The Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) began in 2018 claiming it is an independent non-profit organization of Canada’s leading experts on hate groups. In fact, it is composed of a group of left-wing activists whose objective is to intimidate and silence conservative groups who uphold Judeo-Christian principles. CAHN is modelled on the tarnished and disreputable US Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), known for its vicious attacks on pro-life Christian organizations. CAHN has received over $1 million from the Trudeau government since 2020. Trudeau clearly relishes the work done by CAHN since its objective is to smear his critics.
CAHN’s cozy relationship with the Liberal government was evident, in 2021, when Trudeau’s Diversity Minister, Ahmed Hussen, paid CAHN $268,400 to draft a guidebook for children, called Confronting and Preventing Hate in Canadian Schools. He approved this guidebook, stating that, “the booklet could help teach core values to our kids”. The core values in this guidebook include describing the former Canadian flag, the Red Ensign, which was replaced in 1965 by the Red Maple Leaf flag, as a symbol of colonialism, and as objectionable as the Nazi Swastika. The guidebook also stated that the Conservative party tolerated bigots and was infiltrated with white nationalists.
CAHN claims that it is an “expert” in determining hate, but, in fact, it is an expert only in naming, shaming, and destroying organizations which do not conform to its extremist, left-wing view. It is an investigative, adjudicative, and punitive organization all rolled into one, that wants to decide what Canadians are permitted to think and say.
CAHN’s Website
CANH’s website and its activities quickly reveal its left-wing bias and methods. It targets organizations that do not conform to the regressive, woke agenda. If people are pro-life, they are labelled as sexist and “haters” of women; if people are against the homosexual agenda, they are labelled as “haters” and homophobic; if people are critical of mass immigration or question Islamic values, they are labelled as “haters” and Islamophobic; if people question the veracity of the Residential Schools/Mass Graves narrative, they are “haters” responsible for indigenous genocide.
CAHN’s method is to paint, with a very broad-brush, anyone who voices disapproval of the progressive agenda as a neo-Nazi or white-nationalist, and responsible for hate in Canada. Other tactics include bullying, smearing, and cancelling.
The CAHN lobby always takes aim at what it describes as “extreme right-wing” or “Alt-Right” groups, forever warning about the dangers that the Right poses to women and minorities. CAHN never utters a word, however, about the dangers posed to our democratic and social institutions by left-wing groups, such as communists and their fellow travellers. Why is it that it is always the Right who are the hate-mongers and never the Left?
CAHN’s Failure to Condemn Antisemitism
CAHN’s myopic vision was brought into sharp focus as recently as last year in the wake of the October 7th attack on Israel. Writing in the National Post in November 2023, in an article entitled “Give me the Freedom Convoy Over Antisemitic Campus Lunatics Any Day”, journalist, Jonathan Kay, noted that CAHN was noticeably silent with respect to the October 7th attack and the subsequent antisemitism on display in Canada. Events not of any concern to CAHN included: a group at McGill University called “Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights” which praised the murderers as “heroic”; McMaster University students who blamed the killing of civilians on Israeli soldiers; and the pathetic sight of the president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ Ontario branch, Fred Hahn, openly declaring that he himself is “thankful” for such acts of “resistance” on the part of Hamas.
Despite these blatant examples of hate and antisemitism, CAHN remained silent, until November, when it explained its silence. As Kay noted:
On Nov. 6, CAHN’s chairman meekly explained that his group decried only hateful acts that emerged from “the extreme right.” Which is to say that the extermination of at least 1,200 Israeli Jews didn’t qualify as the right type of antisemitism. He said, “I wish we had the resources to do more . . . [but] we just don’t”. He then suggested that CAHN might possibly get around to denouncing Hamas if that $5-million government cheque arrived (after a recent funding request).
CAHN’s moral blindness and political bias would be laughable if the consequences of such folly were not so serious.
Smearing Campaign Life Coalition
In August of 2024, CAHN attempted to smear and blacklist the pro-life organization, Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), claiming in a booklet, “40 Ways to Fight the Far-Right” (since removed from their website), that CLC was a “Christian nationalist group which believes that Canada was founded on authoritarian conservative Christianity and should be governed accordingly today.” That is not what CLC believes. Instead, CLC clearly states that it:
is a national pro-life organization working at all levels of government to secure full legal protection for all human beings, from the time of conception to natural death. It defends the sanctity of human life against threats posed by abortion, euthanasia, doctor assisted suicide, reproductive and genetic technologies, cloning, infanticide, eugenics, population control, and threats to the family. Campaign Life Coalition never compromises on basic principles and encourages incremental policies that would increase respect and protection for human life.
In its smear of CLC, CAHN played the semantic game of misrepresenting “national” as meaning “nationalist” and then applying this definition of “Christian nationalism” as the belief that “Canada was founded on authoritarian, conservative Christianity, and should be governed accordingly today”.
Although CAHN issued a clarification and apology with respect to the extremist “nationalist” association, it continued its smear by claiming that CLC engaged in hate speech through its support of life and the traditional family, the protection of children, and opposition to the homosexual/trans agenda. In CAHN’s opinion, CLC opposes “pluralism, equality and individual rights”— in other words, all the progressive positions. In reality, CLC is supportive of pluralism, by wanting to include the unborn as part of the human family; equality, by fighting for the rights of the unborn and vulnerable in society; and individual rights, by advocating for the most basic of all human rights, the right to life. CLC does what it does, not only from a faith-based perspective (although one does not need to be a believer to support or belong to CLC), but also from a scientific perspective. CLC states:
Science proves that human life begins at conception (fertilization) when a genetically unique human being comes into existence, with his own genetic code. A fully formed miniature baby with all his parts can be seen at 7 weeks. Since the unborn is fully human, ending abortion is the social justice issue of our day.
Of course, CAHN overlooks the substance of CLC’s positions and instead goes for the cheap rhetorical smear, ignoring the science and the positive, welcoming, and life-affirming vision that inspire those positions—the very opposite of hate!
Useful Idiots Doing What Government Cannot Do … Yet
In the current culture war, the anti-hate lobby is playing the bully for Trudeau’s Liberal government, utilizing tactics of intimidation and abuse that no legitimate government would wish to avail itself of in order to advance policies that could never be enacted in Parliament or approved of at the ballot box. In a “free and democratic society”, the only legitimate response to hate, whether on the Right or the Left, is through free speech and open debate. Such free and open debate can only be meaningful when the focus is on ideas and not people. The tactic of “demonizing your opponent” has no place in civilized debate.
Organizations like CAHN do nothing to resolve the sectarian violence that underlies the hate expressed on Canada’s streets today by pro-Palestinian mobs. CAHN’s silence in the wake of October 7th and its targeting of Campaign Life clearly gives their scam away. CAHN is a discriminatory and intolerant organization of left-leaning activists who are trying to silence the views of others. Canadian taxpayers should not be giving a penny to CAHN.