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How comforting it is to return from holidays (and a self-imposed news blackout) and see that Canadian police are still vigorously pursuing those worst of criminals.

By this, of course, I mean those rare citizens who say outrageous things (alright, some of them shriek them) and try in a sometimes clumsy way to shake up the complacent tenor of Canadian public life, what my Post colleague Conrad Black recently described as being all about studious “conflict avoidance, homogenization, washing out differences, avoiding judgments…” and generally just getting along.

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The latest target is one Kevin J. Johnston, who was criminally charged last week by Peel Regional Police with the wilful promotion of hatred.

It’s a so-called “hybrid offence”, which means prosecutors can deal with it summarily or by indictment; if the latter, conviction carries a two-year prison sentence.

(The same day as the force issued a press release about Johnston’s arrest, it also issued a public safety advisory about a Kitchener woman who had been convicted a few years back of four counts of poisoning young children at the daycare she ran, and was now being released from prison and moving to Mississauga. You can guess which heinous offender got the most media attention.)