MP’s motion condemning Islamophobia nothing to get upset about

Iqra Khalid’s bill does not pose any kind of a threat to freedom of speech or religion

For all the private members’ motions tabled in Parliament, you’d be hard pressed to find examples of Calgarians taking to the streets to protest any of them.

Yet one in particular has accomplished exactly that. M-103, a motion first proposed by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid and subsequently embraced by her government, was the target of protests Saturday in Calgary, Edmonton and other cities.

This would be logical, if M-103 actually represented any sort of threat to freedom of speech, or freedom of religion, as some have suggested. So therefore, not only are we ignoring actual threats to these freedoms, the irrational response to M-103 might discredit future attempts to fix these problems.

M-103 is not a bill, nor does it propose any legislation or changes to existing laws. It merely calls on the government to “condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and religious discrimination,” and to then have the standing committee on Canadian heritage study the extent of the problem and what, if anything, could be done to counter it.

There’s certainly an argument to be made that Islamophobia is both an ill-defined and politically loaded word, and that the Liberals’ reluctance to use something more specific (e.g., anti-Muslim hatred) suggests a strategy to box their Conservative opponents into a corner.

This, however, fails to explain how the motion poses any sort of threat. However we term it, reasonable Canadians should be able to agree that hatred of those who follow the Muslim faith is something worthy of condemnation, especially in the aftermath of the Quebec City mosque massacre. Calgary protest organizer Stephen Garvey suggested to Postmedia that M-103 has the potential to infringe on the free speech rights of every Canadian. How it does this is not exactly clear. He’s not alone in making this claim, though. There have been numerous voices suggesting that M-103 is a blasphemy law in disguise, or that it puts Canada on the path to having such a law.

Garvey implied the same, telling Postmedia that “no religion, ideology or way of life should ever come before our freedom of speech.”

It’s hard to disagree with that notion. However, it’s disingenuous in the extreme to be warning Canadians about the looming imposition of a blasphemy law without noting the fact that we already have one, and have had one for a very long time.

The criminalization of blasphemy is indeed in conflict with freedom of speech and freedom of religion, which is why Section 296 of the Criminal Code (which prohibits the publication of any “blasphemous libel”) would likely never survive a charter challenge. This, of course, only further underscores how absurd this line of argument against M-103 is. Repealing Section 296 would send a strong message and remove the threat that it might ever be used. Why have M-103 opponents not made this case? A protest against an existing blasphemy law is far more logical than a protest against a motion that might possibly somehow result in the creation of a (redundant) law.

Meanwhile, for Albertans who are on the lookout for actual threats to our freedom of expression, perhaps we could jog our collective memories and have a renewed focus on Section 3(1) of the Alberta Human Rights Act. That section, which prohibits the publication or display of anything that is “likely to expose a person or a class of persons to hatred or contempt,” is still on the books.

As we saw in the case of a pastor’s controversial letter to a Red Deer newspaper and the nowdefunct Western Standard’s publication of the Danish Mohammad cartoons, this section of the act can and has had a real effect on freedom of speech in Alberta. Yet strangely, it didn’t seem to come up at Saturday’s protest.

We needn’t invent threats to freedom of speech or freedom of religion. Those who do so are ultimately doing the cause a disservice.