Quote:
Originally Posted by corporatejay
Guys, we still have the charter. Calm the hell down. Free Speech is still very much alive.
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I agree, but you can't really count on the Charter to protect freedom of expression consistently. I mean, even in the case of sections 318 and 319 of the Criminal Code (the hate speech laws that were discussed a couple pages ago), those clearly violate the Charter's freedom of expression provisions, and the Supreme Court held as much. They were simply saved by Section 1.
I think a lot of people are confused about this - the Supreme Court routinely (well, not routinely, but more than you'd think) takes a law that's challenged for violating freedom of expression rights, finds that it does violate freedom of expression rights, and then nonetheless upholds the law. In some of those cases, almost no one in their right mind would object to that - for example, child pornography as a form of expression was held to be protected by the Charter, but its prohibition was upheld nonetheless. In other cases, there's plenty of room for debate.