We need to recognize that the anti-free-speech trend in Canada has been going on for a while. YES, the LPC are worse than the Conservatives here... the so-called "liberal" party is rather obviously illiberal when it comes to of the most fundamental human rights. But it's not new with Justin Trudeau or unique to the LPC.
Consider that holocaust denial is illegal in Canada because of "hate speech" laws.
Think about that for a second. Yes, holocaust denial is dumb. It's a stupid conspiracy theory general AND it's rooted in a racial hatred of Jews. And yet... a simple statement of opinion merits a prison term, no incitement to violence required. This is the problem with our whole delusion about "hate speech isn't free speech". If you don't have free speech to say terrible things you don't have free speech at all.. because nice speech doesn't need protection. (Equally terrible, yet popular speech also gets a pass under an anti-free-speech regime because once you give up on free speech as a principle, it's ultimately down to who has the power to dictate rules about acceptable speech.
That's the difficult thing about being a defender of free speech. You will ALWAYS be defending speech someone thinks is odious... and quite often they will be right.... that speech you're defending IS odious.
It's important to note, that when the anti-free-speech brigade in Canada invented our hate speech laws, they weren't protecting us from threats. Those have always been outside of free speech since we started talking about the idea. True threats have always been offside.
Canadians need to recognize the error we made in making the expression of ideas and opinions illegal and reverse course. To do that we'll have to come to terms with the fact that free speech means terrible speech... but without free speech, we will lose all our freedoms eventually.
I abhor holocaust deniers .., but incarcerating them for their ridiculous ideals ? I find that very distasteful . I don’t like people being arrested for hateful words …. It should only be for actions
My strident take: if Bill C-9 were being enforced, we should see the arrest of many a Hamas-supporting protester. Alas, we will likely only see enforcement against those who act against a protected voter bloc.
Nothing deceptive about the contents of the article.
Pay attention to what the Liebranos are doing, while taking UK as one of their examples.
What the CCP-compromised, CCP-instructed Markie Con Carnie is doing with the help of Liebrano Sleazoid muscle party is to bring Canada The True North Unfree several steps closer to being a dictatorial Marxist shithole.
Strong words but the sentiment isn't wrong. The only thing I would add is that it seems more and more like a weird affiliation between Maoism and Islamofascism. If not for the sizeable influence of Muslim voters and their political 'allies' on Liberal fortunes (today, but just as likely for PC tomorrow), what else explains the 180 degree turn by the federal government supporting a Palestinian state even after a parliamentary vote defeated the same issue? It goes beyond political theatre meant for the home team audience; it overrides parliament because leaders like Trudeau and Carney (and likely Poilievre) seem convinced that they alone know better, and that the organs of state are either there to serve them or should be dismissed as irrelevant. All in the name of 'safety', of course.
Quit correct take.. I am just not sure if the Conservative will sell out to Islamists as completely as the other parties, except Quebec. Quebec actually knows exactly what is up on this item.
I too have concerns about what is going on in the UK, but once again the author has been deceptive in how he frames some of the incidents that have resulted in jail sentences.
Julie Sweeney did not make her comment in "private, closed conversations". She made it on a public Facebook community group with 5000+ members. It was a clear bomb threat ("It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosques. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it."), and her sentence is absolutely deserved. Had she said that same comment out loud in front of a crowd with a loudspeaker, I doubt the result would have been any different.
Connolly was also publicly posting on X, called for hotels holding asylum seekers to be set on fire, and her own defense agreed that she intended on inciting violence.
Why does the author continue to be so deceptive? Are there not better examples of over reach if this is such a huge problem? And why are the editors not catching this?
We provided the quotes, the context and links to both stories. The author has his opinion as to what is and is not appropriate sanction. You're permitted yours.
Again, my concern isn't with the overall thrust of his argument, which I'm broadly sympathetic to. But it's the second time Menzies has pretty blatantly mischaracterized the Sweeney situation in your publication, which falls under my "bullshit" category that I also attempt to hold the line against.
I respectfully disagree with your interpretation. The two incidents were in separate sentences followed by a summary sentence regarding the two and it was clearly stated that the words were worthy of condemnation. Links from established news sources were provided for further details. But, that said, feel free. I had my say, you had yours.
I agree with your comment, but what gets up my (and the British nose) is the two-tier policing. Publicly chanting "death to England" (or Canada or the US) is not considered hate speech. Justice isn't at all blind; there is favouritism for one side, and it isn't the peaceful side (see Sweden).
It was a threat. Clearly. I quoted it in my comment, and here it is again: "It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosques. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it."
But again, the problem is that the author clearly tried to deceive the reader into thinking that the 2 examples cited were comments made in "private, closed conversations" when in fact they were made in public and were clear incitements to violence that would not be protected speech even in the US.
I’m not commenting in that as I’m not sufficiently familiar. It’s just that the number of people hearing a statement doesn’t affect whether or not it is a true threat.
Agreed, this topic is a bit like home self-defence where the facts of the specific case really matter, but are often lost (sometimes deliberately so) in polemics that reference the case.
I’d be a lot more sympathetic to the idea that the UK had gone completely illiberal on their speech laws if there was evidence of a comedian being arrested for saying “trans women are men” or something like that. “Punch them in the balls” is incitement to violence.
Actually I think there is clearer evidence of such illiberal norms with the Human Rights Tribunal in Canada, where people were dragged in front of it for speech that fell well short of incitement to violence.
According to a quick search Kate Scottow was arrested and charged for publicly referring to a "trans-woman" as a man. She was convicted. This was overturned on appeal, but you know what they say about the process being the punishment. Despite this successful appeal some time later, Caroline Farrow was investigated and arrested for misgendering someone on TV. Again... process is a punishment all of its own.
And here's the thing... "trans-women" are in fact male. And since woman is just the word for human females, trans-women are actually men... just men who have a belief they are women or to use the modern phrase "identify as women". In a liberal society we let people live according to their beliefs as much as possible, subject to impositions on others, but facts are facts.
It might be easier to think of it in terms of a different belief... imagine for a moment that Ms. Scottow and Ms. Farrow were arrested not for saying something based on biology, but rather on geology... let's say they said "the world wasn't created by God 6,000 years ago, but is in fact billions of years old". What would any of us say about a country that arrested two women for that? (Let alone convicting one of them of having committed a crime.)
Let's be more generous and say that the UK police only arrested these women for "harassing" religious figures who were public advocates for the "6,000 year old earth" so-called "fact". The "harassment" would be them posting that those men were wrong and the earth was billions of years old. Does that really make it better?
Why are some spiritual beliefs (and the people publicly advocating those beliefs) legitimate targets for criticism and mockery, but some spiritual beliefs are special and protected?
Thanks. Not being an expert on UK hate speech laws, I didn’t know about either of those cases. These seem MUCH more illiberal and scary.
Although I guess they’re not worth writing about now since they were several years ago and were overturned on appeal, which means the UK ultimately decided not to enforce this kind of illiberal speech restriction.
(Which doesn’t help Ms. Scottow who had to go through the process — but at least it shouldn’t happen to anyone else going forward.)
I do think they’re still worth writing about as we do have similar problems here. (See the cases of several women created through a “human rights” kangaroo court with the power to destroy them all at their own cost for the “crime” of not wanting to provide waxing services on male genitals.)
Also, the UK police are still recording “non crime hate incidents” where they put down a record of a “hate incident” based on viewpoints of sex and the report of the person offended.
Again… imagine the RCMP were going and recording “hate incidents” against people insisting the earth is billions of years old, not a mere 6,000.
People in a liberal society do have the right to live their lives as they wish for the most part, but that can’t include setting the police on people who don’t share their beliefs.
I’m not an expert either, but have been reading about these for quite some time through UK news sources. Here’s a summary from FIRE: https://www.thefire.org/news/uk-polices-speech-chilling-practice-tracking-non-crime-hate-incidents which explains: “As defined by the guidance, an NCHI [Non-Criminal Hate Incident] is “any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility, or prejudice based on a person’s” actual or perceived “race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or transgender” status.”
Over 12,000 people per year are being arrested for speech crimes (over 30 per day) still. There are many, many examples of women and men being arrested/getting records for simply saying “men can’t be women” (or similar) and these arrests continue to this day.
It is important to understand that a non-criminal hate speech record is created even if the person is not arrested, and the person doesn’t have to be told the record was even created. They may not know it exists until a background check is completed for a job and it gets flagged.
If that's the quote (I haven't read sources) I'm surprised that was viewed as a threat. There's no indication in there of having a bomb, or planning to do anything with the bomb. If that's the extent - I feel like it was actually quite a stretch to suggest that was a bomb threat. The person clearly was saying she didn't think the mosque was worthy of protection and that she didn't care if someone did blow the mosque up with adults in it. But there's no statement of her planning to do it or taking action to do it. I find it incredible if that was what led to a prison sentence.
Not that I think most reasonable people would say things like that - but this falls into the category of when someone tells you who they are, believe them. And then choose whether you want to associate with them or not based on who you see them to be. Unfriend, block - sure. But I wouldn't have taken that to be a criminal comment. I've seen many people in Canada make many worse statements than that and while they're in bad taste and I tend to think they're lacking in compassion and basic human kindness as a result, I don't view their poor values and decisions as criminal. And therein is the crux. We have a whole lot of people with lower levels of understanding of what's appropriate to say in social media - and some who think outrageous things will get them likes rather than arrested. I'm fine with calling them emotionally stunted, uneducated, hateful, saying things in bad taste. But I personally don't think that quote you provided as a bomb threat was a bomb threat, nor do I view it as criminal unless she actually was getting bomb making supplies.
Free Speech is free speech and in being such must defend deplorable speech as well as favored speech. If we start changing that meaning to suit the political and societal acceptance of the day we shut down a chance to debate and engage with those deplorable ideas and give a political cudgel to power, which is often not used wisely.
When you suppress free speech you drive it underground and within small groups. Then the chances of opinions hardening and resulting in actual loss of life skyrocket. But these then can be excused as individual aberrations thereby enabling congenitally lazy and timid legislators and bureaucrats to carry on ignoring any real societal issues that gave rise to people getting killed.
England is a perfect anecdotal example of people living on islands being inbred and isolated with the issues that arise from this. Like old stock French Quebec which is the dominant source of federal government leadership. Although not on an an island they might as well be. And the intellectual inbreeding from language laws and anti religious laws targeting immigrants continues unabated.
Thank you, Peter. As usual, just so. It's sage advice.
Once a legal standard is altered to fit a specific (this specific is the usual justification), all rights and freedoms become secondary to it... in this case, the standard being in the name of 'safety'. And there is no end to trying to make everything and everybody 'more safe'. So the inevitable result produces legally empowering privileges for some and state sanctioned punishments for others for exactly the same action. This double standard establishes two tiered policing and prejudicial laws and this is exactly what we see playing out on the streets - and airports - of a once united but now illiberal British kingdom that has simply lost its way.
“Because not everything that goes on in America is more important than what goes on elsewhere.”
Things that happen in America don't have to be more important than what goes on elsewhere to qualify as more consequential for Canada. The American presence beside us is always going to be an important constituent of the Canadian experience, and it's bizarre to dismiss acknowledgments of this reality as evidence of unhealthy fetish or obsession.
“But not a lot of people consuming Canadian media know that in the U.K., comedians weren’t just getting one-week suspensions. Nope. Last month they were getting arrested.”
Sensibly, not a lot of people consume Canadian media, period, but it doesn't follow that Canadians themselves are insufficiently informed about world affairs. As a retired reference librarian who prizes source reliability, for example, I have little interest in what's said on CBC, or in the pages of The Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star; yet this hasn't prevented me from being perfectly well aware of Graham Linehan's and Katie Hopkins' latest collisions with the U.K.'s astonishing (because historically anomalous) new hostility to freedom of expression.
Do you really suppose Canadians pay so little attention to what's going on in the U.K. that they were unaware of the Online Safety Act, before you saw fit to inform them? Not sure who you think you're writing for here, but you might want to at least consider the possibility that the limitations of Canada's legacy media and the limitations of what Canadians know about what's happening beyond the country's borders, in America and elsewhere, don't necessarily form coextensive sets. We do have internet access, after all, and maybe we're concerned about recent developments in Brussels and Germany as well, even if legacy media's putative journalists aren't.
I follow news in Germany due to subscribing to a substack written by a German scholar, but I don't follow the UK. I don't watch the news or read Canadian news regularly. I'm not on facebook much anymore. I don't care a whole lot about the UK to be fair.
I do think many Canadians are more obsessed with the US right now than they've historically been. It's fine for the author to call this out. You've worked in a field that the majority of people haven't. That by itself means you're also going to consume information differently even in retirement. It's interesting to me that you took such issue with the topic of this, assuming that it was somehow a slight to you and what you'd already known about, rather than considering that maybe someone (or many someones) would find it interesting.
Spoiler alert - if someone at the Line wrote an article about the troubles happening in Germany, I'd still be interested in reading it. Because the more perspectives you hear on a topic, the better you can understand it. One more perspective isn't going to hurt anyone.
We won’t know these stories if the liberals get their way. China sharply restricts internet access and the proposed bill allows a minister to remove access to internet without oversight or notification.
It's my understanding that even prisoners can't be denied access to their mail, for example, and perhaps we need similar ironclad guarantees that no citizen can be denied internet access. The reality is that the technology of online information exchange didn't just revolutionize the information commons, it also destroyed the old one. When it comes to participating in public life and keeping abreast of what's happening in it, there simply is no alternative to the internet at present.
As for the impulse of those in power to control information diffusion, I think we can take for granted that this predates the oldest written records by millennia. The relatively recent historical development of the printing press, and the even more recent advent of mass literacy gave would-be censors more to worry about, but the control impulse is the same.
I fundamentally am against restricting speech, even if it is disinformation. The cure for disinformation is correct information. More free speech. Give people the tools to differentiate. Enforce true crimes - don't create new crimes when we already have murderers on the streets who are rapid released... we can't manage the true criminals we have, but the government wants to create new criminals?
The legal remedies for libel, slander, and inciting violence have always been around and are still applicable to a digital world. What has changed is that damage can be done in minutes but legal actions can take years. Conspiracy theories have always been around ranging from UFO sitings to vaccine alarmism but we have always assumed that "reasonable people" would see through them. What has changed in the Internet age is that small numbers of kooks can have a disproportionate voice.
Add into this the political information wars and you have the internet today.
If there is a remedy it is electronic justice. Legal remedies have to appear as fast as the crimes occur. A law on hate speech is irrelevant. With respect to misinformation and disinformation, the solution is to expose these arguments to the counter arguments. Unfortunately, a lot of people exist only in their political "bubble".
I suspect bubbles have always existed on some level, but I do think they've grown. And people are much more strident in their beliefs now it seems to me when they go down conspiracy rabbit holes. I've looked into some rabbit holes and decided it was nutty. I've watched others look into the same hole and get pulled into Alice in Wonderland territory and some haven't yet emerged years later. (I'm thinking of Qanon during the pandemic. I thought some of it was laughable, but knew people who believed it wholeheartedly even when predictions didn't come true.)
I imagine eventually the internet will implode on itself. We're probably past the golden age of the internet and some day most people will use it only through approved interfaces with built in censorship so that people can't actually post hateful stuff. But the problem will be that someone will still have to decide what is misinformation and what is hateful. And while some things are clearly in that category - it's too easy for things to get lumped in that perhaps shouldn't be lumped in.
We need to recognize that the anti-free-speech trend in Canada has been going on for a while. YES, the LPC are worse than the Conservatives here... the so-called "liberal" party is rather obviously illiberal when it comes to of the most fundamental human rights. But it's not new with Justin Trudeau or unique to the LPC.
Consider that holocaust denial is illegal in Canada because of "hate speech" laws.
Think about that for a second. Yes, holocaust denial is dumb. It's a stupid conspiracy theory general AND it's rooted in a racial hatred of Jews. And yet... a simple statement of opinion merits a prison term, no incitement to violence required. This is the problem with our whole delusion about "hate speech isn't free speech". If you don't have free speech to say terrible things you don't have free speech at all.. because nice speech doesn't need protection. (Equally terrible, yet popular speech also gets a pass under an anti-free-speech regime because once you give up on free speech as a principle, it's ultimately down to who has the power to dictate rules about acceptable speech.
That's the difficult thing about being a defender of free speech. You will ALWAYS be defending speech someone thinks is odious... and quite often they will be right.... that speech you're defending IS odious.
It's important to note, that when the anti-free-speech brigade in Canada invented our hate speech laws, they weren't protecting us from threats. Those have always been outside of free speech since we started talking about the idea. True threats have always been offside.
Canadians need to recognize the error we made in making the expression of ideas and opinions illegal and reverse course. To do that we'll have to come to terms with the fact that free speech means terrible speech... but without free speech, we will lose all our freedoms eventually.
I abhor holocaust deniers .., but incarcerating them for their ridiculous ideals ? I find that very distasteful . I don’t like people being arrested for hateful words …. It should only be for actions
Important concept. Thanks for this contribution, AG.
My strident take: if Bill C-9 were being enforced, we should see the arrest of many a Hamas-supporting protester. Alas, we will likely only see enforcement against those who act against a protected voter bloc.
Nothing deceptive about the contents of the article.
Pay attention to what the Liebranos are doing, while taking UK as one of their examples.
What the CCP-compromised, CCP-instructed Markie Con Carnie is doing with the help of Liebrano Sleazoid muscle party is to bring Canada The True North Unfree several steps closer to being a dictatorial Marxist shithole.
Strong words but the sentiment isn't wrong. The only thing I would add is that it seems more and more like a weird affiliation between Maoism and Islamofascism. If not for the sizeable influence of Muslim voters and their political 'allies' on Liberal fortunes (today, but just as likely for PC tomorrow), what else explains the 180 degree turn by the federal government supporting a Palestinian state even after a parliamentary vote defeated the same issue? It goes beyond political theatre meant for the home team audience; it overrides parliament because leaders like Trudeau and Carney (and likely Poilievre) seem convinced that they alone know better, and that the organs of state are either there to serve them or should be dismissed as irrelevant. All in the name of 'safety', of course.
Quit correct take.. I am just not sure if the Conservative will sell out to Islamists as completely as the other parties, except Quebec. Quebec actually knows exactly what is up on this item.
I too have concerns about what is going on in the UK, but once again the author has been deceptive in how he frames some of the incidents that have resulted in jail sentences.
Julie Sweeney did not make her comment in "private, closed conversations". She made it on a public Facebook community group with 5000+ members. It was a clear bomb threat ("It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosques. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it."), and her sentence is absolutely deserved. Had she said that same comment out loud in front of a crowd with a loudspeaker, I doubt the result would have been any different.
Connolly was also publicly posting on X, called for hotels holding asylum seekers to be set on fire, and her own defense agreed that she intended on inciting violence.
Why does the author continue to be so deceptive? Are there not better examples of over reach if this is such a huge problem? And why are the editors not catching this?
We provided the quotes, the context and links to both stories. The author has his opinion as to what is and is not appropriate sanction. You're permitted yours.
Again, my concern isn't with the overall thrust of his argument, which I'm broadly sympathetic to. But it's the second time Menzies has pretty blatantly mischaracterized the Sweeney situation in your publication, which falls under my "bullshit" category that I also attempt to hold the line against.
I respectfully disagree with your interpretation. The two incidents were in separate sentences followed by a summary sentence regarding the two and it was clearly stated that the words were worthy of condemnation. Links from established news sources were provided for further details. But, that said, feel free. I had my say, you had yours.
I agree with your comment, but what gets up my (and the British nose) is the two-tier policing. Publicly chanting "death to England" (or Canada or the US) is not considered hate speech. Justice isn't at all blind; there is favouritism for one side, and it isn't the peaceful side (see Sweden).
> She made it on a public Facebook community group with 5000+ members.
I submit that that's irrelevant. The only relevant question is whether it was a true threat or not.
A nasty, hateful NON THREAT said to 5,000 people is free speech that must be defended. A true threat said to only one person is a crime.
The size of the audience doesn't matter.
It was a threat. Clearly. I quoted it in my comment, and here it is again: "It’s absolutely ridiculous. Don’t protect the mosques. Blow the mosque up with the adults in it."
But again, the problem is that the author clearly tried to deceive the reader into thinking that the 2 examples cited were comments made in "private, closed conversations" when in fact they were made in public and were clear incitements to violence that would not be protected speech even in the US.
I’m not commenting in that as I’m not sufficiently familiar. It’s just that the number of people hearing a statement doesn’t affect whether or not it is a true threat.
Agreed, this topic is a bit like home self-defence where the facts of the specific case really matter, but are often lost (sometimes deliberately so) in polemics that reference the case.
I’d be a lot more sympathetic to the idea that the UK had gone completely illiberal on their speech laws if there was evidence of a comedian being arrested for saying “trans women are men” or something like that. “Punch them in the balls” is incitement to violence.
Actually I think there is clearer evidence of such illiberal norms with the Human Rights Tribunal in Canada, where people were dragged in front of it for speech that fell well short of incitement to violence.
According to a quick search Kate Scottow was arrested and charged for publicly referring to a "trans-woman" as a man. She was convicted. This was overturned on appeal, but you know what they say about the process being the punishment. Despite this successful appeal some time later, Caroline Farrow was investigated and arrested for misgendering someone on TV. Again... process is a punishment all of its own.
And here's the thing... "trans-women" are in fact male. And since woman is just the word for human females, trans-women are actually men... just men who have a belief they are women or to use the modern phrase "identify as women". In a liberal society we let people live according to their beliefs as much as possible, subject to impositions on others, but facts are facts.
It might be easier to think of it in terms of a different belief... imagine for a moment that Ms. Scottow and Ms. Farrow were arrested not for saying something based on biology, but rather on geology... let's say they said "the world wasn't created by God 6,000 years ago, but is in fact billions of years old". What would any of us say about a country that arrested two women for that? (Let alone convicting one of them of having committed a crime.)
Let's be more generous and say that the UK police only arrested these women for "harassing" religious figures who were public advocates for the "6,000 year old earth" so-called "fact". The "harassment" would be them posting that those men were wrong and the earth was billions of years old. Does that really make it better?
Why are some spiritual beliefs (and the people publicly advocating those beliefs) legitimate targets for criticism and mockery, but some spiritual beliefs are special and protected?
Thanks. Not being an expert on UK hate speech laws, I didn’t know about either of those cases. These seem MUCH more illiberal and scary.
Although I guess they’re not worth writing about now since they were several years ago and were overturned on appeal, which means the UK ultimately decided not to enforce this kind of illiberal speech restriction.
(Which doesn’t help Ms. Scottow who had to go through the process — but at least it shouldn’t happen to anyone else going forward.)
I’m not an expert by any means.
I do think they’re still worth writing about as we do have similar problems here. (See the cases of several women created through a “human rights” kangaroo court with the power to destroy them all at their own cost for the “crime” of not wanting to provide waxing services on male genitals.)
Also, the UK police are still recording “non crime hate incidents” where they put down a record of a “hate incident” based on viewpoints of sex and the report of the person offended.
Again… imagine the RCMP were going and recording “hate incidents” against people insisting the earth is billions of years old, not a mere 6,000.
People in a liberal society do have the right to live their lives as they wish for the most part, but that can’t include setting the police on people who don’t share their beliefs.
I’m not an expert either, but have been reading about these for quite some time through UK news sources. Here’s a summary from FIRE: https://www.thefire.org/news/uk-polices-speech-chilling-practice-tracking-non-crime-hate-incidents which explains: “As defined by the guidance, an NCHI [Non-Criminal Hate Incident] is “any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility, or prejudice based on a person’s” actual or perceived “race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or transgender” status.”
Over 12,000 people per year are being arrested for speech crimes (over 30 per day) still. There are many, many examples of women and men being arrested/getting records for simply saying “men can’t be women” (or similar) and these arrests continue to this day.
It is important to understand that a non-criminal hate speech record is created even if the person is not arrested, and the person doesn’t have to be told the record was even created. They may not know it exists until a background check is completed for a job and it gets flagged.
If that's the quote (I haven't read sources) I'm surprised that was viewed as a threat. There's no indication in there of having a bomb, or planning to do anything with the bomb. If that's the extent - I feel like it was actually quite a stretch to suggest that was a bomb threat. The person clearly was saying she didn't think the mosque was worthy of protection and that she didn't care if someone did blow the mosque up with adults in it. But there's no statement of her planning to do it or taking action to do it. I find it incredible if that was what led to a prison sentence.
Not that I think most reasonable people would say things like that - but this falls into the category of when someone tells you who they are, believe them. And then choose whether you want to associate with them or not based on who you see them to be. Unfriend, block - sure. But I wouldn't have taken that to be a criminal comment. I've seen many people in Canada make many worse statements than that and while they're in bad taste and I tend to think they're lacking in compassion and basic human kindness as a result, I don't view their poor values and decisions as criminal. And therein is the crux. We have a whole lot of people with lower levels of understanding of what's appropriate to say in social media - and some who think outrageous things will get them likes rather than arrested. I'm fine with calling them emotionally stunted, uneducated, hateful, saying things in bad taste. But I personally don't think that quote you provided as a bomb threat was a bomb threat, nor do I view it as criminal unless she actually was getting bomb making supplies.
Free Speech is free speech and in being such must defend deplorable speech as well as favored speech. If we start changing that meaning to suit the political and societal acceptance of the day we shut down a chance to debate and engage with those deplorable ideas and give a political cudgel to power, which is often not used wisely.
When you suppress free speech you drive it underground and within small groups. Then the chances of opinions hardening and resulting in actual loss of life skyrocket. But these then can be excused as individual aberrations thereby enabling congenitally lazy and timid legislators and bureaucrats to carry on ignoring any real societal issues that gave rise to people getting killed.
England is a perfect anecdotal example of people living on islands being inbred and isolated with the issues that arise from this. Like old stock French Quebec which is the dominant source of federal government leadership. Although not on an an island they might as well be. And the intellectual inbreeding from language laws and anti religious laws targeting immigrants continues unabated.
Thank you, Peter. As usual, just so. It's sage advice.
Once a legal standard is altered to fit a specific (this specific is the usual justification), all rights and freedoms become secondary to it... in this case, the standard being in the name of 'safety'. And there is no end to trying to make everything and everybody 'more safe'. So the inevitable result produces legally empowering privileges for some and state sanctioned punishments for others for exactly the same action. This double standard establishes two tiered policing and prejudicial laws and this is exactly what we see playing out on the streets - and airports - of a once united but now illiberal British kingdom that has simply lost its way.
Exactly! Thank you for the great work Peter.
“Because not everything that goes on in America is more important than what goes on elsewhere.”
Things that happen in America don't have to be more important than what goes on elsewhere to qualify as more consequential for Canada. The American presence beside us is always going to be an important constituent of the Canadian experience, and it's bizarre to dismiss acknowledgments of this reality as evidence of unhealthy fetish or obsession.
“But not a lot of people consuming Canadian media know that in the U.K., comedians weren’t just getting one-week suspensions. Nope. Last month they were getting arrested.”
Sensibly, not a lot of people consume Canadian media, period, but it doesn't follow that Canadians themselves are insufficiently informed about world affairs. As a retired reference librarian who prizes source reliability, for example, I have little interest in what's said on CBC, or in the pages of The Globe and Mail or the Toronto Star; yet this hasn't prevented me from being perfectly well aware of Graham Linehan's and Katie Hopkins' latest collisions with the U.K.'s astonishing (because historically anomalous) new hostility to freedom of expression.
Do you really suppose Canadians pay so little attention to what's going on in the U.K. that they were unaware of the Online Safety Act, before you saw fit to inform them? Not sure who you think you're writing for here, but you might want to at least consider the possibility that the limitations of Canada's legacy media and the limitations of what Canadians know about what's happening beyond the country's borders, in America and elsewhere, don't necessarily form coextensive sets. We do have internet access, after all, and maybe we're concerned about recent developments in Brussels and Germany as well, even if legacy media's putative journalists aren't.
I follow news in Germany due to subscribing to a substack written by a German scholar, but I don't follow the UK. I don't watch the news or read Canadian news regularly. I'm not on facebook much anymore. I don't care a whole lot about the UK to be fair.
I do think many Canadians are more obsessed with the US right now than they've historically been. It's fine for the author to call this out. You've worked in a field that the majority of people haven't. That by itself means you're also going to consume information differently even in retirement. It's interesting to me that you took such issue with the topic of this, assuming that it was somehow a slight to you and what you'd already known about, rather than considering that maybe someone (or many someones) would find it interesting.
Spoiler alert - if someone at the Line wrote an article about the troubles happening in Germany, I'd still be interested in reading it. Because the more perspectives you hear on a topic, the better you can understand it. One more perspective isn't going to hurt anyone.
We won’t know these stories if the liberals get their way. China sharply restricts internet access and the proposed bill allows a minister to remove access to internet without oversight or notification.
It's my understanding that even prisoners can't be denied access to their mail, for example, and perhaps we need similar ironclad guarantees that no citizen can be denied internet access. The reality is that the technology of online information exchange didn't just revolutionize the information commons, it also destroyed the old one. When it comes to participating in public life and keeping abreast of what's happening in it, there simply is no alternative to the internet at present.
As for the impulse of those in power to control information diffusion, I think we can take for granted that this predates the oldest written records by millennia. The relatively recent historical development of the printing press, and the even more recent advent of mass literacy gave would-be censors more to worry about, but the control impulse is the same.
I fundamentally am against restricting speech, even if it is disinformation. The cure for disinformation is correct information. More free speech. Give people the tools to differentiate. Enforce true crimes - don't create new crimes when we already have murderers on the streets who are rapid released... we can't manage the true criminals we have, but the government wants to create new criminals?
The legal remedies for libel, slander, and inciting violence have always been around and are still applicable to a digital world. What has changed is that damage can be done in minutes but legal actions can take years. Conspiracy theories have always been around ranging from UFO sitings to vaccine alarmism but we have always assumed that "reasonable people" would see through them. What has changed in the Internet age is that small numbers of kooks can have a disproportionate voice.
Add into this the political information wars and you have the internet today.
If there is a remedy it is electronic justice. Legal remedies have to appear as fast as the crimes occur. A law on hate speech is irrelevant. With respect to misinformation and disinformation, the solution is to expose these arguments to the counter arguments. Unfortunately, a lot of people exist only in their political "bubble".
I suspect bubbles have always existed on some level, but I do think they've grown. And people are much more strident in their beliefs now it seems to me when they go down conspiracy rabbit holes. I've looked into some rabbit holes and decided it was nutty. I've watched others look into the same hole and get pulled into Alice in Wonderland territory and some haven't yet emerged years later. (I'm thinking of Qanon during the pandemic. I thought some of it was laughable, but knew people who believed it wholeheartedly even when predictions didn't come true.)
I imagine eventually the internet will implode on itself. We're probably past the golden age of the internet and some day most people will use it only through approved interfaces with built in censorship so that people can't actually post hateful stuff. But the problem will be that someone will still have to decide what is misinformation and what is hateful. And while some things are clearly in that category - it's too easy for things to get lumped in that perhaps shouldn't be lumped in.
Thank you to The Line for publishing this.