Whatever their politics, Albertans must say No to vicious rhetoric
We can have passionate debates about our future without raw hatred
No.
It’s time for people of decency and sanity, whatever their political philosophy, to say No.
If you’re a farmer who opposes Bill 6 you need to stand up and say, “No, the trolls inciting murder and insurrection don’t speak for me. The people boasting and posting their plans to kill Rachel Notley don’t speak for me.”
If you’re a politician who opposed Bill 6, you need to stand up, as Wildrose Leader Brian Jean already has, and say, “No, this is not how we change a law or change a government.”
If you’re a politician who supported Bill 6, you need to stand up and promise you won’t be intimidated. But you also need to condemn those on “your” side of the debate who engage in hatemongering and hysteria. You have to acknowledge that there are trolls and bullies among your supporters, too.
And if you’re a media outlet? Time to take responsibility for your website comments. If we, as an industry, can’t afford to hire enough staff to moderate them in real time, it’s time to close them, rather than host public platforms for venom and bigotry.
The Notley government’s handling of new farm safety legislation was high-handed and ham-fisted. The explanations it offered of the new law were contradictory, confusing and condescending. Farmers have a right to be worried and frustrated, especially when the NDP promised to listen to ordinary Albertans, and instead rammed the bill through.
But this isn’t about Bill 6 anymore. It’s about what kind of province we want to be.
There have always been rude angry people out there, writing hate mail long before computers were invented. Twitter and Facebook have made it cheap and easy for a roused rabble to rant, in the crudest and cruelest of terms. But the lurid and graphic death threats, repeatedly made against Notley and a number of her female ministers go far beyond angry venting or raucous political debate. This is vicious misogyny, clearly meant to intimidate.
Even if these people don’t have serious plans to act on their hyperbolic threats, even if they’re only “joking,” God knows what impact their incendiary rhetoric could have on others, who might be less stable. Once we normalize public discussions of how best to murder a premier — wood chipper or hangman’s noose or pitchfork — we poison political discourse in a dark and dangerous way.
So how do we best combat this toxin? Cops and courts may not be the best way. It’s possible that the posted comments could violate Section 264.1 of the Criminal Code, which makes it an offence to utter threats, if those threats are intended to be taken seriously, or if they’re made with the intent to intimidate. They could also, in theory, violate Section 51, which makes it an offence to do an act of violence to intimidate the legislature, or even Section 464, which makes it a crime to counsel others to commit an offence. But it would be very difficult to prove a criminal attempt behind wild Internet ravings and tasteless humour — not without some evidence that people were planning to make good on their threats. And there’s little guarantee that sending police to question trolls will do much except create a bunch of free speech martyrs.
“It’s not clear that it would be in the public interest to prosecute,” says Peter Sankoff, a professor of criminal law at the University of Alberta. “It would just give these guys more face time. For this to be prosecuted as a threat, there would have to be a great degree of specificity. If the defence could raise any possibility that they were just venting, they would likely get off. The criminal justice system tends to be very reticent to convict on these types of things. You’re essentially at the limit of what criminal law can do.”
So if police and prosecutors can’t solve this, who can? We can. By confronting it and calling it out, across party lines, without making apologies for those who advocate violence.
With oil at $35 and thousands of Albertans out of work, with terrorism abroad, and toxic Trump fumes wafting across the border, there’s lots of fear and anger out there. Bill 6, meant to protect vulnerable farm workers, has morphed into a symbolic rallying point for all kinds of anger and anxiety, about everything from carbon taxes to Syrian refugees. But we can have passionate, courageous, intense debates about our Alberta future without threats, without raw hate.
We must. Or else the virtual terrorists win.