The Board's action is a significant step toward 'soft' authoritarianism. Personally, I'm not a big fan of hate speech, and public institutions should punish it. Hate speech is a crime...but what is it, in fact? The Criminal Code defines it as (a) advocating violence against an identifiable group or (b) characterising an identifiable group as loathsome and sub-human to the extent that harm to them is permissible. That's hate speech (heavily paraphrased!), and if you're part of an identifiable group whose history includes repeated acts of extreme oppression--as I am--then you likely support it.

But here's the problem: the day-to-day definition of hate speech has nothing to do with the definitions in the Criminal Code. The working definition is basically "any form of expression that someone believes could hurt someone else's feelings". This could apply to anyone and everyone. Of course, not everyone fits in the "someone else" category. The hurt feelings of many individuals--heterosexuals, European descendants, Jews, and all men (as in people with dicks and balls)--don't count. We can see where this headed, and it ain't pretty: if I don't like you I can get you punished for anything you say or don't say so you better say things that I like or else...

In our legal system any law can be declared void if it is so broad that it creates an unjustifiable amount of discretion for those who apply it. The new (woke) version of hate speech is excessively broad--any expression that could hurt someone else's feelings--doesn't even require an actual victim, and it gives officials a tremendous amount of discretion to use against almost anyone they want. Even this note could be considered hate speech because it could upset someone in a group whose feelings matter (so-called bipoc and trans people). Giving institutions the power to punish people on these grounds is a step toward authoritarianism.

That an arm of the government has officially adopted and used punitively the woke definition of hate speech should scare everyone who values democracy and freedom. To empower the state to punish people for actions that might or could hurt someone else's feelings is to allow the state to punish without justification and outside the rule of law.