But who is doing the infringing exactly?

Reading Mohamed Elmasry's piece in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record about his hate-speech complaint made me think of something I read a few days ago by Colby Cosh. Cosh's column in the Post was about a recent Supreme Court decision, R. v. D.B. where the court ruled on the constitutionality of some provisions in the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

What especially caught Cosh's eye was the reasoning of Justice Rosalie Abella on mandatory publication bans. The judge weighed the s. 2(b) Charter right to freedom of the press against the s. 7 right to security of the person - as if those two rights were supposed to go into the scale in a situation like this. The problem with such logic is that the Charter is only supposed to be there to protect us against state actions, not actions from private individuals.

This is a pretty elementary part of Canadian constitutional law, but some people appear to still have real trouble with it. Which takes me back to Elmasry. Check out this part of his apologia:

The recent smearing of a Canadian institution like our human rights commissions by Islamophobes, who claim to be protecting "free speech," is a classic case of chopped logic.

They seem to have forgotten that reconciling two potentially conflicting legal rights that are also human rights -- the right to be free from hate propaganda, and the principle of freedom of expression -- is not a new challenge, nor is it an easy one.

So, what, does s. 15 confer positive rights just like s. 7 did in the D.B. case? If we are going to take that kind of approach, where does it end? Shall we balance the rights of the everyday citizen to be free from violence against the s. 10 rights to habeas corpus? And I'm not talking a War Measures Act here - I mean, should we enact enduring legislation that infringes other crucial rights and freedoms, as though we are in a permanent state of crisis?