Terrorism speech offences: Driving speech underground
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- Published on Wednesday, 28 September 2016 09:45
- Written by editor
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Terrorism speech offences will undermine radicalization prevention
Dear friends,
Imagine trying to support individuals at risk for radicalization to violence when even a discussion puts them in the position of potentially committing a crime.
This is the situation that currently exists in Canada, where it is a crime to promote or advocate the commission of terrorist offences "in general".
In blog #2 in our National Security Consultation series I lay out the trouble with trying to conduct counter-radicalization programs while criminalizing speech.
The blog on terrorism speech offences is ready to go, read it here.
The government and the police may say: we aren’t going to prosecute people for statements made in the context of community support work or go after rash comments made by teenagers on social media.
But, in thinking about a speech offence, we must think not only about prosecution, but about what expression is chilled because of the threat of prosecution.
Or, go here to see all the blogs in the series as it unfolds.
This is an unprecedented opportunity for Canadians to weigh in on the recent radical changes to our national security landscape (eg. “C-51”) and our long-standing deficits in national security transparency and accountability.
I hope this blog series will help you to understand the issues being considered in the national security consultation, and I encourage you to let Canada's government know what changes you want to see (before the December 1 deadline!).
We'll have another blog in the series ready for you shortly.
Talk soon,
Micheal Vonn, Policy Director
and the BCCLA team
r0
