Ok, you say that the OHR Code does not contain a “hate speech” provision but they (the Tribunal, via the Code and Commission) have the ability to assess financial penalty based on someone’s speech under their legal authority. What meaningful distinction could you possibly be making between this fact and the general concept of a “hate speech” law? Because it is civil or administrative in nature? If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and can assess a financial penalty if you call it a “Coot,” how is this not essentially a “hate speech” law in function even if in somewhat atypical form?
And your examples seem to be inapplicable to Peterson’s situation. Even in the US public employees have diminished free speech protections in their role as employees. So when you give examples of racial slurs and epithets that are never appropriate language in such a setting you are citing uncontroversial and widely agreed upon instances where speech can be limited in Common Law jurisdictions. Similarly, using an otherwise uncontroversial form of address but reserving it solely for a seemingly preferred group along racial lines is somewhat analogous but there is a distinctive difference. In that situation the hypothetical professor is using a form of address in a way that is at least partially disconnected from its inherent meaning, e.g. addressing white males as “gentlemen” but not other males.
In all of your examples the speaker is making a deliberate choice among the many possible forms of address and choosing those that are inherently inflammatory or inflammatory by discriminating in their use in a manner above and beyond their definition. In the situation Peterson is complaining about, the choice of address is entirely and exclusively the purview of the addressee. And not only that, according to some, that choice of address is not limited to the traditional gender pronouns of “he” and “she” but includes choosing from an ever-growing and fairly nebulous list of newly created alternate gender pronouns.
Peterson’s primary complaint seems to be with the aforementioned list, as he apparently stated that he was unwilling to use pronouns beyond “he” and “she” but had no problem on a personal level with addressing someone according to their preferred choice of those pronouns. But if a listener has the hypothetical ability to limit the speaker’s choice of address to a single word, even potentially a word that is not necessarily in common usage, e.g. “zir” (and while excluding those traditional gender pronouns that are in common use), and if failure to abide by that choice (once again a choice entirely beyond the discretion of the speaker) can result in a financial penalty via the authority of the government, then how is Peterson wrong in characterizing this as compelled speech? And if he is correct even to a significant degree that this is a particular form of compelled speech, then how is he wrong that this is largely unheard of and even anathema to traditional Common Law jurisprudence?
For a fact-based forum your characterization of Canadian speech law (at least in terms of Ontario specifically) as well as your blanket dismissal of Peterson’s claims as wholly fictional seems awful light on facts.
Here’s a link to the OHR Commission’s position on misgendering as a form of discrimination and harassment:
Brits and Canadians keep telling me how non-partisan their officials are. How do you know? What’s to prevent an official’s political views from biasing his/her/other’s decisions?
I’m sure politics and partisanship drip into our system all the time, but this is wildly regarded as… taboo. A lot of the rules and traditions in our countries center on the idea of “peace, order, and good government” and ultimately public servants do act in accordance with these societal boundaries. Strange, eh? It’s a cultural difference where citizens, in general, do have faith in the stewardship of our governments’ systems and institutions in spite of the possibly flawed individuals who might wield its powers.
It’s more that:
-they don’t pander to one faction or another for votes, not being elected.
-we have not (yet) reached the point where parties aim to stack the judiciary
-the people involved (like, say, career diplomats in the US State Department) take seriously their role and obligation to be fair and politically unbiased and uninvolved
-because of this standard, they are aware of others watching them for deviation from this standard; and others do watch
-to expand on that point, one loose canon usually would get straightened out by others
-with a lot of these positions, they are career positions not postings that rotate with the party in power
-politicians cannot call judges and discuss cases; nor can they direct crown prosecutors who to prosecute or not, nor (AFAIK) tell the police who to investigate or lay off of. These separations are taken seriously.
The whole NC Lavalin scandal for example, was that the prime minister had the temerity - as did several of his staff - to point out to the justice minister that prosecuting Lavalin and getting them on a contracts blacklist would endanger the jobs of thousands of innocent workers. The system is supposed to be that much hands-off.
Except for the highest levels of departments, most civil servants are just that - career civil servants. Not political appointees. (That’s not to say Canada does not have an extensive system of spoils - board members, citizenship judges, etc. that are appointed due to connections with the party.)
Ethics, tradition, and training. There is no incentive to ignore all of the above, as there would be if officials were elected. For example, as a defense lawyer, I must advance my client’s position as best I can; if I was a lawyer for the Crown, I would be obliged to do the same. In either position, my own feelings or political leanings would never enter the picture; in either position, I would work with the evidence, my client, the Crown, the accused, and my own legal knowledge. Politics would play no part.
My own political views never enter the picture. That’s how we’re trained at a Canadian law school–that our personal politics and feelings on current issues are entirely separate from our professional legal practice. I have represented people whose acts and beliefs are entirely abhorrent to me personally–but I have represented them to the best of my professional ability before the Court. That’s my obligation as a member of the provincial bar, and as one who has agreed to accept these matters. Crowns do the same thing, only from the opposite direction; and they have withdrawn charges when they know that they have no chance of succeeding on them. Yes, we argue; but no, it’s always fact-based in legal arguments. It is never political.
I know a number of provincial Crown Prosecutors. I know them professionally, of course, but I’ve also met them socially. Not a one has given me any reason to believe that they are politically-motivated in their prosecutions or arguments.
Short answer is that the law requires public servants to be non-partisan, especially Crown Prosecutors. If a public servant is openly partisan, that can be grounds for dismissal. So the public service is continually self-selecting for people who don’t have strong partisan interests.
And Crowns are subject to review by their superiors. If a concern started to develop that a Crown was taking partisan factors into account, the Crown’s superiors would come down hard on that Crown.
Bear in mind that we don’t elect our Crowns, and we don’t elect our police. There’s a thread in GD on exactly that point from last week. That is by design, to keep partisan issues out of law enforcement.
And, this is speculative on my part, but the level of partisanship in the US generally seems to be higher than in Canada. One reason for that may be your primary system. If you vote in a primary, it becomes a matter of public record which party you support, either because you registered for a particular party or you asked for the ballot for a particular party. In your system, your partisan affiliations are known, which seems to me to contribute to the idea that everyone is partisan.
Different up here. We don’t have primaries, only the general. I can vote in every provincial and federal election in my lifetime, but no-one knows which party(ies) I support. Unless you self- identify to work colleagues or friends, no- one knows your political views. It just doesn’t seem as hyper-partisan.
For example, everyone knows Mueller is a Republican. And it was common knowledge that most of the lawyers that he hired were Democrats. I assumed that was because of their voting patterns and donations. That gave critics of the Mueller probe an easy target. But here, if you don’t talk about your politics and don’t make Any donations, no-one knows your party affiliation - if any! It’s just not so significant in our culture.
That’s not correct. At least, not down here in Minnesota (and 23 other states that have open primaries).
In Primary elections, we get a ballot that is printed with the Democratic primary on one side, and the Republican primary on the other side. You are warned (repeatedly) to pick one side and only vote on that side. And the tally machines are programmed to reject ballots with votes on both sides, and you have to try over with a new blank ballot.
So nobody knows* which party primary you voted in. And you can switch around from year to year, and vote differently in the general election.
*Technically, as the election judge staffing the tally machine, I could (if my eyes weren’t retirement age) probably see which side of the ballot you used (most people don’t bother with the privacy folders), and if I recognize you, I could possibly remember which party you voted for. But since our primary allows crossover voting, that won’t tell me much.
Actually, I’m not tempted to continue down this road. There is a fundamental difference. Hate speech laws are targeted at speech as described by the Supreme Court: “Representations vilifying a person or group will seek to abuse, denigrate or delegitimize them, to render them lawless, dangerous, unworthy or unacceptable in the eyes of the audience.”
The issue raised by the Peterson case is not about that. The Ontario Human Rights Code has no hate speech provision. As I mentioned earlier, it’s about providing services to the public without discrimination on a personal ground. Those seem to me to be quite different things.
I did my best to respond to that side-track, but my interest here is the Canadian laws that involve hate speech.
Is that the closest you’ll get to admitting you were completely wrong and your labelling of Peterson’s claims as wholly fictional wasn’t based on any facts but presumably your own biases? And while you’re at it, feel free to put down the goalposts you were running away with if that helps.
You know I had a much longer reply as to why this particular application of the OHR Code amounts to a hate speech law even if it and its proponents will not label it as such. In short, the “discrimination” and “harassment” as defined by the Code and Commission in this context would also apply to any common definition of hate speech. In this particular case it would be based solely on speech (as little as one word) and the offense felt by the listener. And I think it’s extremely relevant that it would also be absent any other accompanying conduct that is normally associated with discrimination. In an educational context an example might be allegations of unfair grading and more general examples of such conduct in other contexts would include the denial of services or housing, unequal treatment in employment, etc.
So in that sense I don’t believe it was a hijack, side-track, or shift in topic and I certainly didn’t intend it to be any of those things on my part. The lines between the concepts and terms involved are simply not that clearly demarcated from either a philosophical or legal standpoint. But since it apparently falls outside of what you intended to discuss or want to discuss in this thread I’ll leave it at that.
You failing to recognize any connection between discrimination, harassment, and hate speech, even if only in this specific context, doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. Also, my comments were after someone had already raised the Peterson issue and the OP and others had likewise responded. So how exactly does this relate or is analogus to pointing out someone’s denial of apparently factual occurrences?
I didn’t say Peterson’s claims were wholly fictional, I said yours were. What you said was:
Except, of course, that Peterson never faced such a fine, because he was never part of an OHRC case. That isn’t a thing that happened.
As to the letter he received from his employer, that’s his employer telling him to follow their rules, which are in part that he must follow the Ontario Human Rights Code - something the faculty association he was a dues-paying member of agreed to do. It doesn’t mention the Commission, nor does it says there is a case pending, or threaten him with a fine.