A hate crime is defined as 'Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility....
A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.
Evidence of the hate element is not a requirement. You do not need to personally perceive the incident to be hate related. It would be enough if another person, a witness or even a police officer thought that the incident was hate related.
That has nothing to do with expanded hate speech laws, and the in fact the provincial human rights council in British Columbia ruled against the complainant in the article, and ordered her to pay restitution to the salons.
I assume the GGP is referring to the C-16 bill passed by the federal government of Canada in 2016, which added gender expression and identity to existing human rights laws on discrimination.
I have repeatedly seen a perhaps willful misinterpretation, popularly stemming from Jordan Petersen, that this bill criminalizes misgendering people when that's not the case.
>"After Bill C-16 amended the Criminal Code, Canadian law prohibited hate propaganda against groups
that can be identified based on gender identity or gender expression. The bill also allowed for more
severe sentencing if it is proved that a particular offense was motivated by a bias or prejudice
against a person's gender identity or gender expression.
>
>However, experts say misusing a pronoun would not constitute hate propaganda, nor can it be used as >sole evidence of discrimination.
>
>"If it's just the pronoun, not much is going to happen," explained Cheryl Milne, director of the Asper >Centre for Constitutional Rights at the University of Toronto told AFP."
You’re right, I was confusing the two issues. But this article from the cbc with commentary from two legal experts isn’t completely reassuring:
> Does the bill legislate the use of certain language? And could someone go to jail for using the wrong pronoun?
>In the Criminal Code, which does not reference pronouns, Cossman says misusing pronouns alone would not constitute a criminal act.
>“The misuse of gender pronouns, without more, cannot rise to the level of a crime,” she says. “It cannot rise to the level of advocating genocide, inciting hatred, hate speech or hate crimes … (it) simply cannot meet the threshold.”
>The Canadian Human Rights Act does not mention pronouns either. The act protects certain groups from discrimination.
>“Would it cover the accidental misuse of a pronoun? I would say it’s very unlikely,” Cossman says. “Would it cover a situation where an individual repeatedly, consistently refuses to use a person’s chosen pronoun? It might.”
>If someone refused to use a preferred pronoun — and it was determined to constitute discrimination or harassment — could that potentially result in jail time?
>It is possible, Brown says, through a process that would start with a complaint and progress to a proceeding before a human rights tribunal. If the tribunal rules that harassment or discrimination took place, there would typically be an order for monetary and non-monetary remedies. A non-monetary remedy may include sensitivity training, issuing an apology, or even a publication ban, he says.
>If the person refused to comply with the tribunal's order, this would result in a contempt proceeding being sent to the Divisional or Federal Court, Brown says. The court could then potentially send a person to jail “until they purge the contempt,” he says.
>“It could happen,” Brown says. “Is it likely to happen? I don’t think so. But, my opinion on whether or not that's likely has a lot to do with the particular case that you're looking at.”
>“The path to prison is not straightforward. It’s not easy. But, it’s there. It’s been used before in breach of tribunal orders.”
Hey thanks for educating me about this. I dunno why my inquiry was downvoted (was it not additive to ask for more sourcing?) but I did want to say genuinely I appreciate actual law I can point to and track over time. Has it been used to prosecute anyone that you're aware of, or how has it been applied in courts? Thanks again!
Sources certainly can add some factual, concrete evidence to someone's argument to ask for a source or two.
That being said, I think some just near-reflexively reply 'Source? Source?' as a sort of low-effort 'rebuttal' by implying it's just, like, your opinion, man when they haven't necessarily come up with a well-thought-out argument.
I won't disagree that well-sourced arguments add much to a discussion, especially if you're not well-informed about the topic at hand.
--
But don't worry about the down-votes. It happens, who can know for sure why, they don't really matter, and if you're earnest in your comments, you'll almost always going to end up in the black. :)
