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wikipedia has been corrupted. really cant be used as a source in opinion matters, as its founders are liberals, but not liberal enough to the extent that many controversial subjects or famous figures "cannot be added to."

A lot has to do with it's population that is pretty much a third of muslims and other third world people. Less than a third is British Isles decendants. The other third are from many European countries. Hey, but it still has the English crown.

Results from the 2001 Canadian Census

Trends in membership of various religions (listed in alphabetic order):
Religion 2001 census data
Atheists, Agnostics ,
Humanists, no religion, etc. 16.2%
Buddhism 1.0%
Catholic + Protestants 72%
Catholic 43.2%
Protestant 29.2%
Eastern Orthodox 1.6%
Other Christian 2.6%
Hinduism 1.0%
Islam 2.0%
Judaism 1.1%
Sikhism 0.9%

http://www.religioustolerance.org/can_rel0.htm

Source: Government of Canada

What they traditionally did was to protect someone without resources from being discriminated against. Ie A gay person being fired for being gay. The purpose was to ensure that basic human rights were protected irregardless if the victim had the resources to hire a lawyer and got to court.

Estimated 2008 population census: British Isles origin 24%, French origin 24%, European 16%, Amerindian 2%, other, mostly Asian, African, Arab, 28%. There's your 1/3 and the reason Muslims have great influence. Probably all located in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. The rest of the provinces may have the 24% English as in Alberta.

In Canada, "phobias" seem to have overruled freedom of speech.

Montreal_Guy is prints articles here on POF which he claims will incite hatred against religious people and by his own definition are hate speech. Yet he fears no reprisal from the Human rights Tribunal.

If they we're it is doubtful any of them would lead to conviction.

The biggest problem with these tribunals is that it is totally one sided.

The only questions is how long will it take to shut these Tribunals down or to limit their scope. If we can do this we should be able to get some fair balance between ones right to expression and "hate speech".

In regards of these people going to court, well thats part of the Human rights tribunals shell game. They only find guiltythe people who have no resources to defend themselves in court. Their process they drag these people through is the punishment anyways. How can someone with little resources hire a lawyer and expect to pay $50,000 to fight a $5,000 fine? If these people we're guilty of these so called crimes the government would prosecute them with crown prosecutors in a court of law.

[28] The objects of this Act are set forth in s. 3. The first and most general of them is concerned with principle-and is dedicated to gaining greater public recognition, first of that fundamental idea underlying our society which holds that each member of the community is inherently possessed, in equal measure, of human worth and dignity, and, second, of the derivative concept that each is therefore entitled to be treated, and in turn required to treat every other, as equally worthy of respect and concern (s. 3(a))). The second purpose, more specific than the first, is to further public policy in Saskatchewan which, rooted in these concepts, is aimed at discouraging and eliminating discrimination (s. 3(b)).
...
[48] Section 14(1) had added to it in 1979, immediately after the provision prohibiting the publication or display of "any notice, sign, symbol, emblem or other representation" which tends to interfere with the enjoyment by persons of the rights accorded to them by the law, the following words:

"... or which exposes or tends to expose to hatred, ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any person, any class of persons of a group of persons ... [because of his/her or their race, colour, sex and so on]."

[49] The addition is quite clearly directed at discouraging, if not eliminating, activity which reinforces prejudice and in turn fosters discrimination. Hence the section acquired a second purpose: to discourage some of the underlying causes of "the certain discriminatory practices" covered by Part II.
...
[59] Before turning to the express language of the section, we might say that we have concluded in light of the foregoing that the section requires, by implication, that the message have a specific effect or effects in order to be caught by the section. The message must not only ridicule, belittle or otherwise affront the dignity of the person or the class, it must be such as to cause or be likely to cause others to engage in one or more of the discriminatory practices prohibited by ss. 9 through 13 and 15 through 19.

[30] However, s. 14 goes beyond prohibiting material exposing to hatred. It also prohibits material which ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any group because of race or religion. The appellant argued that these additional grounds for prohibition of publication broadened the section to the extent that the reasoning in Taylor should not apply, and that, as a result, s. 14 was not a reasonable limit on the right to freedom of expression.
...
[33] Accordingly, in our view, s. 14 of the Code is a reasonable limit on the right to freedom of expression as allowed under s. 1 of the Charter. Our reasons for this conclusion are rather perfunctory because the result of this appeal would be the same even if we had concluded that the words "ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of" in s. 14(1)(a) had taken the section beyond the reasoning in Taylor which justified the limit as being reasonable.

[24] In my view, s. 14(1) of the Code is a reasonable restriction on the appellant's right to freedom of expression and religion as contemplated by s. 2(a) of the Charter. See Bell, supra. In Ross v. New Brunswick School District No. 15, [1996] 1 S.C.R. 825, La Forest J. held that the analysis under s. 1 of the Charter is the same whether the legislation infringes the respondent's freedom of expression or freedom of religion.

[25] For all the above reasons the appeal is dismissed.

14(1) No person shall publish or display, or cause or permit to be published or displayed, on any lands or premises or in a newspaper, through a television or radio broadcasting station or any other broadcasting device, or in any printed matter or publication or by means of any other medium that he owns, controls, distributes or sells, any representation, including without restricting the generality of the foregoing, any notice, sign, symbol, emblem, article, statement or other representation:

(a) tending or likely to tend to deprive, abridge or otherwise restrict the enjoyment by any person or class of persons of any right to which he is or they are entitled under law; or

(b) which exposes, or tends to expose, to hatred, ridicules, belittles or otherwise affronts the dignity of any person, any class of persons or a group of persons; because of his or their race, creed, religion, colour, sex, sexual orientation, family status, marital status, disability, age, nationality, ancestry, place of origin or receipt of public assistance.

(2) Nothing in subsection (1) restricts the right to freedom of speech under the law upon any subject.

http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/bible-ruled-hate-speech.htm

Canada, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.

Earlier this month, the actress Brigitte Bardot, an animal rights activist, was fined $23,000 in France for provoking racial hatred by criticizing a Muslim ceremony involving the slaughter of sheep.

By contrast, American courts would not stop the American Nazi Party from marching in Skokie, Ill., in 1977, though a march would have been deeply distressing to the many Holocaust survivors there.

Six years later, a state court judge in New York dismissed a libel case brought by several Puerto Rican groups against a business executive who had called food stamps “basically a Puerto Rican program.” The First Amendment, Justice Eve M. Preminger wrote, does not allow even false statements about racial or ethnic groups to be suppressed or punished just because they may increase “the general level of prejudice.”

Some prominent legal scholars say the United States should reconsider its position on hate speech.

The First Amendment is not, of course, absolute. The Supreme Court has said that the government may ban fighting words or threats. Punishments may be enhanced for violent crimes prompted by racial hatred. And private institutions, including universities and employers, are not subject to the First Amendment, which restricts only government activities.

But merely saying hateful things about minority groups, even with the intent to cause their members distress and to generate contempt and loathing, is protected by the First Amendment.

In 1969, for instance, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction of a leader of a Ku Klux Klan group under an Ohio statute that banned the advocacy of terrorism. The Klan leader, Clarence Brandenburg, had urged his followers at a rally to “send the Jews back to Israel,” to “bury” blacks, though he did not call them that, and to consider “revengeance” against politicians and judges who were unsympathetic to whites.

Only Klan members and journalists were present. Because Mr. Brandenburg’s words fell short of calling for immediate violence in a setting where such violence was likely, the Supreme Court ruled that he could not be prosecuted for incitement.

“Canadians do not have a cast-iron stomach for offensive speech,” Mr. Gratl said in a telephone interview. “We don’t subscribe to a marketplace of ideas. Americans as a whole are more tough-minded and more prepared for verbal combat.”

Many foreign courts have respectfully considered the American approach — and then rejected it.

A 1990 decision from the Canadian Supreme Court, for instance, upheld the criminal conviction of James Keegstra for “unlawfully promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements.” Mr. Keegstra, a teacher, had told his students that Jews are “money loving,” “power hungry” and “treacherous.”

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Brian****on said there was an issue “crucial to the disposition of this appeal: the relationship between Canadian and American approaches to the constitutional protection of free expression, most notably in the realm of hate propaganda.”

Chief Justice****on said “there is much to be learned from First Amendment jurisprudence.” But he concluded that “the international commitment to eradicate hate propaganda and, most importantly, the special role given equality and multiculturalism in the Canadian Constitution necessitate a departure from the view, reasonably prevalent in America at present, that the suppression of hate propaganda is incompatible with the guarantee of free expression.”

America’s distinctive approach to free speech, legal scholars say, has many causes. It is partly rooted in an individualistic view of the world. Fear of allowing the government to decide what speech is acceptable plays a role. So does history.

“It would be really hard to criticize Israel, Austria, Germany and South Africa, given their histories,” for laws banning hate speech, Professor Schauer said in an interview.
In Canada, however, laws banning hate speech seem to stem from a desire to promote societal harmony. While the Ontario Human Rights Commission dismissed a complaint against Maclean’s, it still condemned the article.

“In Canada, the right to freedom of expression is not absolute, nor should it be,” the commission’s statement said. “By portraying Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics, including being a threat to ‘the West,’ this explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice toward Muslims and others.”

http://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/
hate-speechfree-speech-american-exception-
unlike-others-us-defends-freedom-to-offend-speech/