Leader of Canadian far-right party jailed for hate speech

Travis Patron, the founder and former leader of the now-defunct Canadian Nationalist Party, has been given a one-year prison sentence on a hate speech charge.

Last year’s arrest of Mr Patron, then 29, in his home province of Saskatchewan, follows a 2019 social network video called “Beware the Parasitic Tribe.” In the video, Mr Patron claimed that Jewish people “infiltrate the media”, are “swindlers” and “snakes” and that they “infect the body politic like a parasite.”

What “we need to do,” he said, “is remove these people once-and-for-all from our country.”

In a trial in Saskatchewan earlier in October, Mr Patron was convicted of wilfully promoting hate.

Justice Neil Robertson said, when explaining his decision to sentence Mr Paton to a jail term, that the offence caused “harm to the entire Canadian community” because the “attack on one member or group” was “an attack on all Canadians.”

Mr Patron, who represented himself, was silent during the sentencing and did not respond when the judge asked if he had remorse.

Campaign Against Antisemitism reports on news and incidents relating to antisemitism throughout Canada, which have dramatically increased according to a recent audit.