Canadians’ freedom from discrimination cannot be enjoyed when the racists threaten their sense of belonging in society. When freedom of speech only counts for them and not for those who wish to protest their violent platform, the inconsistencies are glaring. How do we know that it is a ruse? Because it is incongruent that racists would select this particular democratic freedom and not give a whit about the others like freedom of religious expression. It is a clever ploy since any counter-protest affirms the fragility of their “right” and proves that is in urgent need of protection. Freedom of speech cloaks their intentions with legitimacy. They know their assembly would be denied if they were honest about their intentions. What they really seek, and often win, is a mainstream forum to spread their racist beliefs. A legal term, it is appropriated by racists for the legitimacy it gives them. The police were torn between protecting vulnerable citizens’ Charter right to security of the person and what they interpret as their adversaries’ Charter right to freedom of speech.Įxtremists’ cry for freedom of speech is evoked in bad faith. Parents and other concerned citizens urged the police to prepare for a return of white supremacists who, in the spring, had protested schools’ legal obligation to accommodate Islamic prayer. That was the month that I attended a meeting of Peel District Police Department. Party Leader Travis Patron was turned away from holding his rally at the University of Toronto in August. In Canada, Conservative Party leader, Andrew Scheer, threatened to cut federal funding of universities if they fail to uphold “free speech.” For Scheer, this failure is represented by the student protestors who prepared to take action against the white supremacist Canadian Nationalist Party. Little wonder the credibility of the ACLU took a serious hit with its thousands of eager new donors since Trump’s election. The ACLU favoured an interpretation of the First Amendment right in which the democratic freedom of speech for a violent group availed over the democratic freedom from discrimination for a religious minority. The American Civil Liberties Union successfully defended the right for the racists to demonstrate in downtown Charlottesville just as they defended the Ku Klux Klan rally in the Jewish neighbourhood of Skokie, Illinois in 1978. Why? Because they wished to preserve the “freedom of speech” of all, evidently including that of Nazis. was one of only three countries (along with Ukraine and Palau) to vote against the UN resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism.