Criminal Code

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places).

Colleagues, Bill C-9 requires us to confront a grave issue: the rise of hatred and acts directed at persons or communities based on who they are. For several years now, we have witnessed a troubling rise in hate crimes in Canada. These are not merely numbers in a report or statistics compiled from one year to the next. They are Canadians being targeted because of their faith, their identity or their membership in a community.

As my colleague MP Larry Brock noted at second reading in the other place, the numbers are alarming: Since 2015, police-reported hate crimes in Canada have risen by 258%. Hate crimes targeting the Jewish community have surged by 416%, and those targeting South Asian Canadians have increased by nearly 380%. In 2024 alone, nearly 5,000 hate crimes were reported across the country — the highest number ever recorded.

Since October 7, 2023, the rise in anti-Semitism has become impossible to ignore. Synagogues have been targeted. For many Jewish families, insecurity is no longer a perception; it is a reality. Students have been harassed simply because they are Jewish — here in Canada in 2026.

We must also recall another reality that is spoken of far too little: the rise in anti-Christian acts. Many churches have been burned. Too many places of worship have been attacked or desecrated. Between May 2021 and December 2023, 33 Christian churches were burned across the country. In the vast majority of cases, those fires were deliberately set.

When a place of worship is attacked, it is not just walls that are being targeted. A message of fear is being sent by design to an entire community.

Faced with that reality, Parliament cannot look away. Canadians must be able to practise their faith, send their children to school and attend their community spaces without fear of being intimidated or targeted.

It is in that spirit that the government introduced Bill C-9. The bill would amend the Criminal Code and seek to intervene more broadly in the way our criminal law responds to certain forms of hatred.

More specifically, Bill C-9 operates on three fronts. First, it adds to the existing hate propaganda regime a new offence aimed at the public display of certain symbols where that display is used to willfully promote hatred against an identifiable group. This includes certain symbols associated with Nazism, but also symbols principally used by, or principally associated with, listed terrorist entities, as well as symbols that so nearly resemble them as to be confused with them. The bill also provides certain specific defences for this new provision, for example, where the display was for journalism, education, art or another legitimate purpose, not contrary to the public interest.

Second, the bill creates a new standalone hate crime offence. In practical terms, hatred would no longer simply be taken into account at sentencing, as current law already allows. Instead, the bill would create a distinct offence where a person commits an offence under the Criminal Code — or under any other act of Parliament — and that offence is motivated by hatred based on one of the listed grounds in the bill. It then establishes a separate penalty scheme for this new offence, with maximum penalties scaled according to the seriousness of the underlying offence.

Finally, the bill creates new offences dealing with intimidation and obstruction of access to certain places. It targets conduct intended to provoke fear in a person in order to prevent them from accessing a place of religious worship, an educational institution, a community or cultural space used by an identifiable group, a residence for seniors or a cemetery.

It also criminalizes intentionally obstructing or interfering with lawful access to those places, subject to certain limited exceptions. In other words, the bill seeks to strengthen the protection of places the government considers especially sensitive by creating new criminal tools to respond to conduct seen as intimidating or hostile.

In short, the bill does not merely adjust a few existing provisions. It proposes to expand criminal law on several fronts at once: with respect to symbols, offences motivated by hatred and access to certain religious, educational, cultural or community places.

It is precisely because this represents a significant expansion of criminal law that Parliament must proceed with caution. No one disputes the need to act. But acting does not mean legislating without restraint. In the other place, several witnesses raised serious concerns, and despite certain amendments, many of those concerns remain.

I think first of the new offences relating to intimidation and obstructing or interfering with access to certain places. Everyone agrees on the principle: A person should be able to enter a place of worship, a school or a community centre without being threatened. Where things become more complicated is in the wording.

Witnesses pointed out that expressions such as “provoke a state of fear,” “obstruct” or “interfere with access” may cast a very wide net. In criminal law, words matter. When they lack precision, we risk shifting the line between what should be punished and what still falls within peaceful protest, even when that protest is disruptive.

This is not a minor point. In a democracy, a protest may be loud, offensive or unpleasant. That does not automatically make it criminal.

However, another, more fundamental question must also be asked: Are these new offences truly necessary?

I would point out that, depending on the circumstances, conduct of this kind may already be prosecuted under existing Criminal Code offences, including intimidation, criminal harassment, uttering threats, causing a disturbance, or disturbing religious worship or certain meetings. In other words, the current law already contains several tools that can apply where people seek to intimidate, threaten or disrupt access to these places.

Witnesses also questioned the creation of a new standalone hate crime offence. Current law already allows hatred to be treated as an aggravating factor at sentencing. Bill C-9 goes further and chooses to make it a distinct offence, with its own logic and increased maximum penalties.

Once again, the question must be asked: Are we creating a tool that is truly necessary, or are we simply layering a new regime on top of one that already exists?

The Barreau du Québec, for its part, spoke of a duplication of the prosecutorial regime for hate crimes, noting that, for identical facts, an accused person could be prosecuted under two different approaches.

The same question arises with respect to the offence dealing with the public display of certain symbols. No one here is seeking to trivialize hateful symbols or what they may represent. However, it has been argued that this provision risks being both redundant, given that the Criminal Code already contains offences such as public incitement of hatred, wilful promotion of hatred and wilful promotion of anti-Semitism, and is difficult to apply consistently. In an already-tense context, that risks shifting onto police and prosecutors the responsibility of drawing the line themselves between what falls within criminal law and what does not.

Honourable senators, here again, one must ask whether the problem truly lies in the absence of provisions in the Code, or rather in the use that is made of them. Mark Sandler, chair of the Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism, indicated that the real problem lies more in the underuse of existing legislative provisions than in the absence of legislative tools.

That is where the real question lies. Will this bill truly prevent what we have witnessed in recent months or years or will it mainly add another layer to the Criminal Code, while many of the necessary tools already exist but do not always appear to be used with the firmness required?

If, in reality, the problem lies less in the absence of legal provisions than in their application on the ground, then we must honestly ask whether making the Criminal Code heavier will, by itself, change what targeted communities are actually experiencing.

Colleagues, I now turn to the amendment adopted in the other place with respect to section 319 of the Criminal Code. That amendment removes from the provisions dealing with wilful promotion of hatred and wilful promotion of anti-Semitism the defence under which a person cannot be convicted if they, in good faith, expressed an opinion on a religious subject — or an opinion based on a religious text in which they believe — or attempted to establish such an opinion by argument.

In other words, this is not a mere drafting adjustment. It is the removal from the Criminal Code of a defence expressly provided by law for 56 years in a particularly sensitive area. That inevitably raises a question: How was a change of this nature introduced into the bill?

It was not included in the bill as originally introduced. It was not presented by the government from the outset as one of the central elements of Bill C-9. Rather, it appeared later during clause-by-clause consideration before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights by way of an amendment proposed by the Bloc Québécois. The government then chose to support that amendment and vote in favour of it, thereby removing from the Criminal Code a defence that is already provided by law.

The context in which this occurred also deserves emphasis. The government resorted to a programming motion to accelerate consideration of the bill, requiring the committee to put the remaining amendments to a vote without further debate and sharply limiting the time devoted to the subsequent stages in the House.

When a bill amends the Criminal Code and an amendment outside the original scope of the bill removes an existing legal protection, such compression of debate is troubling. That is where the discomfort lies. The opposition is fully entitled to demand answers. It is entitled to insist that the government clearly explain why this change is being proposed, what its possible effects will be and why it was introduced in this fashion in a bill that did not contain it at the outset.

This late-stage change has caused serious concern outside Parliament. Civil liberties organizations, legal experts and religious communities have spoken out. Many Canadians have asked why a protection that has been in place for more than half a century is being removed in this way.

This is not a marginal reaction. Canadians of different faiths and backgrounds — Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and others — have raised concerns about this amendment. Those concerns are legitimate. They deserve to be taken seriously. Above all, they deserve to be heard, because in a matter such as this, Parliament should never close itself off to the sincere concerns of those who will be directly affected by the changes it makes to the Criminal Code.

It must also be noted that a constitutional risk has been expressly raised by some witnesses. In R. v. Keegstra, the Supreme Court of Canada had to decide whether the offence of wilful promotion of hatred under subsection 319(2) infringed the freedom of expression guaranteed by the Charter and, if so, whether that infringement could be justified in a free and democratic society.

The court recognized that there was indeed an infringement of freedom of expression. The central issue then became justification.

On that point, the court was divided. Chief Justice Dickson, together with Justices Wilson, L’Heureux-Dubé and Gonthier, concluded that the provision could be upheld. The dissenting judges — La Forest, Sopinka and McLachlin — would have struck down section 319, finding that the infringement of freedom of expression could not be sufficiently justified.

Why does that matter here? Because the Supreme Court did not uphold section 319 in the abstract or in theory alone. It upheld it in the precise form it had at the time, that is, as part of a regime that already included the defences set out in subsection 319(3). Those defences therefore formed part of the legislative balance examined by the court. In other words, the constitutional validity of the provision was assessed in light of the existence of those protections. That is why removing paragraphs 319(3)(b) and 319(3.1)(b) today is not a minor amendment but a change that may weaken the constitutional foundation of the provision.

So, the issue is not merely whether this amendment is advisable as a matter of policy. The issue is also whether removing a defence that has existed in law for 56 years risks exposing section 319 more directly to a constitutional challenge based on freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.

Colleagues, when an amendment removes from the Criminal Code a protection already provided by law, and when that change was not part of the bill as originally introduced, the very least that should be required is a thorough review of that decision, supported by genuine consultations, including targeted consultations with religious groups concerned, many of whom have already voiced their concerns. We have all heard them through the phone calls we receive and the messages in our inboxes.

That is precisely the task of the committee that will study this bill. It will be for that committee to examine the issues I have raised and to shed light on the real scope of this amendment, the risks it may carry and the broader legal and constitutional issues I have highlighted.

The Senate has a particular responsibility when a bill amends the Criminal Code. It must determine whether the text stands up, whether its scope is properly circumscribed and whether the proposed changes have been adequately justified.

Bill C-9 therefore raises serious questions. It touches on the security of communities but also on the balance of criminal law and the safeguards that must accompany it.

That is why its study in the Senate must be undertaken with the greatest rigour. We have a duty to examine this bill carefully, to assess the scope of its provisions and to ensure that the proposed changes are coherent and consistent with our fundamental legal principles.

Colleagues, in that spirit, this bill must now be studied.

Thank you.