Professor Richard Moon has published an informed opinion piece in The Conversation Canada about anti-Muslim hate speech.
"This speech has fuelled public intolerance," writes Professor Moon. "It has, almost certainly, contributed to discriminatory public action such as the requirement that individuals remove face coverings when taking the citizenship oath and the enactment of Québec’s Bill 21 that prohibits many provincial civil servants from wearing religious symbols at work."
"We are less likely to see speech as a call or prelude to violent action when violence seems remote."
"The question now is whether recent acts of violence against Muslims in Canada will lead us to see what we should have seen earlier — that the anti-Muslim speech of Steyn and others is hate speech that encourages violence against Muslims and should fall outside the scope of free speech protection."