An 18-year-old male who was criminally charged with public incitement of hatred after hanging posters at a public high school is being represented in court by lawyers from The Democracy Fund (TDF), a registered charity.
TDF said in an Aug. 9 news release that the teenager was alleged to have hung posters at a public high school containing a QR code that linked to a video that was allegedly “hateful towards the transgender community.”
The charity did not indicate if their client attended the school where the poster was alleged to have been placed, and a legal representative from TDF was unable to reply by press time to an inquiry by The Epoch Times.
Litigation director and lawyer Alan Honner said in the news release that when considered in the context of criminal charges, the term “hatred” has been interpreted as an emotion of an “intense and extreme nature” that is clearly associated with the “vilification and detestation” of an identifiable group.
“As interpreted by the courts, expression is not criminal merely because it ridicules, belittles, or affronts the dignity of a person,” said Mr. Honner.
Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that everyone has fundamental freedoms including freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression.
TDF said the teenager in question has the right of free expression. “TDF decided to assist in the defence of the accused young man because of its mandate to preserve and promote civil liberties, including freedom of expression,” the release said.
According to the organization, in the decision of Ward v. Quebec, a majority of the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed that freedom of expression does not exist unless it gives rise to a duty to tolerate what other people say.
The Supreme Court has a three-part test for analyzing section 2(b) that says: “1) Does the activity in question have expressive content, thereby bringing it within section 2(b) protection?; 2) Does the method or location of this expression remove that protection?; and 3) If the expression is protected by section 2(b), does the government action in question infringe that protection, either in purpose or effect?”
In other words, according to TDF, “a society which only protects conventional or harmless expression is not a free society.”
