Zero Tolerance

I missed this news story a few months ago… I guess I can’t read anything. The Public Safety Minister, Steven Blaney, told the UN General Assembly that Canada would have zero tolerance for any attempts to delegitimize Israel, including the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” movement.

Full disclosure: I have nothing to do with the BDS movement, but I’m tempted to sign on now out of spite.

Luckily it didn’t escape the attention of CBC columnist Neil Macdonald, who has been asking what exactly zero tolerance means in this case, what sort of actions the government is planning to take against this movement. On May 7 he got a reply from Josee Sirois, a spokesperson for the Public Safety department. The reply didn’t list specific actions, but did quote the Criminal Code sections on hate crimes and hate speech.

Full disclosure: I dislike Neal Macdonald but don’t remember why. I probably disagreed with him about something petty… this is why I need to cite sources on my enemies list. I’m tempted to sign on as a fan now. Out of spite.

So, the sections of the Criminal Code relating to hate crimes don’t apply here, since they only deal with motive once a crime has been committed. For example, vandalizing a mosque would probably be considered a hate crime, but only because vandalizing any building is already illegal.

The sections on hate speech, though, that’s a little more concerning. They make it illegal to incite genocide, incite hatred, and willfully promote hatred.

I doubt the spokesperson meant to imply that advocating boycotts is inciting genocide. But what about the other sections? Willfully promoting hatred? That’s awfully vague. I mean, I’ve promoted hate before, and I’ll do it again.

Go ahead and hate this guy. It’ll be fun, I promise.

At least this one spokesperson thought that these sections were somehow relevant to the question of what zero tolerance actually means. The department as a whole has walked it back… stating that the laws have been on the books for years and haven’t changed in any relevant way.

Laws not changing isn’t all that reassuring, given how easy it is to vary the interpretation of those laws, and the level of enforcement. But let’s accept that for now.

So then, has anything changed, despite the denial? The article where the department walked it back referred to the new cyberbullying law from December, which among other things modified the hate speech law to add national origin as a protected class, in with things like race, gender, and religion.

But perhaps there’s another change in the law that could be relevant. Five days ago, one day before that email from the spokesperson, Parliament passed the new anti-terrorism law, Bill C-51. One of the many changes it made was including as terrorism any actions threatening economic or financial well being.

Which brings us back to my easy dismissal of those hate crimes laws. They don’t apply in this case, because they only come into play when doing something that’s already a crime. But what if boycotts can be considered a crime? When the new provisions were discussed, I only really predicted them being used against pipeline protesters, or First Nations blocking highways, which would be bad enough. Once you make it a crime to do anything threatening economic interests… well, it has me a little worried.