TORONTO — After meetings last week with members of Canadian Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith Canada, Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley changed the way hate crimes will be processed in the province.
According to B’nai Brith, the changes will now require that “decisions on whether to grant the attorney general’s consent to the laying of hate crime charges will be made within 60 days of the request submission. All requests for charges under hate crime sections of the Criminal Code will also now be brought to the attorney general himself.”
Len Rudner, Congress’ regional director for Ontario, told The CJN that there’s no set date for the changes to take effect.
“It’s not certain when they will come into play. But clearly we have the assurance of the attorney general that they will be made,” he said, adding that as far as he knows, at the moment there are no other cases involving potential charges under Section 319 of the Criminal Code that affect the Jewish community.
Bentley’s discussions with Jewish groups was a follow-up to a July talk between the attorney general’s office and Congress, after Bentley’s office decided not to lay charges against University of Toronto student Salman Hossain for posting alleged anti-Semitic remarks online in 2008.
At the time, Congress had requested “further investigations” into the matter and asked for another meeting with the attorney general.
Hossain’s postings targeted Jews and referred to Zionist conspiracy theories about the World Trade Center attacks.
In one, Hossain asked: “When do I get to shoot a few Jews down for attempting to blow up dozens of mosques in America right after 9-11… why f—ing target the Americans when the Jews are better?”
Hossain, a Bangladeshi-Canadian, added that he hoped for “many more merry 9-11s” and said “Jews are literally the most treacherous nation on the face of the Earth,” and he claimed that “the filthy Jews carried out 9-11.”
Congress wanted him charged under section 319 of the Criminal Code for wilful promotion of hatred.
In a statement last week, Congress’ Ontario region co-chair Frank Bialystok said his organization believed Hossain’s alleged statements “crossed the line into wilful promotion of hatred as defined by the Criminal Code. Yet we were told a number of circumstances, including the length of time it took to make a decision in the case and Hossain’s own personal efforts for rehabilitation, were the reason the attorney general declined to give his consent and that no charges will now be laid.”
Despite this, both Congress and B’nai Brith called last week’s discussions with Bentley “positive” in that the province’s new policy on hate crimes will allow these types of cases to be considered in an expedited manner.