By Peter Copeland, May 28, 2026
The federal government’s newly proposed Bill C-9 is a response to the issue of rising hate crimes – particularly against Jewish communities and other vulnerable groups – and its tabling signals a welcome seriousness in confronting these challenges.
However, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places) contains several troubling provisions and is largely unnecessary. Legally, our existing laws are sufficient; the problem lies in their enforcement and prosecution.
The Bill has symbolic value and includes a few important measures, but these are outweighed by its risks. It requires further amendment to be salvageable and would still offer only limited value, as it addresses the wrong problem – a lack of political capital and sufficiently broad public support for police to enforce the law.
Police and prosecutors increasingly operate in politically polarized environments where enforcement decisions involving identity, protest movements, religion, and minority communities carry significant reputational and professional risk. In practice, this can lead to hesitation in proactive enforcement in contentious situations, particularly where authorities fear accusations of bias, discrimination, or political partiality.
This reflects a society that has lost a strong common identity, where handling diversity has become the top priority.
Some elements of the bill – such as the stand-alone hate-motivated offence and the targeting of wilful intimidation or obstruction at places of worship, schools, and community centres – may offer practical value by signalling the seriousness of these acts and giving law enforcement clearer authority where ambiguity or hesitation currently exists.
However, these benefits must be weighed against the risks of redundancy. Existing laws already prohibit intimidation and obstruction of access, but do not refer to specific places in which this cannot occur. The greater problem with existing laws is the unwillingness – and often times, lack of training – to properly enforce and apply them. On one reading, the bill is therefore redundant and unjustified, and on the other, it could lead to greater restrictions on behaviour in areas where protests occur.
The bill removes the religious-belief defence in s. 319(3)(b) of the Criminal Code, which protects expressions made in good faith on the basis of religious texts or sincerely held religious belief. In response to criticism from religious organizations and civil liberties groups, the committee amended the bill to include language clarifying that “hatred” refers to extreme detestation or vilification and does not include mere criticism, disapproval, or discussion of beliefs, practices, or conduct. While this wording was intended to track existing Supreme Court jurisprudence in cases such as R v. Keegstra and Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission v. Whatcott, it does not fully replace the clear statutory protection that previously existed. Instead, religious speakers, clergy, and institutions will now be required to rely more heavily on prosecutorial discretion and judicial interpretation after charges have already been laid.
The bill also weakens important procedural safeguards by reducing the role of attorney general oversight in certain hate-related prosecutions. Historically, such safeguards reflected the recognition that hate propaganda offences occupy a uniquely sensitive area involving expressive freedom, religion, political dissent, and criminal sanction. Lowering these thresholds risks encouraging politicized or inconsistent enforcement while increasing the chilling effect associated with investigation and prosecution themselves.
The bill’s statutory definition of hatred also raises concerns. The government has emphasized that the definition merely codifies existing Supreme Court jurisprudence by defining hatred as “detestation or vilification” that goes beyond “mere dislike or disdain.” However, the wording is not identical to the language employed by the Supreme Court in Keegstra and Whatcott. It is crafted in such a way that it could be argued that the gap between “involves vilification or detestation” and “strong dislike” leaves greater room for the criminalization of less extreme examples of expression than what is arguable under the definitions employed in the existing Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence. This has prompted some to question whether the proposed test will be materially different.
Given the inherently subjective nature of hatred, and the courts’ history in expanding the meaning of contested concepts through their “living tree” theory of constitutional interpretation, Parliament should exercise considerable caution before modifying or expanding these concepts legislatively. The safer course would have been to adopt the Court’s precise language from past precedent and preserve the existing statutory safeguards that formed part of the constitutional balance upheld in prior jurisprudence.
Lastly, the bill contains a novel, overly broad hate symbol provision that could restrict the waving of flags and images that may provoke discomfort or strong disagreement but not be themselves signs of hatred. It could benefit from further clarification so as to ensure a high threshold exists for the offence to apply.
These proposals are concerning given that our existing laws define hatred in appropriately restrictive ways in light of its inherently vague and subjective features and only criminalize it when it rises to a very high level – that of vilification and detestation.
More fundamentally, Bill C-9 risks treating what are ultimately cultural and enforcement problems as legislative ones. Canada already possesses extensive legal tools to prosecute hate-motivated intimidation, threats, obstruction, and violence. However, enforcement remains inconsistent in increasingly politicized and socially fragmented environments where police and prosecutors often face strong institutional and reputational pressures discouraging proactive action. Expanding hate-related offences while weakening safeguards and broadening subjective concepts such as “hatred” may therefore do less to solve the underlying problem than to increase legal uncertainty and social polarization.
The main reasons police and prosecutors aren’t willing to enforce and prosecute hate crimes are institutional and cultural in nature. Canada has diversified beyond cohesion. Our society has no strong core identity, and our political leaders seem to care more about affirming and managing an increasingly incoherent cultural makeup while privileging what the progressive left deems “marginalized” groups and downplaying and disparaging the “old stock settlers.”
Police leaders are in a difficult position: they must advocate for their members while also protecting them from both physical danger and reputational harm, including backlash in the court of public opinion driven by identity politics and movements such as Black Lives Matter. They are also public servants appointed by boards that are often, to varying degrees, political in nature. Front-line officers, on the other hand, frequently express frustration that proactive enforcement can expose them to disproportionate professional and public consequences.
Within policing, the philosophical split between white shirts (senior leadership) and blue shirts (frontline officers) reflects this divide. As members of the managerial class, police chiefs face strong institutional pressures to remain aligned with the activist and left-wing social-service networks that shape public policy and public opinion in Canada. In a climate where many influential groups are deeply critical of policing, chiefs may fear reputational harm, political isolation, or funding consequences if they are perceived as acting too aggressively. It is therefore not surprising that the chiefs have expressed their qualified support for Bill C-9 following a round of amendments, which has DEI overtones weaved in throughout.
These factors conspire to create situations in which police may feel they lack political or public support backing to enforce the law. Indeed, research shows that police are increasingly reluctant to respond to certain calls or to use force in cases involving diverse suspects. Many fear public criticism or professional repercussions for taking decisive action in politically charged environments.
A 2019 study of police in Canada and the United States showed that 93 per cent of officers surveyed believed the public perception of policing has worsened since they started their career. It also found that a “substantial majority” of the rank-and-file officers surveyed intentionally reduced their interactions with diverse communities due to “officers’ perceptions that such discretionary initiatives are unnecessarily risky.”
Bill C-9’s proponents are hoping it will be a silver bullet that ends hate crimes in Canada. Unfortunately, this flawed law may end up inflaming tensions across the country. The problems run much deeper, exacerbated by a “cultural mosaic” mantra that derides and dismisses Canada’s history, culture, and traditions. Until we get a handle on that, and realize that unity is our strength, not diversity for its own sake, we will have an increasingly balkanized country.
Peter Copeland is deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
