To your last point: Both. The current DoJ in Ottawa is approaching dangerous in its bias, appears here to showing willful ignorance of (relevant!) historical facts, and it is clearly attempting to future-manipulate allowed social behavior.
This is one of your best pieces ever too by the by. Very well written and incredibly relevant today. I hope a lot of people - and it should be mandatory for everyone under 35 - reads it.
As for Jordan Peterson leading the HRT... THAT is the best idea you have had in ages. At least things would be adjudicated on facts, words would hold a proper meaning, and you would have to rationally and thoroughly prove your allegations. And he'd do it in days not the current years it takes for many cases. Of course that more than anything scares the lefties to death, they count on the subsidies, benefits, and inherent fogging of a long process to sway and wear down any semblance of actual Justice from occurring.
"There’s no nice way to put this. These measures reveal deeply authoritarian instincts toward speech and regulation, all the more pernicious as they’re being introduced by people who are absolutely convinced of their own righteous good intentions."
100%! And to this I would add, the people introducing these measures already have a track record of authoritarian conduct so there is absolutely no reason to believe ANY of this is inadvertent. These people can just fuck right off.
“The process is the punishment…” exactly, just ask Mark Steyn rep his comments on Muslim fundamentalists. Also as Terry Glavin points out in another Substack article on this subject:
“With Bill C-63, the Liberal government intends to restrain our Charter right to free expression. It’s on purpose. The point of the law is to silence the government’s adversaries without even having to invoke the law’s provisions or drag anyone in front of its star chambers.
The point is to preempt speech the Liberals deem to be beyond the pale, owing to the onerous and extreme consequences of speech that could so easily be found to fall outside what the laws’s expanded, cabinet-appointed bureaucracy deems permissible. Robust political discourse of the kind the Trudeau government does not like will be shut down…
Do Noy Obey in Advance
I’ll leave with the seminal 2017 essay by the great Timithy Snyder. Rule Number One:
Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
I think the explanation for all this is pretty simple: the people who liked provisions like Section 13 were defeated when the Harper government repealed it, but they never conceded the problems and they never went away. Now they see the opportunity to reverse what they see as another error of the illegitimate Harper interregnum, and they're restoring things to what they see as their proper form.
The criminal code already has provisions for conspiring to commit offences and making Threats against others:
s. 465(1)(c) [conspiracy to commit indictable offence],
s. 465(1)(d) [conspiracy to commit summary offence]
264.1 (1) Every one commits an offence who, in any manner, knowingly utters, conveys or causes any person to receive a threat (a) to cause death or bodily harm to any person; (b) to burn, destroy or damage real or personal property; or (c) to kill, poison or injure an animal or bird that is the property of any person.
Do we need more laws or do we need to use the tools we have
I find the aims of this government far more than troubling. Their ongoing desire to muzzle free speech and opinion is horrifying. I don’t think I am engaging in gross exaggeration here; after all, are we not still a democracy?
I do think this is a deliberate move to shut down speech that they disagree/ or disapprove of; they do seem to admire the speech policies as practiced in the former Soviet Union.
I suppose the DoJ official was reminded of a former LIBERAL MP, Hedy Fry who stated:
“You can just go to British Columbia in Prince George where crosses are being burned on lawns as we speak," she told the House.
Where would Ms. Fry’s antics fit into the hate speech conversation if this legislation passes? Forced to apologize for slighting a community with no evidence to back up her claims, would she get a pass? Have a year’s house arrest? Get promoted as an “Independent” Senator?
Well young lady, you have hit the proverbial nail on the head when you bring up the issue of Human Rights Tribunals. Not sure how people get placed on these tribunals. Does government look for people who are failed candidates from the NDP? Perhaps the focus is finding potential candidates who are current, or former Sociology Professors from York University. Another potential list of applicants might be people who pushed hard to get Dundas Street in Toronto re-named, because of some fictitious rumour that the original Mr. Dundas was a slave owner. There will be no shortage of candidates for the up coming explosion of new Human Rights Tribunals, about to be brought to us by various governments across Canada.
Something that I couldn't help but get a giggle out of - even though it's more sinister than funny, is that if this passed? Then Trudeau would in quick order have a laundry list of complaints about him. He's made some pretty provocative statements in the last few years, some of them which are definitely engaging in discriminatory speech and depending on the person listening, it could sound like hate speech. Do the liberals somehow think they're immune? That everything they utter is believed to be pure and innocent by everyone who hears it, and nobody could possibly perceive it a different way? Or do they fail to understand that there are some types of speech that ARE hateful to some listeners, and may not be hateful to other listeners? (Which is part of the problem with the attempt to try and legislate any of this.)
I am never quite certain if the Liberal government forgets our history, ignores our history, or simply makes up historical crap that serves its interest. But in this case, it is not just Section 13 and hate crimes that serves as potential historical lessons. Canada must be diligent about elitist campaigns to suppress speech because we have a long history of such actions. In recent discussions with my students, I have had opportunity to discuss Section 98 of the Criminal Code, inserted in the aftermath of the Winnipeg General Strike. That section did not make it illegal to commit a crime but rather illegal to belong to a political association that challenged the existing order (in other words, you would be charged for thinking incorrectly - and at the same time they removed Section 133 of the Criminal Code which protected people from being charged with sedition for the simple act of pointing out defects in the constitutional order). Using associated deportation procedures, the government was deporting 1000s of people every year for Section 98 violations. A federal MP, Tim Buck, was jailed for the simple crime of believing in Communism. Later the students and I discussed An Act to Protect the Province Against Communist Propaganda or the Padlock Law, that was passed by the Duplessis government in 1937 following the removal of Section 98 from the federal criminal code. Like Section 98, the Padlock Law was intended to suppress speech that people did not like. And both were incredibly popular among the political establishments of their eras. These laws permitted a form of "executive despotism," as Eugene Forsey remarked. They gave the governing political class a club they could wield at political opponents. The Padlock Law was the best since it never really defined Communism and thus the Quebec government could just label whatever it disliked as Communism and suppress it. If the Liberal government actually knew any of our history instead of rewriting history whenever they seek to justify their own ideological bent, they might remember the labour leaders, the Jehovah Witnesses, the Jews, or any of the other groups who were persecuted under these speech laws. Rather than remember the failed policies of the past, however, the Liberal government is to busy trying to invent its own version of the Accurate News and Information Act to care about such mundane realities.
Just the other day an ideological supreme court justice determined that the word woman was confusing, therefore a woman should be called a person with a vagina. (And it almost goes without saying that a man will now be called a person with a penis. I suspect there might be some angst if we do not define the size of said penis, but I digress).
Now, “The spokesperson further claimed that the Online Harms Act sets a “high bar” for whether something constitutes “hate propaganda.” “Really; we just had a supreme court justice utter one of the inanest comments ever and we are to trust someone (who is arguably less versed in the law) to adhere to the supposedly “high bar”?
And – “…assuring us that the bar for prosecution is really, really high. Super high, in fact. The highest. Just trust them.”; is like trusting the lib/dips to spend our tax dollars wisely.
Excellent piece, highlighting the chilling effect of measures GUARANTEED to be applied to controversial opinions of all political stripes.
The threat of having to answer a complaint, and the reality of the “punishment by process” will induce all but the most masochistic to remain silent, possibly the original goal of the complainant. This chilling effect impairs the function of an open Democracy, which requires discussion and debate, some of which will be heated, to find the best way forward through challenging issues.
To your last point: Both. The current DoJ in Ottawa is approaching dangerous in its bias, appears here to showing willful ignorance of (relevant!) historical facts, and it is clearly attempting to future-manipulate allowed social behavior.
This is one of your best pieces ever too by the by. Very well written and incredibly relevant today. I hope a lot of people - and it should be mandatory for everyone under 35 - reads it.
As for Jordan Peterson leading the HRT... THAT is the best idea you have had in ages. At least things would be adjudicated on facts, words would hold a proper meaning, and you would have to rationally and thoroughly prove your allegations. And he'd do it in days not the current years it takes for many cases. Of course that more than anything scares the lefties to death, they count on the subsidies, benefits, and inherent fogging of a long process to sway and wear down any semblance of actual Justice from occurring.
"There’s no nice way to put this. These measures reveal deeply authoritarian instincts toward speech and regulation, all the more pernicious as they’re being introduced by people who are absolutely convinced of their own righteous good intentions."
100%! And to this I would add, the people introducing these measures already have a track record of authoritarian conduct so there is absolutely no reason to believe ANY of this is inadvertent. These people can just fuck right off.
“The process is the punishment…” exactly, just ask Mark Steyn rep his comments on Muslim fundamentalists. Also as Terry Glavin points out in another Substack article on this subject:
“With Bill C-63, the Liberal government intends to restrain our Charter right to free expression. It’s on purpose. The point of the law is to silence the government’s adversaries without even having to invoke the law’s provisions or drag anyone in front of its star chambers.
The point is to preempt speech the Liberals deem to be beyond the pale, owing to the onerous and extreme consequences of speech that could so easily be found to fall outside what the laws’s expanded, cabinet-appointed bureaucracy deems permissible. Robust political discourse of the kind the Trudeau government does not like will be shut down…
Do Noy Obey in Advance
I’ll leave with the seminal 2017 essay by the great Timithy Snyder. Rule Number One:
Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
I think the explanation for all this is pretty simple: the people who liked provisions like Section 13 were defeated when the Harper government repealed it, but they never conceded the problems and they never went away. Now they see the opportunity to reverse what they see as another error of the illegitimate Harper interregnum, and they're restoring things to what they see as their proper form.
The country is being turned into one vast thumb sucking Kindergarten.
The criminal code already has provisions for conspiring to commit offences and making Threats against others:
s. 465(1)(c) [conspiracy to commit indictable offence],
s. 465(1)(d) [conspiracy to commit summary offence]
264.1 (1) Every one commits an offence who, in any manner, knowingly utters, conveys or causes any person to receive a threat (a) to cause death or bodily harm to any person; (b) to burn, destroy or damage real or personal property; or (c) to kill, poison or injure an animal or bird that is the property of any person.
Do we need more laws or do we need to use the tools we have
Isn’t it “Ass-waged?”
I am a lawyer. I see no holes in your theory. You told the whole story fairly BARD. ( beyond a reasonable doubt)
I find the aims of this government far more than troubling. Their ongoing desire to muzzle free speech and opinion is horrifying. I don’t think I am engaging in gross exaggeration here; after all, are we not still a democracy?
I do think this is a deliberate move to shut down speech that they disagree/ or disapprove of; they do seem to admire the speech policies as practiced in the former Soviet Union.
I suppose the DoJ official was reminded of a former LIBERAL MP, Hedy Fry who stated:
“You can just go to British Columbia in Prince George where crosses are being burned on lawns as we speak," she told the House.
Where would Ms. Fry’s antics fit into the hate speech conversation if this legislation passes? Forced to apologize for slighting a community with no evidence to back up her claims, would she get a pass? Have a year’s house arrest? Get promoted as an “Independent” Senator?
Thank you so much for raising the profile of this awful bill.
Please continue.
Well young lady, you have hit the proverbial nail on the head when you bring up the issue of Human Rights Tribunals. Not sure how people get placed on these tribunals. Does government look for people who are failed candidates from the NDP? Perhaps the focus is finding potential candidates who are current, or former Sociology Professors from York University. Another potential list of applicants might be people who pushed hard to get Dundas Street in Toronto re-named, because of some fictitious rumour that the original Mr. Dundas was a slave owner. There will be no shortage of candidates for the up coming explosion of new Human Rights Tribunals, about to be brought to us by various governments across Canada.
Something that I couldn't help but get a giggle out of - even though it's more sinister than funny, is that if this passed? Then Trudeau would in quick order have a laundry list of complaints about him. He's made some pretty provocative statements in the last few years, some of them which are definitely engaging in discriminatory speech and depending on the person listening, it could sound like hate speech. Do the liberals somehow think they're immune? That everything they utter is believed to be pure and innocent by everyone who hears it, and nobody could possibly perceive it a different way? Or do they fail to understand that there are some types of speech that ARE hateful to some listeners, and may not be hateful to other listeners? (Which is part of the problem with the attempt to try and legislate any of this.)
Thanks for the article.
I am never quite certain if the Liberal government forgets our history, ignores our history, or simply makes up historical crap that serves its interest. But in this case, it is not just Section 13 and hate crimes that serves as potential historical lessons. Canada must be diligent about elitist campaigns to suppress speech because we have a long history of such actions. In recent discussions with my students, I have had opportunity to discuss Section 98 of the Criminal Code, inserted in the aftermath of the Winnipeg General Strike. That section did not make it illegal to commit a crime but rather illegal to belong to a political association that challenged the existing order (in other words, you would be charged for thinking incorrectly - and at the same time they removed Section 133 of the Criminal Code which protected people from being charged with sedition for the simple act of pointing out defects in the constitutional order). Using associated deportation procedures, the government was deporting 1000s of people every year for Section 98 violations. A federal MP, Tim Buck, was jailed for the simple crime of believing in Communism. Later the students and I discussed An Act to Protect the Province Against Communist Propaganda or the Padlock Law, that was passed by the Duplessis government in 1937 following the removal of Section 98 from the federal criminal code. Like Section 98, the Padlock Law was intended to suppress speech that people did not like. And both were incredibly popular among the political establishments of their eras. These laws permitted a form of "executive despotism," as Eugene Forsey remarked. They gave the governing political class a club they could wield at political opponents. The Padlock Law was the best since it never really defined Communism and thus the Quebec government could just label whatever it disliked as Communism and suppress it. If the Liberal government actually knew any of our history instead of rewriting history whenever they seek to justify their own ideological bent, they might remember the labour leaders, the Jehovah Witnesses, the Jews, or any of the other groups who were persecuted under these speech laws. Rather than remember the failed policies of the past, however, the Liberal government is to busy trying to invent its own version of the Accurate News and Information Act to care about such mundane realities.
Just the other day an ideological supreme court justice determined that the word woman was confusing, therefore a woman should be called a person with a vagina. (And it almost goes without saying that a man will now be called a person with a penis. I suspect there might be some angst if we do not define the size of said penis, but I digress).
Now, “The spokesperson further claimed that the Online Harms Act sets a “high bar” for whether something constitutes “hate propaganda.” “Really; we just had a supreme court justice utter one of the inanest comments ever and we are to trust someone (who is arguably less versed in the law) to adhere to the supposedly “high bar”?
And – “…assuring us that the bar for prosecution is really, really high. Super high, in fact. The highest. Just trust them.”; is like trusting the lib/dips to spend our tax dollars wisely.
Excellent piece, highlighting the chilling effect of measures GUARANTEED to be applied to controversial opinions of all political stripes.
The threat of having to answer a complaint, and the reality of the “punishment by process” will induce all but the most masochistic to remain silent, possibly the original goal of the complainant. This chilling effect impairs the function of an open Democracy, which requires discussion and debate, some of which will be heated, to find the best way forward through challenging issues.