Someone in Canada forgot that sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt me...
I spent some time working on projects in Toronto, and my view is that the English speaking Canadians gave up there country the day they declared it Bilingual. The culture of English jurisprudence was lost, and replaced with the quasi french culture of Quebec. Then any culture took precedence over the English culture, all in the name of tolerance of others... America is heading that way now. Watch out for ‘Immigration reform, 10+million new voters who were raised in a culture of corruption. It’s bad.
I believe in France you cannot be tried as a member of a group, only as an individual. In other words, there is no concept of “hate crime.” There’s a phrase for this tenet of law—can’t think of it right now. So France is ahead of both the U.S. and Canada in this regard.