He mocked a disabled boy in a comedy bit. Was it discrimination? Canada’s Supreme Court will decide.

When he realized that “little Jérémy” had not yet died and that his illness wasn’t terminal, Ward said, he “tried to drown him,” but found he was “unkillable.” So he went online to check what Gabriel’s illness was: “He’s ugly!” Ward said.

The audience roared.

“I didn’t know how far I could go with that joke,” the comedian said in the routine, which he performed before live audiences hundreds of times from 2010 to 2013, and which spread online. “At one point, I said to myself, ‘You’re going too far. They’re going to stop laughing.’ But no, you didn’t.”

On Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada will decide whether Ward crossed a legal line when it releases a ruling in a case that touches on how to balance freedom of expression with a Quebec law that protects safety from discrimination and the right to dignity.

Among the questions before the justices is whether Ward’s stand-up routine was justified as free speech, and whether artistic or political speech that mentions or mocks personal features constitutes discrimination, giving human rights tribunals the jurisdiction to grant redress.

For Ward and the comedians and free speech advocates who are backing him, even the most distasteful and offensive jokes are protected by the right to free expression, and courts and human rights tribunals shouldn’t be policing them.

“We’re concerned a comic has been punished for a joke he made as part of his work,” Walid Hijazi, a lawyer for an association of professionals in Quebec’s comedy industry that was granted intervener status in the case, said in oral arguments in February. “That will have a chilling effect.”

But Gabriel, who is now 24, and the human rights and disability advocates in his corner argue that there are limits to freedom of expression. They contend that Ward’s routine was discriminatory and violated Quebec’s human rights code.

“It’s not about asking this court or any other court to establish what is in good taste, what is acceptable and what should be censored,” Stéphanie Fournier, the lawyer for Quebec’s human rights commission, said in oral arguments. “It’s about discrimination — discrimination against a child with a disability.”

Gabriel was born in 1996 with Treacher Collins syndrome, a rare disorder that causes malformations of the head, ears and palate. He began life deaf. When he was six, doctors implanted a bone-anchored hearing aid. Suddenly, he could hear from 80 to 90 percent of sounds, and he learned to sing.

The boy soprano Gabriel shot to prominence in Quebec after singing the national anthem at a Montreal Canadiens game in 2005. He was invited to sing with Dion in her dressing room in Las Vegas and for Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. He wrote an autobiography.

Gabriel was 13 when Ward began performing his routine. When he first saw it, he testified, he was hurt and developed suicidal thoughts. Kids at school repeated the jokes. He and his family were angry about other videos on Ward’s website that disparaged Gabriel’s physical appearance and suggested that his mother was exploiting him financially.

Gabriel’s family filed a complaint with Quebec’s human rights commission; the commission brought a case against Ward to the provincial human rights tribunal. In 2016, the tribunal found Ward’s comments were discriminatory and violated Gabriel’s right to “dignity, honor and reputation” under Quebec’s human rights law.

“Taking the context into account, the tribunal concludes that Ward’s jokes exceeded the limits of what a reasonable person must tolerate in the name of freedom of expression,” Judge Scott Hughes wrote in the decision. “The discrimination suffered by Jérémy was unjustified.”

Hughes ordered Ward to pay more than $28,000 in damages to Gabriel and $5,600 to his mother.

Ward appealed. In a 2-1 decision in 2019, the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld the tribunal’s ruling, saying that while it doesn’t intend to censor artists, they must realize that “artistic freedom is not absolute and that they are, like any citizens, responsible for the consequences of their words when they cross certain limits.”

It dismissed the awarding of damages to Gabriel’s mother.

Ward appealed to the Supreme Court. In oral arguments, Julius Grey, Ward’s lawyer, said Gabriel wasn’t singled out because of his handicap, but because he was famous, like the other targets. It could be argued, he said, that Ward “provided equality … by treating him the same as the other sacred cows.”

“Oh, come on, come on, come on! Don’t go that far,” Justice Russell Brown interjected. “We’re not talking about Galileo or Salman Rushdie here. He’s no hero.”

“We’re talking about somebody saying that they would try to drown a 13-year-old child that has a physical disability,” said Justice Sheilah Martin, “so let’s make sure that we understand the stakes here.”

“He didn’t say, ‘I’d like to drown him,’" Grey responded. “He said, ‘I tried to drown him,’ which is obviously not true, and it’s part of a performance.”

“Yes,” Martin replied, “but it also ties into a stereotype that the lives of children with disabilities are less meaningful … so in jokes, in conversation, there’s very little that needs to be cued to get to those social norms or suppositions, which are, at base, demeaning of the dignity of the person targeted.”

Justice Malcolm Rowe recalled the time he spent in the diplomatic service behind the Iron Curtain.

The comedy there “wasn’t particularly funny,” he said. “That was the problem. Because it was all authorized speech.”

Grey replied that if the appeal court’s decision is upheld, “stand-up comedy will become goody-goody humor.”

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