“Madam Speaker, my friends say some scary things happened. The bill must be why it happened. The government needs to do more to sell it better next time.”
What they said. What they meant.
Plain-language translations from the House of Commons.
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Combatting Hate Act
A bill to make it easier to criminally charge people for 'hate propaganda' offenses, creating new offenses for promoting hatred against 'identifiable groups' or intimidating people accessing religious places. During debate, Conservatives raised concerns about free speech and religious liberty, while Liberals insisted the bill would only protect vulnerable communities. As usual, many members spoke at length about their own ridings and personal anecdotes only tangentially related to the bill.
“I already asked this once. Here it is again. The bill says people can still talk about their religion or politics or science, as long as they don't willfully promote hatred. Why won't you take yes for an answer?”
“You said we shouldn't repeat hurtful remarks. But then you repeated those remarks in your own speech. Aren't you contradicting yourself?”
“I want to ban more religious speech. The current law has too many loopholes that let people say things I don't like.”
“I want the Conservatives to debate solutions. I want them to propose something that can get to an agreement.”
“That last speaker just mentioned freedom. I'm going to change the subject. I want to talk about how my party got an amendment passed. We want to get rid of a religious exemption. I'm going to ask you what you think of that. I want everyone to be more civilized and respect each other.”
“I want to know whether you actually support repealing this religious exemption. Nobody would be forbidden from just reading a religious text. But using those texts to deliberately incite hatred against a group or a religion would become a crime.”
“That bad thing? I bet you don't like that. So let's get rid of that old rule that lets them do it.”