The Canadian Senate voted today to add gays and lesbians to the list of groups protected from speech inciting violence or genocide against them. This is probably something of a parting shot for NDP MP Svend Robinson, one of the major national figures of the Canadian left who got himself in a bit of trouble a couple weeks ago. Robinson had been trying to get a bill of this sort passed for about ten years, and finally accomplished it on a private member's bill - something very unusual in Canadian federal politics, especially for something so sweeping.
The voting disparity between the Senate's vote and the House of Commons vote last September is striking - 85% of the senators supported the law, while the Commons vote was an almost even split. A whole hell of a lot of people abstained in each vote - 48 MPs and 35 senators.
The whole gay rights issue has been flying back and forth through Canadian politics since last year, when some Supreme Court rulings established a set of rights which are causing the same cry of "activist judges!" that the United States is experiencing right now. The division in Parliament is interesting because we're getting to see one of the purposes of the Senate at work.
The Canadian Senate operates differently from the American one in that the members are appointed generally for life, but the general idea of keeping them around longer exists both here and south of the border. From that springs the whole idea of "sober second thought," a second level of the legislature that has a bit more leeway to take unpopular but necessary stands without worrying about the Wrath of the Electorate right around the corner. It's kind of visible in the fact that the Senate vote was far more in favor than the House vote, though stacking and the number of abstentions on both floors is a bit telling. The Commons vote probably gives a better idea of the voters' views on the issue than the Senate's vote, which shows the division in the country on the issue.
The objections to the hate speech protections seem a bit alarmist, but on the other hand there's some point to them. Canada has a fairly harsh stance on hate literature - not to the extent that a country like modern Germany does, but considerably moreso than the United States. For instance, you can't get something like The Turner Diaries here. As a result, the concern is getting raised about things like the Bible or other religious texts which merrily advocate slaying one group or another being declared hate speech. This is one of those weird things where I don't exactly think that would be an issue, but I also can't find myself able to coherently explain why. Either way, despite not officially having a separation of church and state, we seem to do a pretty good job of keeping up at least a vague form of a wall between the two. Considering the two. We'll see how it goes, I suppose.
CBC also has a section of their site which goes into depth on the issue, giving a fairly comprehensive overview of the debate and showing a bit of how the Canadian Supreme Court functions around such issues. Worth a brief glance at least, if you're following the issue either in the US or in Canada.
Posted by zibblsnrt at April 28, 2004 08:16 PM