Supreme court sides with Quebec comedian accused of discrimination for mocking disabled boy
“A discrimination claim is not, and must not become, an action in defamation,” said the majority decision, co-written by Chief Justice Richard Wagner and Justice Suzanne Côté. “The two are governed by different considerations and have different purposes.”
The jokes were frequently in poor taste, as one would expect from a comedy roast. Ward said it was great to see a kid living out his dying wish — “He’s been dreaming since he was little to sing off-key in front of the Pope!” — but then he realized the disease wasn’t terminal.Article content Ward performed the show, called Mike Ward s’eXpose, more than 200 times and released it as a video. Gabriel’s parents, arguing it constituted discrimination against a disabled person, complained to Quebec’s human rights commission in 2013.
In its majority decision — signed by Justices Wagner, Côté, Michael Moldaver, Russell Brown and Malcolm Rowe — the court reprimanded a recent trend by Quebec’s Human Rights Tribunal to take on discrimination cases based solely on expression, as opposed to more traditional discrimination complaints based on access to housing or employment.
There may still be cases of allegedly discriminatory speech that are properly decided at a human rights tribunal, the ruling goes on to say, but the Gabriel case is not one of those. But beyond that, the court said Gabriel did not suffer the type of discriminatory effects needed to supersede Ward’s right to freedom of expression.Article content
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