The Case of the "Traitors": An Essay on Freedom of Speech in Politics

Jeffrey J. Cormier is an assistant professor of sociology at the
University of Western Ontario in London. He is the author of The
Canadianization Movement: Emergence, Survival and Success.

This short polemic by attorney-at-law Franзois Gendron examines the
20-year history of a freedom of speech case. On December 4, 1981, Gilles
Rhéaume and Guy Bouthillier, writing on behalf of the Société
Saint-Jean-Baptiste, published a text in Le Devoir stating that the
during the constitutional talks of 1980 the Quebec Liberal members of
Parliament had “betrayed” Quebec, “collaborated” with English
Canada, and should be “made to pay” for such a “treason”:
“They are traitors,” Rhéaume and Bouthillier claimed. Two Liberal
members, Céline Hervieux-Payette and David Berger, went to court,
arguing along with several Quebec journalists that the text should be
prohibited on the grounds that it incited violence. Gendron traces the
history of this case as it moves through Quebec Superior Court, Quebec
Court of Appeals, and finally the Supreme Court of Canada. He examines
court transcripts, expert testimony, witnesses, and other similar
freedom of speech cases to prove his point: “In my view, all opinions
should be permitted expression, no matter how original, extreme or
controversial they may be.”

Well, perhaps not “all” opinions. In the epilogue, Gendron looks
that the 1993 case of Richard Lafferty, a financial analyst who in a
small publication compared Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard to Adolf
Hitler. In March 2000, a Superior Court ruled against Lafferty and in
October 2003 he was ordered to pay $10,000 each in damages to Parizeau
and Bouchard. Gendron approves of this ruling as much as he approves of
the final ruling in the Hervieux-Payette case, which was that the
Rhéaume and Bouthillier text did not incite violence. For Gendron,
freedom of speech is not absolute; limits are set by what we find to be
common practice in Canadian society. This essay makes for an interesting
read.