Ok, I feel I have caught up on this, and the points I see as important:
- You can't be charged with a hate-crime for using the wrong pronoun
- You could be called before a provincial HRC depending on context of where it was used, eg. workplace, public facility, classroom
I was siding with him, though, on the stipulation that the government shouldn't force you to USE language, versus prevent you from using language. In other words he was saying that the government can deem, say, the infamous 'n-word' as abusive language but shouldn't force you to use a pronoun.
Does this legislation effectively do that for him ? If I say you can ONLY refer to me by this pronoun and you insist on using 'they' then it seems to me he's right. It's an edge case but if he's protesting on the basis I stated then yes he is right.