Governments around the world have a long history of introducing laws that restrict speech while insisting they are not acts of censorship.
Each new proposal is framed as a measure to promote safety, combat misinformation, or protect vulnerable communities, yet the result is often the same: expanded state authority over what citizens can say or share.
Now Canada’s Attorney General Sean Fraser is attempting to reassure Canadians that the federal government’s new hate speech legislation, Bill C-9, is not a disguised attempt to police online expression.
The proposal, already facing strong opposition from free expression advocates, introduces new “hate-related” offenses and expands police powers over what is labeled “hatred” in the Criminal Code.
Fraser told MPs that the government is not seeking to criminalize internet activity that is currently legal.
“We should recognize there are many acts we may find offensive that do not constitute hate for the purpose of the Criminal Code,” he said during his appearance before the Commons justice committee.
He insisted the bill’s purpose is not censorship, even as he confirmed that its provisions would apply equally to speech on the internet and in public spaces.
The legislation, officially titled An Act To Amend The Criminal Code (Combatting Hate Act), also bans the display of Nazi and Hamas symbols that are deemed to promote hatred, makes it an offense to obstruct religious or cultural ceremonies, and rewrites how “hatred” is defined.
The bill frames it as “the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than disdain or dislike.”
Free speech advocates have warned that this rewording lowers the legal bar by abandoning the Supreme Court’s requirement that hatred must be “an emotion of an intense and extreme nature.”
Fraser responded that any online statement would only be subject to prosecution if it already met the threshold for hate propaganda under existing law. “The only circumstance where you could imagine some online comment attracting scrutiny under this law would attach to behavior that is criminal today but is punished less severely,” he told the committee.
The federal government has repeatedly tried to expand hate speech laws in recent years. Two previous efforts, Bills C-36 and C-63, collapsed under public pressure and procedural failure.
Bill C-36 would have allowed fines of up to $70,000 or house arrest for “legal content deemed to incite hatred,” while the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) proposed life sentences for repeat offenders and monetary rewards for complainants. Both were shelved before becoming law.
