Hacker News Reader

Comment by kmeisthax | Hacker News Reader

>Perplexed, the judge responded: "What do you mean, first amendment? What's that?," pointing out that the U.S. constitution does not apply to Canada.

I don't think the judge is saying "Freedom of Speech is un-Canadian", I think the judge is dunking on an unsympathetic defendant for getting their understanding of the law from Internet memes. While there are differences in how strictly American and Canadian law interpret the concept, it's not like one country has freedom of speech and the other one doesn't.

View on HN

I’m a Canadian, we don’t have free speech in nearly the same way Americans do. Using a gendered pronoun one doesn't prefer is considered hate speech in my country and has been tested in court [1]; our freedom in this regard is actually very limited. A man was arrested in my town two years ago for holding a crude sign which compared BLM to Marxists. In poor taste, sure, but worthy of being put in handcuffs? I personally don't think so.

[1] https://www.them.us/story/canadian-court-rules-misgendering-...

Context matters. In your specific first example, the person being misgendered was an employee and the person misgendering them was an employer. In other words, the tort is creating a hostile working environment; which absolutely should be illegal and has little if anything to do with freedom of speech.

Second example sounds bad on it's face, but I can't actually seem to find a source for it, so I don't have context. I can imagine several contexts in which that might actually be permissible conduct. For example, if the man was protesting by blocking a major thoroughfare, or trying to rile up BLM protesters into attacking him.

I'm not sure what source you're looking for, it was one person who got put in a squad car in a small town of a couple thousand people. Who knows whether he was charged, I only heard about it through some local social media. The context was that he was holding a sign on a sidewalk next to a busy road in a sort of solo protest against nothing.

Yes context does matter, those were just the first two examples that came to mind. My point remains though, anyone who's lived in both the US and Canada should know without a shadow of a doubt that what you can legally say in Canada is very different from what you can legally say in the US.

Depends on what you consider freedom of speech. Canada's certainly a long way from a place like Pakistan or China but many Americans would argue "freedom to offend" is the most important part of freedom of speech.

Indeed, the "Fundamental Freedoms" section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is mostly equivalent to the First Amendment. (At least to a layperson, I'm sure there are some legal details that differ) https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/how-righ...

It's very significantly different - it's an alienable right as long as the alienation is considered "democratic and free". It can also be completely alienated by suspension of articles in the Charter.

Interesting, that is a good point: http://lawiscool.com/2010/02/22/are-there-inalienable-rights...

But the constitutional rights and freedoms such as freedom of expression, a right against arbitrary detention or imprisonment, and even our right to life, liberty and security, are not absolute. The Charter leaves loopholes for the federal Parliament, provincial legislatures, or even judges to limit or take away any rights or freedoms. There are no inalienable rights in Canada.

He should have gone with the Prime Directive instead. William Shatner is bound by it, after all, and he is Canadian.

No; Captain Kirk's bound by it, and he's from Iowa. (He only works in outer space.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com