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By Augustin Hamilton (Quebec Life Coalition) — Photo: motortion/Adobe Stock

Bill C-9, entitled “Combatting Hate Act”, introduced by Mark Carney's Liberal government on September 19, 2025, poses a serious threat of censorship to the freedom of expression of Christian, pro-life, and pro-family Canadians, whose words are often labeled “hateful” by their opponents for the simple reason that their discourse criticizes the ideology of the latter.

As far as we are concerned, C-9 proposes:

• to redefine hatred,
• to create a new category of “hate-motivated” offenses as an aggravating factor in the commission of a crime.
• and to facilitate the prosecution of “hate crimes” by removing “the requirement that the Attorney General consent to the institution of proceedings for hate propaganda offences".

“Hatred” (understood here as a feeling) has been defined by case law as follows in the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in R. v. Keegstra: “hatred connotes emotion of an intense and extreme nature that is clearly associated with vilification and detestation,” and "Hatred is predicated on destruction [...] [It represents] an emotion that, if exercised against members of an identifiable group, implies that those individuals are to be despised, scorned, denied respect and made subject to ill-treatment on the basis of group affiliation."

However, Bill C-9 defines “hatred” as follows: “the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than disdain or dislike.” We can already see that the definition is much vaguer and does not include the idea of mistreatment, for example, which opens the door to varying degrees of interpretation within the courts and commissions responsible for judging cases of “hatred.”

C-9 creates “a hate crime offence of committing an offence ... that is motivated by hatred based on certain factors”, overlapping with but not replacing section 718. 2(a)(i) of the Criminal Code, which already considers hatred to be an aggravating factor in a crime, thereby creating a double crime and increasing the prison sentence from 2 years to 5 years, and from 14 years to perpetuity, thereby upsetting the balance of the current system by allowing for disproportionate sentences.

By removing “the requirement that the Attorney General consent to the institution of proceedings for hate propaganda offences”, C-9 removes a filtering mechanism that is used in most Canadian provinces — except Quebec, where charges can be laid by any prosecutor in the DPCP — opening the door to more abusive prosecutions.

In light of what we have seen, we can see a plan that takes into account all the ingredients necessary for abusive prosecutions, the first step being taken by making the definition of “hatred” extremely vague and leaving it to the varying discretion of the courts and commissions responsible for judging these cases. The fact that someone “incites hatred” inevitably leads to the assumption that the person inciting "hatred" is themselves motivated by this feeling. C-9 therefore creates a double penalty for citizens who will be convicted on the grounds of “hatred,” for which it has broadened the definition and removed certain protections.

As things stand, the legislation has already given rise to broad interpretations, notably in the case of Christian activist Bill Whatcott, who called on homosexuals to renounce the sin of sodomy. Accused of inciting “hatred,” Mr. Whatcott went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the judges, despite the definition of “hatred” given in the 1990 Keegstra case, found him guilty in 2013, even though he had not incited violence against an identifiable group. Mr. Whatcott's lawyers had invoked the defense based on bona fide religious belief, enshrined in section 319(3)(b) of the Criminal Code, which states: "No person shall be convicted of an offence ... if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text".

According to lawyers consulted by the National Post, this defense has never been successfully used in court. According to these lawyers, the Supreme Court's reasoning in the Keegstra ruling can be summarized as follows: "It is rare that a person who intends to incite hatred acts in good faith or is motivated by sincere belief. " Thus, the religious defense is considered suspect, even insincere, in such cases.

The Bill Whatcott case showed that criticism of a practice or ideology associated with an identifiable group is seen as hostility toward that group.

This brings us to another potential danger of Bill 9, the Liberals have reached an agreement with the Bloc Québécois to add an amendment to the bill that would remove the defense of religious good faith from the Criminal Code. As we have seen, the current bias in the courts already makes this defense virtually unusable. We do not need fewer defenses, quite the contrary! In this regard, Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, stated during a session of the Justice and Human Rights Committee: "In Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Romans — there’s other passages — there’s clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals… there should perhaps be discretion for prosecutors to press charges… there are clearly passages in religious texts that are clearly hateful." It is strange that he cited only the Bible as a source of “hatred,” but it is clear that for some high-ranking liberals, Christians are a priority target.

Another existing problem, which Bill C-9 would only exacerbate, is that many “hatred” cases are adjudicated by commissions, such as the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which are not bound by the same standards as ordinary courts. These commissions can accept indirect evidence and apply the preponderance of probability standard rather than the criminal standard. Judgments before commissions suffer from procedural imbalance, as the complainant often has no costs to cover, while the accused must pay for their defense, even if the complaint is ultimately dismissed—making the procedure itself a punishment.

In this already problematic situation, we do not need the Liberals and their Bloc allies to tighten the rules of our own persecution. We therefore invite you to sign the following petition against Bill C-9.