Combatting Hate Act: Legislation to protect communities against hate

Backgrounder

Intimidation offence

The intimidation offence makes it a crime to engage in any conduct with the intent to make someone afraid, in order to prevent them from accessing a religious or cultural institution and other specified places. This could include threats, acts of violence, or other intimidating behaviour.

The offence is punishable by a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment, or two years less a day for less serious offences.

Obstruction offence

The obstruction offence makes it a crime to intentionally block or interfere with another person’s lawful access to the same places. This includes, for example, deliberately blocking doors, driveways, or roads that are used to get to religious or cultural centres, or not allowing a person to enter those places.

The offence is punishable by a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment, or two years less a day for less serious offences.

Places protected by the new intimidation and obstruction offences

The intimidation and obstruction offences protect buildings or structures that are:

• primarily used for religious worship (e.g., synagogues, mosques, churches, temples and gurdwaras) or cemeteries.
• primarily used by an “identifiable group”, for administrative, social, cultural, or sports activity purposes, as an educational institution, or as a seniors’ residence.

“Identifiable group” is defined as groups distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.

Respecting Charter rights to free expression and peaceful assembly

The Act is carefully designed to make sure that it does not apply to people who are simply communicating information, peacefully protesting, or otherwise not engaging in criminal activity around religious and cultural centres and other specified places. These changes do not prohibit protest, assembly or unreasonably affect an individual’s freedom to voice their concerns in a safe and peaceful manner.

Hate crime offence

The hate crime offence applies to anyone committing a federal offence that is motivated by hatred based on specific grounds, such as race, sexual orientation, religion or sex.

The escalating penalty structure for the new hate crime offence reflects the harm caused by the illegal act, providing higher maximum penalties for more serious crimes. For example, the offence of uttering threats carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment on indictment (a criminal charge for more serious crimes). If prosecuted under the new hate crime offence, the maximum penalty would increase to 10 years on indictment. Sentencing courts must impose a penalty that reflects the seriousness of the offence and the degree of responsibility of the offender.

New hate propaganda offence targeting display of hate or terrorism symbols

The Criminal Code previously contained four hate propaganda offences. The Act creates a new, fifth hate propaganda offence that makes it a crime to wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group by publicly displaying the following terrorism or hate symbols:

• symbols principally used by or associated with terrorist entities that are listed under the Criminal Code
• the Nazi Hakenkreuz
• the Nazi double-sig rune (also known as the SS bolts)
• a noose

Public display of such symbols for legitimate purposes, such as educational, artistic or journalistic purposes are not captured by this offence.

Repeal of “Good Faith Religious Opinion” defence

Previously, the Criminal Code included a specific defence for certain hate propaganda offences when the accused claimed they were expressing, in good faith, an opinion on a religious subject or a belief based on a religious text. This was commonly referred to as the “good faith religious opinion” defence. The law repeals this specific defence.

The repeal of this defence does not criminalize religious expression, which is protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. It does not limit anyone’s ability to express religious beliefs in good faith.

The repeal of this defence does not change the narrow scope of conduct captured by these offences, which still require a clear, intention to promote hatred or antisemitism. Religious sermons, texts and teachings communicated in good faith, such as preaching, or scriptural readings would not meet this standard.

To reinforce this understanding, the law includes new clarification clauses to confirm that the offences only capture statements communicated to intentionally promote hatred or antisemitism.

Definition of “hatred”

The law adds a definition of “hatred” to the Criminal Code that is based on Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence currently followed by courts. The law defines hatred as an emotion of an intense and extreme nature that is clearly associated with vilification and detestation. The law also specifies what is not hatred – namely, acts that solely humiliate, discredit, hurt or offend.

Adding the definition of “hatred” to the Criminal Code clarifies when conduct constitutes a hate crime, promoting a more consistent application of these offences in the criminal justice system.