Federal legislation to combat hate propaganda is being expected here following a report submitted by a special Government committee to the House of Commons urging legal measures against dissemination of hate literature and prison terms for persons advocating genocide.
The report was submitted last week by Solicitor General Lawrence Pennel. The committee, headed by Law Dean Maxwell Cohen of McGill University, was set up by the Federal Government last January to study the problem of curbing the flow of propaganda aimed at ethnic or religious minorities. The Government had stated that the committee’s recommendations would serve as basis for Federal action.
In a related development, the Canadian Jewish Congress sent a letter to Prime Minister Lester Pearson, urging him to consider support of legislation extending the “spirit and intent” of the Criminal Code, which bans mailing of “scurrilous matter,” to make it “an offense to publish, whether orally or in writing, anything that is scurrilous.”
The proposal was offered as “a further suggestion which we would like you to consider as an additional or alternative approach” to previous Canadian Jewish Congress recommendations to the Government and the House Committee on External Affairs last year.
The Government committee proposed that the Criminal Code be amended to make advocacy or promotion of genocide “an indictable offense,” punishable by five years imprisonment. The committee offered, as part of its proposed amendment the proposal that “every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred or contempt against any identifiable group, where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace, is guilty of an indictable offense and is liable to imprisonment for two years, or, an offense punishable on summary conviction.”
PROPOSES IMPRISONMENT FOR PROMOTING GROUP HATRED
Another proposed clause of the suggested amendment was that “everyone who, by communicating statements, wilfully promotes hatred or contempt against any identifiable group is guilty of an indictable offense and is liable to imprisonment for two years or an offense punishable on summary conviction.”
Under the proposed amendment, no legal action would be taken if the individual concerned “proves that the statements communicated were true,” or “relevant to any subject of public interest, the public discussion of which was for the public benefit” or that “on reasonable grounds he believed them to be true.”
The committee report noted that Saul Hayes, executive vice-president of the CJC, indicated he wished the recommendations to exclude truth as a defense.
The committee made a number of “supplementary recommendations” among them one calling for Government action on statutes and regulations on hate propaganda material and activities, so that such rules would be related “to the general standard as set out in the Criminal Code rather than to a standard established independently by “various government agencies and departments.
JEWISH CONGRESS URGES EFFECTIVE CHECKING OF HOSTILITY
The letter by the Canadian Jewish Congress to Premier Pearson urged that in amending the Criminal Code for more effective treatment of hate propaganda, “the definition of scurrility should provide that ‘scurrilous matter’ include matter a principle purpose of which is to promote hatred or contempt of or hostility against a class of persons or against any person as a member of a class by reason of the particular race, nationality or ethnic origin, color or religion of such class or person.”
In language similar to that proposed by the Government committee for treatment of genocide charges, the letter proposed that “to preserve the nature of legitimate debate and publication,” the proposed amendments “should also provide that no person shall be convicted of an offense only by reason of having published in good faith and in decent language statements relating to controversial social, economic, political or religious beliefs or opinions.”
The letter to the Prime Minister noted briefly that the CJC proposals were aimed at protecting constitutional rights of freedom of speech and press. The letter said the CJC was “encouraged in our belief that such an amendment would be in harmony with the mores of the community by the recapitulation of the general laws of this country on matters of freedom of speech which were expressed by the advisory opinions of two Postal Boards of Review.” Those review boards acted in support of the actions of two Fostmasters General who banned the use of the mails in 1965 to hatemongers.
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