Communities across Canada are adopting bylaws aimed at restricting free speech deemed ‘offensive’ or ‘harassing’.

London, Edmonton, Calgary and now Waterloo, have all implemented bylaws targeting freedom of expression with a goal of labelling speech as hateful, racist or discriminatory. Although protection of LGBT populations prompted these changes, the application goes far beyond these narrow issues.

In Calgary, for example, the bylaw bans protests connected to national identity and origin, gender and others. However, as Canadian Constitution Foundation lawyer Joanna Baron points out, a protest supporting the rights of Iranian Woman would clearly fall under this bylaw by nature of both nationality and gender.

Or, at a drag queen story event, both sides would fall equally under this restriction; the exact outcome witnessed at a protest against transgender individuals in change rooms, earlier this year in Calgary.

Baron points out, “I think it’s incredibly short-sighted for anybody who advocates for LGBTQ rights [to support such bylaws]”.

Waterloo’s new bylaw follows the same flawed thinking yet bizarrely states “nothing…shall prevent or limit a lawful protest.”

How is this contradiction possible? How do two parties with opposing views speak up, when their position clearly offends the other party? Unless every group in every future protest are fined equally, what we are sure to see is a continuation of a gross imbalance of legal rights and freedoms.

Hate speech is already accounted for under our criminal code, and the threshold set is high for a reason. It is a balancing act between upholding freedom of speech and a point where it can be deemed true hate speech, counselling genocide or inciting violence.

We have already witnessed individuals being charged for reading their bible or praying in public, and parents labelled as extremists for defending their children.

Baron puts it succinctly; “in a free society, when you’re just talking about feeling offended … [or] feeling harassed, if there’s no accompanying threat of physical harm, there are other ways to respond”, “this is about protecting fundamental freedoms.”