What, exactly, counts as an insult? For Montrealers, this is not just a hypothetical question about the limits of civility and good taste. In Canada’s second-most populous metropolis, the city council just banned insults to municipal employees — police officers included — and offending parties could now pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for saying the wrong thing to the wrong city worker.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the new rules don’t even bother to define what is an “insult” or what speech is “offensive.”
A ‘half-baked’ proposal to ban insult
Yves Francoeur, head of Montreal’s police brotherhood, and his union have been pushing for years for the city council to better protect police against disrespect. This week, he got his wish when the Montreal city council voted 35-25, despite the objections of civil liberties groups, to pass a bylaw protecting municipal employees from insult and offensive behavior. Opponents called the proposal “half-baked,” and councillor Marie Plourde said members were “asked to vote now and consult later.”
The bylaws, which will be implemented at a later date, leave a lot to be desired — specifically, some important definitions for the speech the city council now intends to ban and punish with fines.
The rules reasonably prohibit things like threats made against municipal employees in the course of their duties. No arguments there. But it also bans “insults” made toward employees, as well as “offensive” or “humiliating” behavior. A savvy reader might now be asking: Well, what counts as an insult? Can’t plain old criticism be insulting or humiliating for the recipient?
But don’t look to Montreal’s city council for an explanation for these subjective terms, because the new bylaws don’t offer one. Perhaps even more absurdly, under the bylaws it’s also prohibited to “encourage” or “advise” another person to insult a municipal employee.
In addition to fines from $350 to $1,000 for a first offense and more for repeat offenders, the bylaws also permit employees to refuse services to people who have engaged in insulting or offensive behavior.
“Giving the middle finger, it’s not what will give you a ticket,” the mayor said about the bylaws. “Let’s just be honest. There’s bigger issues in terms of the attitude of some citizens.” (To be clear, if a cop determines that your middle finger is insulting, he can indeed issue you a ticket. Because the bylaws don’t say otherwise.)
But if city officials think this kind of restriction on citizens’ speech will create a more respectful relationship between people and cops or city workers, they may be in for a rude awakening. Threatening people with fines or lack of access to city services if they “insult” a cop, which the cops themselves get to define as they issue the ticket, is very unlikely to do anything but encourage more discontent — and frankly, may just make more people want to insult cops.
“Shut up or pay up” isn’t exactly persuasive. And it certainly is not respectful of free speech rights.
Is Montreal an outlier?
Unfortunately, this campaign against insult isn’t unheard of in either Canada or the world more broadly. In recent years, officers in the province of Quebec have issued thousands of fines under similar bylaws banning insults. Quebec City police alone have issued 11,092 fines since 2020. According to Global News, “the staggering number of fines for foul language coincides with a series of high-profile cases about police misconduct in Quebec.” Curious indeed.
Politicians and public employees elsewhere have also recently tried their hand at limiting critical speech. Just look at two stories I wrote about in this month alone, like Australia where the country’s top bureaucratic body is pushing for limits on “harmful” social media clips mocking public officials’ testimony. Or Germany, where the Alternative for Germany party wants the country’s chancellor criminally prosecuted for his criticism of AfD’s immigration policy.
Even in the United States, our ability to speak about government employees is under attack. This week, FIRE announced its lawsuit against the Kingsport, Tennessee, police department, which orchestrated a pre-dawn raid against a local critic who had posted negative videos about the police on YouTube.
Whether in the U.S. or Canada or Australia or beyond, the lesson is clear: You will not eliminate insults or criticism against government officials or employees by punishing those who voice them. Instead, you might just inspire a whole new class of critics.
Canada is a joke. If you are a Muslim or BIPOC, you will not face any penalties with these speech laws. They only apply to native Canadians, similar to the UK justice system.
This is, sadly, par for the course in strains of Quebec culture: they really don’t like negative depictions, especially from anyone they consider an outsider, and never mind if it’s warranted.
Eight or nine years ago, Andrew Potter penned a salient and relatively anodyne article in Maclean’s about the winter traffic problem in Quebec being linked to cultural malaise.
The government responded by essentially pressuring McGill university to squeeze him out of his coveted job there for which he was entirely qualified under the pretext that, not only was he casting Quebec culture in a negative light, but he was doing so as a maligned “Anglaise”, despite being fully bilingual and having resided in Quebec for a significant period.
It also says a lot about how seriously this rendition of Quebec culture takes its shortcomings. Rather than rectify them, they would rather sweep even honest and innocent reporting under the rug. You can imagine, then, how they react to anything construed as deliberate derogation, or “disrespect”.