Juno News - A report warns that ＂safetyism＂ is being weaponized by governments to justify censorship

00:00:00.000 you guys have a special report that has been put out on what you refer to as safetyism and how the

00:00:06.960 state slash government is now using safetyism and it could start trampling our rights can you expand

00:00:13.600 on that a little bit yeah so safetyism refers to a cultural or even institution or government

00:00:20.560 tendency to prioritize physical and even emotional safety above all other values you know at the

00:00:28.880 expense of those other values, including freedom, personal development, open debate and discourse.

00:00:35.580 And look, safety is, of course, important, but Canadian governments have exploited emergencies

00:00:41.980 or the sense of danger historically in the most grotesque ways. They've used the rationale of

00:00:51.120 safety to shut down Sean Foyt, to lock down the forests in Nova Scotia. They've used it to justify

00:00:57.840 censorship surveillance or restrictions on basic freedoms all in the name of protecting people from

00:01:04.480 discomfort or offense or some type of perceived risk or harm and it's this culture where no risk

00:01:11.520 is tolerable whatsoever that cellophane wrapper in the woods is apparently so dangerous that you're

00:01:17.200 not allowed to walk your dog in the forest so in this report safety above all which you can download

00:01:24.080 for free at the ccf.ca safetyism we go through the historic instances where governments have

00:01:33.760 overreached and eroded and violated civil liberties in the name of safety

00:01:39.360 and they're really disturbing examples from the invocation of the war measures act in response to

00:01:46.320 the october crisis in 1970 where habeas corpus was suspended where homes were searched without

00:01:53.040 warrants where people were arrested and detained incommunicado for for weeks there was the

00:02:01.840 detainment of an internment of japanese canadians in 1942 following japan's attack on pearl harbor

00:02:11.680 and japanese canadians were rounded up across the country and put into shacks in interior bc

00:02:18.560 without adequate heating their property was seized by the government and stole and sold

00:02:24.800 and then that money was used to finance their own internment because the government told people

00:02:30.720 that japanese canadians were too dangerous because of this you know inaccurate risk

00:02:37.760 view that they would be spying on canadians so they all had to be proactively put into these

00:02:44.080 internment camps.

Juno News - August 19, 2025