is valuable because human agency and identity emerge in discourse--in the joint activity of creating meaning. Moon recognizes that the social character of individual agency and identity is crucial to understanding not only the value of expression but also its potential for harm. The book considers a range of issues, including the regulation of advertising, hate speech, pornography, blasphemy, and public protest. The book also considers the shift to social media as the principal platform for public engagement, which has added to the ways in which speech can be harmful, while undermining the effectiveness of traditional legal responses to harmful speech. The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression makes the case that the principal threat to public discourse may no longer be censorship, but rather the spread of disinformation, which undermines public trust in traditional sources of information and makes engagement between different positions and groups increasingly difficult."-- Provided by publisher

While much of Canada’s early commitment to religious freedom was simply a pragmatic compromise to ensure social peace and political stability, the Supreme Court of Canada in a series of judgments that pre-dated the Charter sought to articulate a principled account of religious freedom as an “original freedom” that is an important “mode[] of self-expression” and “the primary condition[] of the community life”. This understanding of religious freedom shaped the Supreme Court of Canada’s initial reading of freedom of conscience and religion protected by s. 2 (a) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, the story of religious freedom in Canada is not simply that of a linear progression from the pragmatic tolerance of religious minorities to the principled protection of the individual’s religious freedom. In its subsequent s 2 (a) decisions, the Court began to read freedom of religion as a form of equality right that requires the state to remain neutral in religious matters. The state must not prefer the practices of one religious group over those of another and it must not restrict the religious practices of a group unless it has a substantial public reason to do so. Underlying the Court’s commitment to religious freedom is a recognition of the deep connection between the individual and her/his spiritual commitments and religious community and a desire to avoid the marginalization of minority religious groups. Concerns about inclusion and social peace that lay behind the extension of religious tolerance in Canada’s early history continue to be important in the contemporary justification and interpretation of religious freedom. The Court’s commitment to state neutrality in religious matters requires it to distinguish between the private sphere of individual or group spiritual life and the sphere of public secular life. However, the line between these two spheres is contestable, moveable, and porous.

"This book examines law and religion from the perspective of its case law. Each chapter focuses on a specific case from a Commonwealth jurisdiction, examining the history and impact of the case, both within the originating jurisdiction and its wider global context. The book contains chapters from leading and emerging scholars from across the Commonwealth, including from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Malaysia, India and Nigeria. The cases are divided into four sections covering: - Foundational Questions in Law and Religion - Freedom of Religion around the Commonwealth - Religion and state relations around the Commonwealth - Rights, Relationships and Religion around the Commonwealth. Like religion itself, the case law covers a wide spectrum of life. This diversity is reflected in the cases covered in this book, which include: - Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur v Home Minister on the use of the Muslim name for God by non-Muslims in Malaysia - The Church of the New Faith v Commissioner of Pay-roll Tax (Vic) which determined the meaning of religion in Australia - Eweida v UK which clarified the application of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights - R v Big M Drug Mart on the individual protections of religious freedom under the Canadian Charter of Rights. The book examines how legal disputes involving religion are among the most contested in the courts and shows that in these cases, passions run high and the outcomes can have significant consequences for all involved"--

Will recent acts of violence against Muslims in Canada lead us to see what we should have seen earlier — that anti-Muslim works are hate speech that encourage violence against Muslims?

A number of doctors in Ontario have challenged the policy of the provincial College of Physicians and Surgeons that requires its members to provide a patient with an “effective referral” to another doctor if they were unwilling or unable on moral grounds to offer a particular medical service, such as an abortion or medical assistance in dying. The doctors argue that if they were to give an effective referral, they would be complicit in acts that in their view were immoral. I will argue that the significant issue in this case and other conscientious objection cases, is not, as the courts have said, the reasonable balance between the individual’s religious interests or commitments and the interests or rights of others in the community, but is instead whether the individual’s religiously-based objection should be viewed as an expression of personal religious conscience that should be accommodated, provided this can be done without noticeable harm to others, or as a religiously-grounded civic position or action that falls outside the scope of religious freedom and may be subject to legal regulation. The commitment to religious freedom requires that a distinction be made — a line drawn — between civic and spiritual beliefs or actions. An individual’s spiritual practices are both excluded and insulated from political decision-making. However, their beliefs concerning civic issues, such as the rights and interests of others and the just arrangement of social relations, even if grounded in a religious system, must be subject to the give-and-take of ordinary politics. In determining whether a particular (conscientious) objection should be viewed as a personal or spiritual matter or instead as a civic or political position, two factors may be relevant. The first is whether the individual is being required to perform the particular act to which they object only because they hold a special position not held by others, notably some form of public appointment. The other factor is the relative remoteness-proximity of the act that the objector is required to perform from the act that they consider to be inherently immoral. The more remote the legally required action, the more likely we are to regard the refusal to perform it as a position about how others should behave or about the correctness of the law, rather than as an expression of personal conscience.