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Question: What is it that Canadian courts have concluded, Israeli terror victims have known for years and Canadian editorialists keep ignoring?

Hint: Tony Blair just found out.

Answer: Hate kills.

As recent events show, free speech is essential to a democracy, but so too is protecting society from those who would use hate to destroy it. Free speech advocates who decry the trial and conviction of hate propagandists such as David Ahenakew consistently miss the point.

In the days since Mr. Ahenakew was convicted of willfully promoting hatred, free-speech absolutism seems to have bloomed on Canadian editorial and comment pages. Editorial writers from across the country, including The Globe and Mail, came out against the law under which Mr. Ahenakew was charged. Each agreed that Mr. Ahenakew should be punished by public censure and even the revocation of his Order of Canada. However, they argued that freedom of speech is too precious to risk over the prosecution of a man like Mr. Ahenakew.

On this Globe and Mail website, political science professor Stephen Newman goes further. Attacking 15 years of Canadian jurisprudence limiting hate propaganda, Prof. Newman denies the existence of empirical evidence of the negative effects of hate propaganda. His denial is only accurate if history and current events do not count.

The Holocaust was forged in the raging hatred of Nazi tracts such as Hitler's Mein Kampf and Julius Streicher's Der Sturmer newspaper. The Rwandan genocide of the 1990s was the direct result of the public dehumanization of Tutsis. The Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh was inspired by the neo-Nazi hate novel The Turner Diaries. Islamist terror organizations have become the greatest engines of hate propaganda in the world. Osama bin Laden publicly ruminated about his hatred of Americans, "crusaders" and Jews prior to the events of 9/11. Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group, outlawed in both Canada and the U.S., televised its own dramatization of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In Iraq, al-Qaeda operatives spew their hate, not only against Americans, but against their fellow Muslims, seeking to promote sectarian violence.

In Canada, our courts have wrestled for years with the balancing of free-speech rights and the protection of vulnerable groups. In a series of cases since 1990, the Supreme Court has ruled that minorities must be protected from the effects of hate speech. Just a few months ago, our highest court was challenged by the case of Rwandan hate propagandist Leon Mugesera. Mr. Mugesera was a prominent provincial leader in pre-genocide Rwanda. He gave a speech comparing Tutsis to "cockroaches" and calling for their extermination. His words presaged the butchery that engulfed his homeland. The court found that Mr. Mugesera's speech constituted a crime against humanity, and thus ordered his deportation.

In London, authorities are trying - both literally and figuratively - to pick up the pieces after the recent terrorist atrocity. Part of the post mortem appears to be a recognition that promotion of hatred by extremists falsely claiming to speak for Islam is a true root cause of terrorism. As a result, Tony Blair announced last week that Britain is looking at toughening its own anti-hate laws. In a 1949 U.S. Supreme Court case, Justice Robert Jackson responded to the argument of free-speech absolutism by declaring that the American Constitution is not a suicide pact. His words ring true today.

Canada cannot be a democracy if people are allowed to use words that we know will harm Canadians. Equally important, as Tony Blair learned the hard way, we have to find ways to prevent people from learning the hatred that leads to atrocities such as the London bombings. The might of society, including its laws, must be behind that effort. Stripping David Ahnakew of his Order of Canada pin is not enough. We have to show that his kind of conduct is so wrong that it is criminal. Our future depends on it.

Marvin Kurz is honourary legal counsel of the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada.