Note: I did not read the book, so I don't know how inflammatory it was. Just adding an anecdote.
The book itself was not found to be hate speech. The Canadian Islamic Congress made a human-rights complaint about an excerpt from it, which was published in Macleans, at both the federal and (multiple) provincial levels. They never should've been brought in the first place, but all cases were eventually dismissed.
"Lemire (with the qualified support of PEN Canada and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, among others) has won the right to cross-examine HRC investigators concerning their conduct during investigations, namely their posting of provocative racist comments on websites. Jonathan Kay, of the National Post, opined that the HRC had "managed a seemingly impossible task: They've found a way to rehabilitate the image of neo-Nazis, transforming them from odious dirtbags into principled free-speech martyrs.""
Nice "business" they've got, plant racist speech at the websites of their enemies and then prosecute them for it (or something close to that, I forget the details now).
Actually this is incorrect. The hate speechs laws were recently tested in the Supreme court [1] and they are not simply based on threats of violence in speech against discriminated groups (that is already covered by many federal laws)
The provincial level speech laws are intended to criminalize (via fines) speech containing prejudice in order to promote social equality. For example, the intended objective in Saskatchewan hate speech laws:
> “tackling causes of discriminatory activity to reduce the harmful effects and social costs of discrimination.”
> “appropriately balances the fundamental values underlying freedom of expression with competing Charter rights and other values essential to a free and democratic society, in this case a commitment to equality and respect for group identity and the inherent dignity owed to all human beings,” wrote Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein for the court.
[1] http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/27/supreme-court-uphold...
So it's not a simple as just targeting people who promote genocide or deny the holocaust.
These broad hate speech laws have the potential of causing "chilling effects":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect_(law)
But what's worse is that they are trialed in special tribunals and the defendants don't have access to the standard legal defence rights.
> Mary Agnes Welch, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists stated that Human rights commissions "were never meant to act as language nannies. The current system allows complainants to chill the speech of those they disagree with by entangling targets in a human rights bureaucracy that doesn't have to operate under the same strict rules of defence as a court."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Human_Rights_Commissio...