Scotland and Canada, united in confusion over freedom of speech
by Chris Selley, National Post:
Nobody in either country knows what their landmark new legislation is going to look like in real life. That’s a terrible feature in any law.
“Police told to target comics under new hate crime law,” was The Herald’s front-page headline on Tuesday, the Glasgow, Scotland, newspaper having received leaked guidance to police on how they should interpret the new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act. The guidance to police “states that material regarded as ‘threatening and abusive’ under the (act) can be communicated ‘through public performance of a play’,” the Herald reported.
The legislation, which is due to come into effect April 1, adds age and “variations in sexual characteristics” to an existing list of groups offered explicit protections, as it is in Canada under the Charter and human rights legislation — though, bizarrely, the Scottish list still excludes sex itself; as in, for example, being a woman — and lowering the standard for criminal offence from “where there is an intention to stir up hatred” to “where it is likely that hatred would be stirred up.”
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