A political group distributes cards in your community inviting people to call a telephone number for more information about their organization. However, after callers dial the telephone number, they hear a recorded message that targets certain racial and religious groups with hateful and denigrating comments. Eventually, a human rights complaint is made against the political group. The complaint says that the speech contained in the recorded message is hate speech. The political group does not deny that the content of the message contains hate speech. However, they argue that a telephone call is a private communication rather than a public communication and so not covered by the Code. They claim the complaint against them is not valid because the Code doesn’t cover private communication.
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No, they are not meeting their responsibilities under the Code. While telephone calls are often considered private communication, in this instance, they are part of a campaign to reach the public, rather than to have private conversations. Since the recorded message is meant to reach many people, the hate speech is publicly communicated and so violated the Code.
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