Bill C-9, styled the Combatting Hate Act, is racing through the Senate’s Standing Committee on Human Rights after passing the House of Commons on March 25, 2026. On paper, it amends the Criminal Code to create new offences for wilful intimidation and obstruction of access to places of worship or community spaces used by identifiable groups, a standalone hate-crime motive with enhanced penalties, a public display offence for certain “terrorism or hate symbols,” and procedural tweaks. It also removes the long-standing s. 319(3)(b) “good-faith religious opinion” defence, replacing it with a weaker “for greater certainty” clause on sincerely held beliefs.
The government frames the bill as a targeted response to rising hate crimes, especially the post-October 7, 2023, surge in antisemitic incidents. Yet the Senate study process — witness selection, testimony, and senator interventions — reveals a pattern of emotional urgency, historical inaccuracies, internal contradictions, and minimal scrutiny of data. This “circus,” as critics describe it, risks turning a statistically minor crime issue into a vehicle for broader speech regulation that could chill lawful protest, religious expression, and historical debate.
The Bill’s True Scope: Subjective Tools That Can Criminalize Context and Dissent
The legislation’s new offences hinge on highly subjective elements: “provoke a state of fear,” “associated with” listed terrorist entities, and “hatred” redefined as “the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than disdain or dislike.” These terms shift enforcement decisions toward real-time police judgments about feelings and context rather than clear, objective conduct.
The government has repeatedly assured Canadians that the bill “does not criminalize lawful protest or peaceful assembly” and “does not target dissent.” Police witnesses, however, painted a different picture. Representatives from the Toronto Police Service described how the new provisions would allow officers to deem the acceptability of a protest based on how a community feels in the moment — effectively turning subjective perceptions of fear or offence into grounds for intervention. This directly undercuts the government’s claims. Combined with the bill’s vague language around “association” with terrorist symbols and “obstruction” of access, the law opens the door to criminalizing political expression, signs, flags, or gatherings that police or affected groups interpret as intimidating. Existing offences already cover violence, threats, and harassment; the new layers lower the bar without evidence of widespread prosecutorial failure.
The removal of the religious-opinion defence is especially consequential. For 56 years, it shielded sincere scriptural interpretations from hate-propaganda charges. Its elimination shifts the burden onto believers, making biblical teachings on sexuality, marriage, or sin potentially prosecutable as “wilful promotion of hatred.” Senator Paula Simons’ April 16, 2026, second-reading remarks exemplified the framing when she told religious Canadians they have a right to be “homophobic and transphobic” if their faith demands it, but should not expect elevated legal protection if it crosses into “preaching hatred.” This reduces millennia of consistent Christian (and other faith) exegesis to modern identity categories without engaging the theology or historical record.
Witness Selection, Misinformation and Contradictions in Testimony
Human Rights panels from May 20 through May 25 heavily featured pro-bill voices: CIJA, police associations including the Toronto and Edmonton services, Indigenous leaders from the Métis National Council and Anishinabek Nation, the Black Opportunity Fund, and equity-aligned groups. Critical perspectives from the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and constitutional expert Prof. Dwight Newman appeared but were outnumbered. Major evangelical and Catholic networks were notably absent from early witness lists.
Testimony leaned heavily on “lived experience” and emotional harm rather than granular evidence. Police described needing tools to assess “fear” and “acceptability” during protests. Advocacy groups invoked surging incidents and community trauma. Senators rarely pressed witnesses on data legitimacy, prosecution rates, or contradictions. The result is a process that mirrors the bill itself: feelings-driven, with urgency and personal narrative taking precedence over rigorous fact-checking.
Several claims stood out as factually weak or internally inconsistent. Craig Wellington of the Black Opportunity Fund told the May 21 panel that in the 1700s, “enslaved black people in Canada escaped to the US for freedom,” using the claim to argue for adding the noose as an explicit hate symbol and to highlight supposedly “denied” Canadian slavery history. This inverts documented history: Canada served as a refuge via the Underground Railroad, with roughly 30,000 arrivals in the late 1700s through the 1860s; slavery ended gradually through the 1793 Upper Canada Act and full emancipation in 1834. No historical evidence supports mass Black escapes from Canada to the slaveholding U.S. South or widespread Canadian lynch mobs.
Indigenous witnesses, including Métis National Council President Victoria Pruden and Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Linda Debassige, on May 21, pushed for criminalization of “residential school denialism” — including any public statement that some schools were beneficial or that some Survivors had positive experiences. Yet both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission records and committee discussion acknowledged variation: not all 150,000 children faced identical abuse, and some gained education or skills. The witnesses conceded this reality while still demanding that public mention of positive experiences be treated as hate. This creates the absurdity of potentially criminalizing Indigenous voices sharing personal or family testimony. Adding to the contradiction, the TRC itself documented that a large proportion of the thousands of child deaths in the schools resulted from disease — particularly tuberculosis and influenza outbreaks exacerbated by poor conditions — rather than deliberate mass killings. Furthermore, despite widespread announcements of “mass grave sites” based on ground-penetrating radar anomalies (most notably the 2021 Kamloops claim of 215 potential unmarked graves), no forensic excavations have confirmed actual mass graves or human remains at the major announced sites as of May 2026. Many remain unexcavated “anomalies,” yet witnesses sought to criminalize any public questioning of these claims.
Pro-bill advocacy groups such as CIJA warned of “multiple terror plots” and an imminent “deadly attack” on Jewish communities, citing post-October 7 spikes. While antisemitic incidents have risen, these specific claims often rely on self-reported audits like B’nai Brith’s, which are heavily online, lack full public verification for duplicates or Canada-specific sourcing, and were not rigorously challenged in the hearings. Police testimony further highlighted the tension by emphasizing subjective community feelings as a basis for enforcement, contradicting the government’s assurances about protected protest.
A Feelings-Driven Bill in a Feelings-Driven Process
Hate crimes remain a tiny fraction of overall crime in Canada. There were 4,882 incidents out of more than 2.53 million total police-reported Criminal Code incidents in 2024 — roughly 0.19 percent. Even after a post-2023 spike, they are dwarfed by sexual crimes, property crime, assault, and theft. Prosecutions for existing hate offences are low, and the documented gaps stem primarily from resourcing, training, and dedicated units rather than missing Criminal Code language.
Yet the bill codifies “feelings” — fear, detestation, vilification — as legal triggers. Witnesses and senators repeatedly invoked emotional urgency over hard data. The process itself — delayed transcripts, limited cross-examination, and lived-experience priority — mirrors the bill’s subjectivity. Toronto Police testimony crystallized the contradiction when officers stated they would determine the legality and acceptability of a protest based on how a community feels in the moment. This is the exact opposite of what the Justice Minister repeatedly claimed the bill would and would not do — that it would not criminalize lawful protest or target dissent. What the government presents as narrow protection becomes, in practice, a tool for subjective suppression of dissent.
The combination of vague offences, police discretion over feelings and context, weakened religious safeguards, and minimal data scrutiny creates a predictable chilling effect. Pro-Palestinian advocates fear criminalized symbols or gatherings; Christians fear prosecuted sermons or Bible teaching; historians or Survivors risk charges for nuanced residential-school discussion. Civil-liberties groups warned that the bill could disproportionately impact the very minorities it claims to protect, turning protected expression into potential offences.
Why This Matters
Bill C-9 was sold as protecting places of worship and communities from real intimidation. Instead, the Senate study has become a platform for unscrutinized narratives that prioritize feelings over verifiable facts. With hate crimes a statistical drop in the bucket and existing laws already on the books, the rush to expand subjective criminal powers raises fundamental questions about proportionality, free speech, and democratic accountability.
The Human Rights Committee’s final report and any amendments will be telling. Canadians deserve legislation grounded in hard data and rigorous debate — not a feelings-driven process that risks turning dissent into a criminal act. The circus is still in session. Watch the ParlVU videos, demand transcripts, and contact senators while the study continues.