...and has rightly embarrasses me in besting me. In the comments here he points out that the crime of sedition is still on the books at s. 59. My wallowing in treason, in the sections in the 40s, focusing on the act and conspiring rather than the mere speaking of words - it reminds me of the time I wrote a paper on the first three of Descartes six meditations. Frankly, I was too lazy to go any further. Had I but clicked...just hyperlinked...I would have not repeated the error as he referenced s.59 in an earlier post when, to my defence, I was recently beach-bound, surviving only on fried clams.

But that all being all that, the actual offence is this:

61. Every one who

(a) speaks seditious words,
(b) publishes a seditious libel, or
(c) is a party to a seditious conspiracy,

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

But that includes meanings set out in s. 59 including "every one...who...teaches or advocates...the use, without the authority of law, of force as a means of accomplishing a governmental change within Canada." This is a bit odd in this day and age as there is something of a deeming of an evil intent in an act of "teaching" without concurrent "advocating" (note that pesky "or" in there).

And has the charge ever been proven? And in anything like the modern context? There are plenty of instances of old idle charges laying around (consider the crime comic) or charges undone by a Charter challenge. So the real question...ok, the second real question after noticing the crime actually exists...is could it be successfully laid or is it a historical artifact?

The leading case on the principle is apparently an untimately unsuccessful charge fifty-four years ago in Boucher and The King [1951] SCR 265 in which, according to one web source, the Supreme Court of Canada decides that handing out religious pamphlets by Jehovah's Witnesses does not constitute seditious libel and is therefore not a criminal act. I cannot lay a hand on Boucher but it is referenced in that chestnut R. v. Keegstra, [1990] 3 S.C.R. 697 where it is stated:

In Boucher v. The King, supra, the Crown attempted to charge a Jehovah's Witness, who had accused Quebeckers and Catholics of persecuting the Witnesses, with the crime of seditious libel (currently s. 59 of the Criminal Code). This Court, however, held that intention to produce feelings of hatred and ill will between different classes of His Majesty's subjects fell short of seditious intent. Something more, such as intention to disturb order or to resist authority, was needed.

So advocating something more than the spreading of ill will is required, something more specific and in the nature of a plan or at least a sharing of a goal of change through violence. A little more can be gleaned from the reference in that 2002 BC Supreme Court case, Phillips v. The Vancouver Sun:

The concept was further recognized by Rinfret C.J.C. in Boucher v. The King (1950), 99 C.C.C. 1, [1951] 2 D.L.R. 369, [1951] S.C.R. 265. The case involved the question of what intent was necessary as an essential ingredient of sedition. The members of the court were in agreement that there had been misdirection in the charge to the jury, but were of different views as to whether the consequence should be an acquittal or a new trial. Rinfret C.J.C. shared the minority view that there should be a new trial. The statement to which I refer was not made, however, with reference to his dissenting view, but obiter on the larger question of the inherent limits to free speech. He said (at pp. 11-2 C.C.C., pp. 378-9 D.L.R., p. 277 S.C.R.):

I would not like to leave this appeal, however, without stating that to interpret freedom as licence is a dangerous fallacy. . . . It should not be understood from this Court . . . that persons subject to Canadian jurisdiction "can insist on their alleged unrestricted right to say what they please and when they please, utterly irrespective of the evil results which are often inevitable". It might well be said in such a case, in the words of Milton, "Licence they mean when they cry liberty", or, as expressed by Mr. Edouard Herriot, "La liberté doit trouver sa limite dans l'autoritélegalé".

I like that - evil results required like in hate crime. It sounds a lot like counselling treason, too, come to think of it, except counselling a treason would be more specific. Could a sedition which was not counselling treason ever be prosecuted and won?

And what other nation's Supreme Court quotes from Milton? Except that when Milton said that sedition would be pretty much what I was talking about here, simply speaking against government policy.