As a counterpoint laws around hate speech do and have existed in Canada since 1970 and they are specific. We as a country also are more progressive than the states.

The way it works interfaces with the idea that some speech can call for violence or genocide against other geoups and can be liable to be charged under law UNDER SPECIFIC CONDITIONS.

1 - It has to be public - ie one is playing to a crowd. This covers things like making speeches over a microphone, or broadcasting propaganda through print or recording. This law does not apply to private speech. Amongst your peers in a social setting you can do or say whatever you like.

2 - It must regard the call for killing members of an identifiable group (ones outlined in the charter of Rights and Freedoms), or inflicting conditions of life on a group which are calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group.

3 - It holds other protections- Laws that cover other rights like religion do allow religious views to be expressed or ones that pretain to a legitimate concern of public welfare. These however require citations from legitimate sources. If you are quoting a true historical event or a scientifically proven fact in your speech that actually happened and is documented by historians or scientists - there are protections. If what you are saying is provably untrue then the law takes into account a certain level of flexibility to sentencing based on a good faith understanding that a certain level of deviance from fact can be present as a matter of someone being ignorant.

4 - Like all laws it is a sliding scale. Like you can call the police for someone being a public nuisance by yelling their heads off at 3am - Most of the time this doesn't end in so much as a fine. In a non broadcast recording setting the cops basically tell the person to stop and only if they persist can they be arrested and even then they might not be charged. Nobody really has seen prison time under this law. Just fines.

A recent amendment to the law specifying holocaust denial has seen people sent to prison and even then it has only shut down those doing it persistently online because that specific rhetoric is historically documented as coming from a movement with clear intent to promote genocide.

The imagining of laws as not being capable of having balance with civil rights activism is a sham and it ultimately hurts minorities. Advocating for better rights or social acceptance cannot be punishable under these laws. Heck advocating for the decriminalization of hate speech is protected speech because there are laws REGARDING protected speech. If someone is calling to kill or inlict utter undeniable misery then they can do it without the benefit of a megaphone. It won't stop all speech, and it shouldn't, but if someone is trying to incite actual violence by documenting themselves advocating for actual demonstatable violence then society can have tools to make the cost of that higher.

However - Americans have an entirely different situation. Canada does not have private prisons that provide more pressure to incarcerate more people. We do not elect judges and the only way you can become one is to be a lawyer in good standing for over 8 years. Our documents regarding rights and freedoms is in modern language and not archaic text that requires historical scholarship to contextualize and deconstruct. There is no doctrine in Canadian law to protect the anachronistic interests of long dead founders of the country.

Law in America is much easier to use as tools of oppression. Your paranoia is not unfounded but it is a product of legally speaking coming from a broken home. Laws can be narrow and specific scalpels and not hammers. If they are made in the spirit of protection from violence and narrowed to that purpose they can be good. The rallying cry of "Freedom of speech" is already not absolute and has reasonable limits. It can and does have reasonable limits and those limits are protective of truth and the bodily safety of your fellow citizens who deserve to not be attacked and killed by other citizens radicalized by rhetoric made into weapons.

Keep your mind open.