You have major reading comprehension issues and clearly you only have a very basic understanding of the Charter. I learned what you very disrespectfully tried to "teach" me in grade 9. I never said we don't have freedom of speech in Canada, if you read what I said closely, you'll see that I said we have LESS freedom of speech than the US, which is true.
Are you excited to learn something new today?! This is because of the "reasonable limits" clause in the Charter. It means that if you say something questionable that can be interpreted as hateful and offensive, the legal system can decide whether you're allowed to say what you said.
We also have strong anti-hate speech laws that the Americans don't have. In the US, the KKK or neo-Nazis can legally organize demonstrations and march through the streets. In contrast, The Canadian Criminal Code makes advocating genocide or inciting hatred against any "identifiable group" an indictable offence with maximum prison terms of two to fourteen years.
Now I'm not saying either country's laws are better or worse but what I said previously stands true: Canada is by nature a more PC country and even our laws are reflective of this difference.
Sorry, sonnyboy, but what you said was: "the Americans have the First Amendment but we don't have the equivalent here."
Which is an unbelievably ignorant and asinine comment for someone to make who supposedly learned in Grade 9 that Canada
has the Charter.
And your attempt to patch it up in this recent "expanded commentary" by comparing the limits on "free speech" in the US Bill of Rights vs. the Canadian Charter isn't much more impressive - probably because you don't seem to understand where and how the limitations operate in the US (not that I think your understanding of them in Canada is all that great either).
Simply put, the US just uses a slightly different mechanism to apply
its limitations on free speech, with the result that speech is limited in a slightly different manner but to much the same end result.
As a very simple example, in Canada, Zundel was prosecuted under the "anti-hate speech" section you referred to on the grounds that his writings denying the Holocaust ever happened promoted hatred against Jews. If he had been operating in the US, by contrast, he might very well have found himself charged under a similar state law outlawing the publication of such works on the grounds that they were "false statements of fact" - and therefore unprotected by the right of free speech. Or possibly, depending on context, as "incitement", "threats" or "fighting words". (I assume that you
are aware that criminal law is a federal jurisdiction in Canada but a state one in the US, yes?)
BTW, where did you ever get the fat-headed idea that groups like the KKK or neo-Nazis
can't parade through a street in Canada if they want? That's "freedom of assembly" and isn't covered by the "hate speech" clause. They just have to be a
little more careful about what they put on their signs and what they yell as they march, that's all. (Although, to be fair, in
Brandenburg v Ohio, the rather similar conviction of a KKK group in the US was only quashed because the State had failed to prove that the violence they were inciting was sufficiently "imminent"...)
Anyway, there was nothing whatsoever wrong with MY reading comprehension when I commented on your original post: it was your post that didn't say what you seem to think it said.
I do think you need to go back and sit through that class again, though, to learn the mechanism by which the "reasonable limits" clause in the Charter actually works... but that would take more time to discuss than I can be bothered spending in this post - which is on a thread about flu shots anyway.
