A recent post by the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) has sparked a pro-free-speech response by the Alberta government and a subsequent online debate about what constitutes “too far” when it comes to hate speech. A short EPS ad posted to social media earlier this week reminds Edmontonians of an online portal for hate incident reporting that first launched around 2024. “We’ve been talking more about hate crime lately,” the post reads. “Not because it’s trending. Because it’s happening. As you can see, we get mail.” The examples, which include blacked-out and seemingly real-life comments about deportation, minority groups and threats of hanging, pop up on screen briefly before EPS urges people to report hate as it is witnessed or experienced. The video generated mixed comments online, including from Public Safety and Emergency Services Minister Mike Ellis, who posted about freedom of speech on social media days after EPS published. Ellis said the United Conservative government would be in touch with provincial and municipal policing agencies to “ensure Albertans’ policing priorities continue to be cracking down on violent crime, theft, illegal drugs and vandalism,” while upholding “everyone’s right to free speech … regardless of an individual’s religious or political beliefs.” Premier Danielle Smith, in turn, called free speech a “foundational Alberta value.” “We don’t believe in policing unpopular or religious-based statements even if they are controversial. That’s a slippery slope other countries have fallen into and we can’t go down that road,” she said in a reply to Ellis’s original social media post. Edmonton’s ‘Report Hate’ campaign The “Report Hate” campaign isn’t necessarily new. Edmonton’s police service first partnered with Crime Stoppers to create a 100-per-cent anonymous reporting portal that notes hate incidents or complaints without tracking personal information. The portal is used for hate crimes — an indictable offence defined by the Department of Justice as “motivated by hate, based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, or any other similar factor.” It also covers hate incidents — non-criminal actions defined by the same criteria as a hate crime, but, while offensive, are not indictable. “An example of a hate incident could include the uttering of racial slurs or comments that we all recognize as unacceptable, but nevertheless, they’re not criminal,” the 2024 EPS release notes. “However, it’s still important for our investigators to track hate incidents, even if we can’t lay charges.” MacEwan University hate crime researcher and former Edmonton Police Commission member Irfan Chaudhry says the purpose of hate incident reporting tools is to give another avenue to potential victims who may feel afraid to speak up. Chaudhry had a hand in creating StopHateAB.ca, one of the first online reporting tools in Alberta, if not Canada, and says defining hate requires nuance. “Most of the time you’d be getting legitimate incident reports, but then you’re also getting a lot of frivolous ones or ones that don’t necessarily hit that threshold of hate, let alone hate speech,” he explained. He says he was “taken aback” by the Alberta government’s response to a long-running EPS campaign. “There is a tendency for this current government to make sure that they are first and foremost protectors of free speech and free expression, and all those charter guarantees … While not discounting that, that does not necessarily mean that free speech allows you to say anything without accountability.” In the 2024 EPS release, Ellis is quoted as saying “The Report Hate campaign will serve as an important reminder to Albertans that there is a safe and anonymous way to report incidents of hate, discrimination, and intolerance.” When asked about his 2024 quote, the minister restated his social media post from Tuesday. “Alberta’s government does not condone hate speech or violence, but we believe law enforcement should be focused on stopping violent crime, not policing opinions or ‘hurt feelings,’” both versions said. Freedom of speech The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms formally protects freedom of expression, including thoughts, beliefs, opinions and the press, under Section 2(b). Those rights, however, are “not absolute” and “can be limited to protect other rights or important national values,” according to the Government of Canada website. The Criminal Code of Canada lays out specific instances in which people can be charged with hate offences: speech that “exposes an identifiable group to detestation, vilification going beyond being offensive, and the willful promotion of hatred,” Chaudhry notes. He added there’s a distinction between offensive speech and what constitutes the wilful promotion of hatred against groups. “That narrative, that’s a lot of what you’re seeing online. It isn’t overly hateful, but within context, it is definitely exclusionary, likely offensive … It creates an ‘us vs. them’ dynamic. “It’s really important to look at this from a contextual and systemic perspective, because it’s almost like a snowball … It’s going to lead to different expressions of hatred. We have seen that in our country’s history in the last number of years, within the context of social media.” Who defines hate? Although Smith did not specify what she meant by a “slippery slope” in how speech is policed, her words come at a time when the United Kingdom had publicly been reviewing its own non-criminal hate incident reporting tools for concerns of “unclear guidance” and officers being called to homes over everyday insults and routine arguments. A new system now “prevents police from recording lawful free speech whilst ensuring that reports from the public, which may lead to genuine harm, get the right response,” according to a March 2026 U.K. government release. In Canada, Chaudhry says non-criminal hate incidents are recorded purely for documenting hate that doesn’t hit a crime threshold, but “still has an impact on communities.” “When you take (reports) collectively, you get really interesting insights on the dynamics of hate within communities,” he explained. Prior to the Quebec City mosque shooting in 2017, he says, police had reports over a seven-year span of different forms of intimidation against Islamic groups that, in isolation, didn’t cross a criminally punishable threshold. “When you look at it individually, yeah, it might just seem like a one-off. When you look at it collectively, you can start to build patterns and trends.” Chaudhry added that he never knew the EPS program to do anything with hate reports except take note of certain dynamics. But playing “devil’s advocate,” he says he can see why the Alberta government would take issue, as the validity or criminal severity of a hate report comes down to the same question. “I think it’s the dynamic of who defines hate when it doesn’t fit into categories within the criminal code,” he concluded. “Are the police now defining it? Am I, the reporter, the one defining it? Who’s actually defining it if it doesn’t fit within the threshold?”
