The Importance of Free Speech

Precisely. As a couple of Canada's victims have already pointed out, "the process is the punishment." You might win, but the time & resources it's sapped from your life are designed to make you think twice about using your de jure freedom of speech.

edited 16th Aug '12 1:42:06 PM by Jhimmibhob

To add on to Jhimm's point, the mere accusation can cause you a world of problems all by itself, even before you go to a court.

Yeah, the "money" part is after the human rights courts because then you need a lawyer. However, I'd like to point out that the issue with money is a general consequence of a bad justice system in general. Our Chief Justice has already spoken out about the lack of accessibility to courts. She... used very carefully chosen and non-political words to voice her concerns.

And actually the time/money effort is a serious detriment to the rights of the abused. So really, it's still lopsided in favour of the intolerant speaking out even with hate speech laws, but it certainly dampens their tone a bit. If they do anything obviously hateful then they can get dinged right off the bat.

@ Maxima

No. If the government comes after you, you've made a serious breach. Otherwise it's a civil case that starts in human rights court. Basically the most serious roadblock is getting it to the point where the human rights court will listen, this process is time consuming and favours the intolerant. However, once it makes it there, then I think it ends up being fair. A punishment can be as simple as demanding an official apology.

edited 16th Aug '12 1:49:10 PM by breadloaf

Yeah, I'd assume that most people don't have the money to take the aggressor to court.

Hmm....that sounds a bit different from the States, where it feels like you can drag anybody to court any day of the week.

Well that'd be suicidal in Canada. Loser pays ALL the fees.

That is a major difference. I wasn't aware of that. There's a lot of noise happening in America because here it's the total opposite.

There was once a story of a story of a guy that was making a living off of filing lawsuits against businesses that were "polluting his air quality" even though his home was located well beyond any reasonable proximity to such a factory. Of course, most companies decide to just settle, because the expense of going through the courts is more than just writing a check to shut the guy up.

When they caught on to this, several companies wanted to counter-sue, but, of course, anybody can file a lawsuit any time they like.

If America adopted a "loser-pays" system, I'd be far more inclined to go with hate speech laws.

The notion that you can just drag anyone to court for anything in the US is wildly overblown. I've had a number of cases where I had a legitimate tort, but no real way of collecting, so I wasn't able to actually make a case.

You could make the argument that organizations like Scientology might abuse these sorts of laws. Actually, good question: Has the Church of Scientology ever uses Canada's hate speech laws to sue individuals for badmouthing the courts?

edited 16th Aug '12 2:03:45 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

I can easily believe that, and I also believe Maxima. That mostly suggests that the judicial system is flawed in several ways that can unjustly affect plantiffs or defendants, depending on the details.

Wildly overblown? Ha. No.

If you have money you're a target, because the major flaw of the system is that there's no penalty for filing false claims.

Not exactly. The penalty for filing false claims is that you still have to pay some of the court costs. For example, Drunkscriblerian could have filed suit against Bank of America for mishandling his mortgage and falsely filing for foreclosure on the house. However, because we have no money to get a lawyer, he can't sue.

Wait, Let Me See If Ive Got This Straight...some clueless woman can sue McDonald's because she burned herself with her own hot coffee, but Scrib can't get his money from Boa because they were, once again, being a bunch of scrupleless asstards??

Am I the only one this makes no sense to?

Because she burned herself with a cup of hot coffee, and got sent to the ICU with second and third degree burns to her genital area. Other than that, yes.

edited 16th Aug '12 2:48:19 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

The real thing is, how visible a given case is. It's not that just anyone and everyone can file a claim and lawyers will jump at your beck and call just to get a percentage of the claim money. No, what happens is if you have a case that is visible and the lawyer thinks there's a high probability that it'll be successful AND that the earnings upon a success will compensate them for their time, they will then take the case with promise of payment upon your success. If you don't meet this criteria, you basically have to front the legal fees where are, to put it bluntly, outside of the price range of the majority of Americans.

She only got the million dollars due to a jury, the judge later reduced the amount. She only asked for her medical bills plus a little bit to be covered (also her legal fees).

And no, Scientology has not abused those laws. We don't have jury trials for those cases. So unless you think you can fool a judge, good luck.

Then I am officially in support of Canada's hate speech laws. If Scientology hasn't managed to manipulate the system the way it does here, where we have less stringent laws on speech, I can't imagine that those particular hate speech laws are the problem.

The way our courts work is an issue, but that's not the topic of the thread.

Okay I was just reading about Scientology and Canadian court systems to double check my facts. It would seem that Scientology did in fact attempt to pull the same stunt in Canada except not only did they lose, they were counter-sued over libel and were then hit with the largest punishment in history (until 2008). Scientology lost 1.6 million dollars in total in aggravated damages against people they tried to silence.

In particular, Scientology attempted to read unfiled Notice of Motion on the steps of a courthouse in front of the press to seriously harm and damage the reputation of lawyers investigating Scientology. Later when sued for libel for those actions they claimed "freedom of speech" and judicial privilege (protecting them in reading the motion in public). The courts rejected their arguments.

So not only did they lose the attempt to silence people with hate speech, they got massively penalised for the poor way of abusing it.

edited 16th Aug '12 4:20:20 PM by breadloaf

Fuck yeah Canada.

Fuck Canada and their court procedures that actually make sense.

Now now . . . let us be fair to our wealthier, healthier, smarter, hotter, sexier, and all-around superior Canadian Supermen neighbors.

edited 17th Aug '12 8:14:46 AM by KingZeal

Arrrrrgggghh.......

In any event, this shows that no, Hate Speech Laws do not, on their own, lead to totalitarianism. Ergo, when discussing hate speech laws, if you're going to oppose them, you should speak about the specifics-because in the abstract, we've seen that there are at least some circumstances under which they do not lead to the kind of thing that has been suggested.

Problem with this picture is that is Canada and we are the U.S. it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how this could become an absolute shit storm in the various states or be waylaid in certain states. (Looking at you southern states and midwest)

Hmmmm... guys... give some credit. Some of the things that seem to be impressing you about Canada's system of law... Three guesses where the templates for a lot of them come from (and, heck, credit where credit is due... some reverse engineering goes on in the other direction, as well)?

The UK runs the same system: loser coughs up the dosh (including if they're on Legal Aid... payment options are available, fines dependant on ability to pay... well, more or less). Libel and slander are a tricky business, though. Trickier than in the US. The burden is not to just prove the truth of your statements, but that you haven't broken the laws of libel. In short, you can be proven true in what you wrote... but, still guilty of the libel.

Having said that... it's easier to show that your opponent has crossed the lines when you can find ways to point out where they have broken public order, discrimination or hate-act laws. Those are the high trumps in the libel game.

edited 16th Nov '12 2:34:36 AM by Euodiachloris