"Zombie Safe Sex" organizer jailed - the state of free speech in Canada

Canadian court allows ‘hate crime’ charge against Christian activist
Excerpt:

Christian activist Bill Whatcott is out on bail and out of a job after turning himself in to Calgary police June 22 to face a criminal charge in Toronto of wilfully promoting hatred against “the gay community.”

Toronto Police Service issued a Canada-wide warrant for Whatcott in May for the indictable hate crime offence after a two-year investigation into complaints made against Whatcott in 2016.

Whatcott and several others marched in the 2016 Toronto Pride Parade dressed in skin-tight green bodysuits with face masks as members of the Gay Zombies Cannabis Consumers Association.

They distributed 3,000 pamphlets on “Zombie Safe Sex” that included a flyer warning of the physical and spiritual dangers of homosexual activity.

The pamphlet featured graphic images of anal warts, a corpse described as an “AIDS fatality,” and another image of “genital warts in the mouth” set next to a headshot of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. 

It excoriated the “homosexual activism” of Trudeau, former Liberal Defence Minister Bill Graham, and former Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Whatcott’s criminal prosecution for promoting hatred is highly unusual, and required the authorization of Ontario’s former Liberal Attorney General Yasir Naqvi, according to Daily Xtra.

Naqvi’s deputy attorney general Paul Boniferro green-lighted the criminal charge in April, Crown counsel Jennifer Epstein told LifeSiteNews.

In 2013, the Supreme Court deemed two of Whatcott’s flyers hate literature when it ruled on his appeal of a Saskatchewan human rights tribunal judgment against him.

However, Whatcott’s criminal charge is significantly more serious.

“If I get convicted of this, it’s going to be a very low bar of what anyone can say,” he told LifeSiteNews. “Because they’re going to use it, they’re going to use it as a precedent for what the next Christian can say.”

Comment: Free speech is not protected in Canada