Juno News - August 11, 2023


Are the censors winning the war on free speech？

Topics
Free Speech under threat cancel culture online safety regulations censorship and local regulations
Mentioned
Aaron Gunn Andrew Lawton Show Christine Van Gein Justin Trudeau Christine Scott Denner Ernst Zundel Jordan Peterson J.K. Rowling Bill C-63 Politics Explained Steven Crowder Tucker Carlson Jamil Giovanni Ben Shapiro Magna Carta Joe Rogan Mike Ward Amy Hamm Rothstein Watcott and 2 more
This is RUINING Canada and nobody is trying to solve it Cancelled for challenging the “science”

Episode Stats


Length

43 minutes

Words per minute

169.03

Word count

7,345

Sentence count

391

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, host Andrew Lawton is joined by Aaron Gunn, Director of the Canadian Foundation for Free Speech, to discuss the threat to free speech and expression in Canada. They discuss a new documentary from Aaron Gunn called "The End of Free Speech in Canada" that explores the challenges faced by Canadian citizens when it comes to freedom of speech.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show. This is the Andrew Lawton Show. Brought to you by True North.
00:00:10.660 Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show, the Andrew Lawton Show here on True North.
00:00:18.720 It is Friday, August 11th and as you hopefully know by now, on Friday we tend to just rip up the regular format and do a couple of things.
00:00:26.120 Sometimes we'll do a lengthy interview with someone who warrants a full show and isn't necessarily connected to the news of the day in a very imminent time sensitive way.
00:00:36.760 Other times we decide to do a deep dive into a big picture issue which is an ever important one in our time.
00:00:44.060 And in my view, and this has pretty much always been the case as long as I've been in media, the most important issue is free speech and the threats to it.
00:00:53.360 Now, free speech means a lot of different things to a lot of people and I'm very cautious when I talk about it to note that there is the cultural attitude of free speech.
00:01:03.700 The attitudes of freedom-minded people about whether we should be able to speak our minds and engage in civil discourse.
00:01:10.000 And then there's also the legal right to free speech which is very different and it's not the right to consequence free speech.
00:01:17.280 It's not the right to necessarily access a particular private platform, but even so, despite how we live in a liberal democracy or what's supposed to be a liberal democracy,
00:01:27.220 there are a number of mechanisms that the government has that allow for it to trample on free speech.
00:01:33.620 And the reason I've always believed free speech to be the first and foremost freedom that we need to protect in society is because it is the freedom that allows you to do anything else.
00:01:43.620 Without free speech, you can't actually argue for any other political change in society without risking a crackdown,
00:01:50.160 whether it comes from government or from big tech or even from cancel culture, which I argue is a threat to free speech as well.
00:01:57.820 So all of this is to say that there is a problem in Canada and in the last few years,
00:02:02.220 we've no doubt seen monumental challenges against many of our civil liberties and our fundamental freedoms.
00:02:07.540 And with that, free speech was also a casualty.
00:02:10.460 People who have spoken up against the government narrative on COVID, for example,
00:02:15.120 have found themselves censored or threatened with punishment by regulatory colleges,
00:02:20.700 even if the government narrative becomes shattered all by itself because of the science evolving in days, weeks, months or even years.
00:02:29.580 And that's just one of many challenges.
00:02:31.680 We also, as we've been talking about on the show for many months now, have seen this huge laundry list of internet regulations coming from the federal government
00:02:39.600 that regulate not just how we use the internet and what we do on the internet and what we see,
00:02:45.360 but one bill that the government has been talking about will dramatically alter what you can say on the internet
00:02:51.340 when the government decides to take an internet regulation on things like hate speech and possibly misinformation,
00:02:58.180 things that you may think are bad and we don't want, but do you really trust the government to define that
00:03:03.660 and fairly apply that test to social media companies and the internet?
00:03:07.920 So all of this is to say there's a lot to talk about here,
00:03:10.640 and many of these themes were touched on in a fantastic new documentary from our friend Aaron Gunn
00:03:16.180 called The End of Free Speech in Canada.
00:03:19.080 Perhaps it sounds a little bit gloomy, but as you'll hear if you watch the documentary,
00:03:23.980 there is ample reason to suspect that we are nearing that point.
00:03:27.820 Let's just take a look at this documentary now.
00:03:30.120 The Ontario College of Psychologists decided in their wisdom that I am required to undertake re-education lessons.
00:03:38.520 I'm not stopping.
00:03:40.340 All the justifications for censorship are based on the idea that if people think and speak freely,
00:03:45.900 they will share dangerous thoughts.
00:03:48.220 If you don't believe that man can express himself freely,
00:03:51.180 how can he have the judgment to control what others express?
00:03:54.960 Is free speech and free expression in Canada under attack?
00:03:59.220 From government plans to censor and regulate the internet,
00:04:02.540 to regulatory bodies demanding the re-education of those who disagree,
00:04:07.120 has one of the foundational values of our democracy begun to erode?
00:04:12.400 Should courts really be targeting comedians whose jokes some find distasteful?
00:04:17.380 Should politicians be restricting protests of those whose views they find obscene?
00:04:22.980 Or, as Voltaire said, should we defend to the death our right to disagree?
00:04:28.360 Once you try to disempower the freedom of expression of an entire class of person,
00:04:32.920 it suddenly starts to look very authoritarian.
00:04:35.200 This is a guy who is authoritarian.
00:04:37.940 When he says I'm coming to regulate the internet, we should believe him.
00:04:42.360 My name is Aaron Gunn, and this is Politics Explained.
00:04:45.760 That is a snippet from Aaron Gunn's The End of Free Speech in Canada.
00:04:56.120 One of the people featured in it is Christine Van Gein,
00:04:58.860 who is the litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation,
00:05:02.560 which is one of the leading warriors on the front lines of the fight for free speech and other freedoms.
00:05:08.560 So I thought we'd bring them both on the show today, Aaron Gunn and Christine Van Gein.
00:05:12.840 Both of you, it's great to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.
00:05:16.300 Thanks for having me.
00:05:17.400 Thank you for having us.
00:05:18.860 So let's start with you, Aaron, and get the bigger picture here.
00:05:21.760 Why did you decide to wade into this?
00:05:23.680 Why did you decide to give this the old Aaron Gunn film treatment?
00:05:28.080 Well, you took the words right out of my mouth, Andrew.
00:05:31.340 There's the old saying, you know,
00:05:33.220 take away all my freedoms, but leave me freedom of speech,
00:05:35.860 and I'll use it to win back the rest.
00:05:37.580 And that really gets to the core of why I made the documentary.
00:05:41.780 There is no freedom more fundamental than freedom of speech
00:05:45.460 and freedom of expression.
00:05:46.600 It is at the very foundation of Western civilization,
00:05:51.240 and I would say also as part of that, the founding of this country.
00:05:55.620 And unfortunately, we've seen some very troubling erosion of free speech
00:06:01.080 over the past few years and maybe past couple of decades.
00:06:06.800 And more importantly is what I see coming down the pipeline.
00:06:12.360 The trend that we're on is not a good one.
00:06:14.540 And I think it's not so much that Canadians have lost an appreciation for free speech.
00:06:19.940 It's that they don't necessarily know what's happening in their own country
00:06:23.600 with regard to some of these policies.
00:06:25.140 So we wanted to pull the curtain, pull the curtain back, as it were,
00:06:28.820 and bring to light some of these troubling changes.
00:06:32.680 Let's talk about the legal context on this, Christine,
00:06:35.920 because I know that we have certainly the internet regulations,
00:06:38.920 which are not direct censorship bills per se, but have effects on free speech.
00:06:44.440 And then we have this forthcoming legislation that's been promised by the government
00:06:48.760 that would actually potentially cause direct censorship online.
00:06:52.820 But with the internet and beyond, what would your sort of legal assessment be
00:06:56.600 on the state of free speech in Canada, which is supposed to be a constitutional freedom?
00:07:02.420 Well, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, thought, and belief
00:07:06.420 is all guaranteed in our charter.
00:07:08.740 It predates the charter.
00:07:10.300 We had freedom of expression in Canada, freedom of speech before the 1980s
00:07:15.360 when the constitution was patriated and the charter was enacted.
00:07:18.500 It's a really old concept.
00:07:23.080 It was, you know, dates back.
00:07:25.060 Socrates argued for freedom of speech.
00:07:28.540 It was the foundations of it were laid in the Magna Carta,
00:07:31.960 then later the British Bill of Rights.
00:07:34.200 And it is just a core foundational notion of liberal thinking,
00:07:40.600 of classical liberal thinking.
00:07:41.880 And as Aaron said, it is how we define the contours of all of our other rights.
00:07:49.520 It's through freedom of expression that we can argue for freedom of association,
00:07:55.900 freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of the press.
00:07:59.780 We need freedom of expression to make all of these arguments.
00:08:03.060 And as Aaron really well said, to win back our other freedoms.
00:08:07.260 I'm not sure how I feel about whether or not we are losing freedom of speech,
00:08:16.220 freedom of expression long term.
00:08:18.280 This is a right that is always under assault.
00:08:22.160 It has been under assault throughout all of history.
00:08:25.940 It is a right that really is beneficial for the powerless.
00:08:30.920 And so it is in the interest of the powerful to try to take it away from us whenever they can.
00:08:38.420 It is an exercise of power to limit the speech of another human being.
00:08:43.100 And in doing so, you actually tread into their humanity and their basic dignity when you silence them.
00:08:50.740 So I think that there's nothing new about attacks on freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
00:08:56.020 But perhaps because we're entering this digital era, there are new ways that petty titrants are trying to achieve that goal of silencing us.
00:09:07.520 I think, to your point, though, the cultural latitude has slightly changed about this.
00:09:12.800 Because it used to be that, I mean, going back to the great free speech protests at Berkeley, you know, decades ago,
00:09:18.920 that free speech was viewed as the antidote to oppression, as you just said, Christine.
00:09:23.240 And free speech was viewed as the way that you really buck authority.
00:09:27.020 And now, though, there seems to be this rebranding by certain voices on the left.
00:09:31.800 And I know you've encountered this, Aaron, where people actually argue that free speech is oppressive,
00:09:37.000 that free speech is the thing that marginalizes the powerless.
00:09:41.120 When did that change happen?
00:09:42.800 Well, I would think I think what you're getting at there specifically, Andrew, is is free speech used to be an issue that was owned by what we would call the left or by liberals,
00:09:56.680 I think, through kind of Western culture, Western countries.
00:10:00.580 And it's been completely flipped on its head.
00:10:02.440 Now you have political parties that are that are notionally left wing that historically have stood up for marginalized people who are arguing that words are violence, that speech is harmful, that speech is dangerous.
00:10:15.780 And I think a really important point to make that a couple of the speakers made during the documentary is is that nobody, you know, there's no even the worst dictator that you can imagine the world.
00:10:27.640 You know, they don't go around and say we want to take the free speech rights away of our citizens.
00:10:32.600 That's not how they frame the issue.
00:10:33.920 Whatever these rights are taken away, it's always framed as, you know, for our benefit, for the protection of citizens, for the protection against some kind of dangerous or malicious forces in our society.
00:10:47.540 So and you see that same kind of rhetoric being used here in Canada, whether it's to protect against hateful speech, harmful speech, misinformation, disinformation, you know, even hurt feelings.
00:11:00.100 So it's I think it's important to keep an eye for.
00:11:03.240 But there's been some shift to your to to what you were saying.
00:11:06.240 I don't know when it happened in the 2000s where these political parties that traditionally stood up for marginalized people started attacking the, you know, the the very right that these marginal people marginalized people have used historically to stand up for themselves and stand up for their rights.
00:11:23.740 And why that's happened is maybe a longer conversation.
00:11:26.820 I would just add there's there's an aspect to that of of the mainstream point of view.
00:11:34.400 So it's views that are outside of the mainstream that that are that the people are in the dominant position are the ones calling for for the silencing of others.
00:11:44.480 And look, I'm not saying that all speech is created equal.
00:11:47.380 Some voices should be shut down from civil society when they are expressing hateful or intolerant or incorrect viewpoints.
00:11:58.480 We should use the right to freedom of expression to correct those views.
00:12:03.320 But that is the role of civil society of, you know, journalists of pointing out flaws and arguments of political actors saying that this is a this is a bad idea.
00:12:14.760 It's not the role of government to come in and say that's not allowed when that's happening.
00:12:22.080 You know, that it is the the dominant position trying to impose a view on a non-dominant position.
00:12:30.960 That's that's I think that's part of it.
00:12:32.740 I think part of it is that the the progressive viewpoint has become the more dominant viewpoint in society more recently.
00:12:39.540 But the concept of silencing your enemies is is not not new at all.
00:12:44.760 One one recent example of the government wading into this was in the 2022 budget when out of nowhere they included in the budget.
00:12:53.480 So you think this is about taxes and deficits.
00:12:55.320 They included a provision that amended the criminal code to ban Holocaust denial, to criminalize denial of the Holocaust.
00:13:02.360 Now, let me say, I believe the Holocaust happened. 0.98
00:13:04.940 I believe six million Jews were slaughtered.
00:13:06.760 I believe it was atrocious.
00:13:07.840 And I believe that people who deny the Holocaust are more often than not these horrific anti-Semites and should be, like Christine said, shut down by civil society.
00:13:17.600 They should be denounced, but they should not be, in my view, thrown in jail.
00:13:21.320 And here we have an example of an issue that I think we increasingly see where in order to take the pro-free speech position,
00:13:29.700 you have to stand up for a very reprehensible form of expression, which is denial of the Holocaust.
00:13:35.580 And there are a lot of people that don't understand that distinction of saying, I support your right to say something, even if I find what you're saying to be horrendous.
00:13:46.100 And this is something, Aaron, that we see all the time, where if you take a principled stand for free speech, it's as though you're endorsing whatever thing was said.
00:13:54.140 Yeah, well, I'm sure all of us on this call have had to be involved in that debate before.
00:14:03.720 There's the famous saying that's been attributed to Voltaire, even though I know somebody else said it, where, you know, I disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
00:14:12.400 And I think that's the ethos of free speech really at its core.
00:14:15.680 And, you know, it's all about another one of the speakers that I interviewed in the documentary said, you know, that he referred to these people as the prickly porcupines, people that maybe cross the line on occasion.
00:14:28.480 People say things that you might vehemently disagree with or find reprehensible.
00:14:32.860 But if you start criminalizing speech with these individuals, you set the standard that down the road might be used against people who are saying increasingly reasonable or moderate viewpoints, but which might be outside of the mainstream, as Christine said.
00:14:51.460 So that is where the standard is set that later might be applied against you.
00:14:56.100 And that's the interesting thing about free speech, if you actually support it, is that, of course, everybody wants free speech for themselves, but you also have to give free speech to your political opponents as well.
00:15:09.740 Just I'll just if I can add one thing to that, which is the right to freedom of expression is content neutral.
00:15:17.100 There's a lot of case law that has for a long time established that it's a content neutral right.
00:15:22.720 It doesn't matter how offensive or wrong the speech is, it is still protected under the charter.
00:15:30.460 And I would bring up the case as a very famous case involving a Holocaust denier named Ernst Zundel.
00:15:37.440 It was one of the first cases about this topic in in Canada.
00:15:41.980 And of course, I think it should go without saying that I know that the Holocaust happened and it was one of the greatest crimes committed in the history of humanity. 0.92
00:15:52.060 And my family and my family is Jewish and I my my husband, my children are Jewish.
00:15:57.700 And the the outcome in Zundel, what happened in that case was the government essentially put the Holocaust itself on trial. 0.51
00:16:09.600 There were called to the stand historians who had to defend that this was a thing in history that truly happened.
00:16:17.220 They called witnesses who were Holocaust survivors and those witnesses were cross-examined by Zundel's lawyers to undermine their experience as Holocaust survivors.
00:16:29.860 Zundel's lawyers put on display.
00:16:32.640 So-called experts in Holocaust denial to give their their disturbing and false version of events.
00:16:43.860 So when you have to think about the consequences of laws like this that criminalize particular types of speech, you don't want to give a platform for something like that to happen.
00:16:54.340 And this has come up again because the federal government, the Trudeau government has contemplated, although they haven't proposed legislation on it, criminalizing the notion of residential school denialism.
00:17:11.440 And, you know, there's no legislation been proposed about it, but we have to think about what the consequences of criminalizing particular types of speech would be, because in the in the Zundel case, it was an appalling and disturbing circus that I don't think anyone would want to create an incentive to have through criminalizing that particular type of speech.
00:17:34.520 Well, and that's a very good point. And I would say the residential school denialism is a logical extension.
00:17:40.960 The criminalization of it is a logical extension from a criminalization of Holocaust denial, because at that point, you're already saying that one's belief in a historic events, veracity or lack thereof, is a matter for the state to adjudicate.
00:17:55.480 And once you've decided to do that, you're really just talking about a question of degrees.
00:17:59.320 And it's not much of a stretch to imagine that, well, climate change denialism could be criminal or denying any other hate crime, denying the atrocity of slavery, whatever the case is.
00:18:11.580 And that's where I'm always leery of the slippery slope argument.
00:18:15.320 But I think when we're talking about encroachments on freedoms, we have a fair bit of evidence for for this, that there is a slippery slope.
00:18:22.500 And once you give the state license to do something, you're really furthering the capacity to do that.
00:18:30.180 There are just so many better ways to reach people.
00:18:32.820 There are so many stories of people who question and convert Holocaust deniers and and and terrible people using advocacy and persuasion rather than the hammer of the state coming down and and saying, we're going to give you a criminal sanction.
00:18:52.660 And that is the way to correct in incorrect information.
00:18:59.060 It's through civil society and good faith conversations to help people understand when when they are wrong there.
00:19:08.940 You didn't use the term, so I'm not putting this at your feet, but the term that, you know, we've always talked about in this fight, certainly from my part is the so-called marketplace of ideas that, you know, we all go out and we exchange our ideas and the good ones prosper.
00:19:21.060 And I was at a little forum a few months back that had a number of academics and journalists, and I was a bit outnumbered ideologically there.
00:19:28.880 And one of the panelists who was a bit pro Internet regulation mentioned with this mocking tone, oh, the marketplace of ideas.
00:19:36.560 And everyone laughs at it in the room because to them, it's this hilarious concept that that is a complete anachronism in society.
00:19:44.260 And I realized in that moment, OK, we've got our work cut out for us if we want to promote free speech here.
00:19:49.640 Because right now we don't have a willingness in society to engage with people that we disagree with as much as we did, you know, even 10 years ago, certainly 20.
00:19:59.620 And, you know, the idea like Stephen Crowder, I know he's gone through his own challenges recently, but he used to do that great little bit where he'd sit at a table and put a statement up and say, change my mind.
00:20:10.660 And it was actually a very pure display that you'd see and people would go up and they'd have oftentimes a very civil discourse.
00:20:18.520 And I know you've tried to do this, Aaron, with people.
00:20:20.520 And I'm wondering, one on one, one on one, outside of the mobs and the protests and the Twitter world, do people still have that desire to speak about their differences with someone?
00:20:32.120 I think so. I think you see it. I mean, you mentioned cancel culture at the start of this segment.
00:20:39.860 And, you know, it's it's you see that happening kind of across society right now with social media and in the traditional media and these forces to basically if you disagree with someone to go out and and destroy their lives or destroy their livelihoods or remove their ability to to to to have a voice, an effective voice.
00:20:58.920 But I don't see that on in those one on one interactions.
00:21:03.120 When you talk to to friends or family, there's a big group of you hanging about traditional kind of water cooler conversations in Canada.
00:21:11.180 I find people are simple. Everyone's got different political views and different different views on the issue of the day.
00:21:17.820 And people usually get along and respect people's right to disagree.
00:21:21.320 But the the political culture, I think, has become somewhat toxic in this country.
00:21:28.060 And there has been, as we've all just chatted about, a resurgence in Canada of the political idea that if we don't like what you're saying, the government should try to exercise its power to either criminalize that speech or through bills like C-11 to marginalize it so that basically nobody hears what you have to say.
00:21:53.440 And C-11, just for context, if you haven't been following, this is the bill that basically mandates a certain amount of Canadian content on your YouTube homepage, your Netflix homepage.
00:22:04.140 And, you know, it sounds all benign and nice promoting Canadian artists.
00:22:07.560 But in reality, it's government manipulating what you see on the Internet.
00:22:11.740 And I know this is often in political discourse called the censorship bill.
00:22:15.760 And I maybe it doesn't directly censor, but it does artificially change what you access.
00:22:21.980 And it means if you're a creator, it artificially diminishes your reach.
00:22:26.400 So I think there is an argument to call it censorship in some form.
00:22:29.120 I mean, the joke that I have made about this is that True North is, you know, pure red-blooded Canadian content.
00:22:34.820 So technically, we should be forced to the homepages on this.
00:22:37.660 But I don't actually think Justin Trudeau passed a bill that would cause more of my show, more of your show, Christine, more of your movies, Aaron.
00:22:44.620 So I feel somehow we'll end up being the losing end of this because we won't be government-qualified Canadian content.
00:22:50.940 And there is something that, you know, originally people sort of viewed censorship as being this very blunt instrument that, you know, like Stalin photoshopping out before Photoshop was even a thing, people from photos.
00:23:02.800 But there are a lot of backdoor ways to censor.
00:23:06.000 And one of them is licensing or accreditation or the idea of, oh, no, anyone can, we have free speech.
00:23:12.200 You just need to get a license to publish or something like that.
00:23:15.140 And I'm wondering, Christine, if you see that increasing, basically this censorship by bureaucracy.
00:23:21.580 Oh, yeah.
00:23:22.560 So with C11, I have my own YouTube channel.
00:23:26.820 And I would not benefit from C11, even though my YouTube channel is filmed in Canada by a Canadian about Canadian law.
00:23:37.940 I would not qualify as Canadian content.
00:23:41.620 And even if I wanted to try, it's all of these bureaucratic loopholes to jump through.
00:23:47.240 Even as a lawyer, it would be a challenge for me to fill out the required paperwork to get my videos accredited as Canadian content every time I put one out so that it might benefit from this legislation.
00:24:01.700 I just do not have the ability to do that.
00:24:04.280 And when we talk about what censorship means, the government here with C11 is putting its thumb on the scale of the algorithm.
00:24:13.360 It's saying this content goes to the front page and it's kind of binary, right?
00:24:18.320 If something goes to the top, the other stuff gets pushed down.
00:24:22.200 So it does have an impact.
00:24:24.640 And people don't scroll to page 10 of YouTube.
00:24:27.580 They check out the stuff that the algorithm serves up to them.
00:24:31.280 So you are hurting other content creators when the government puts its thumb on the scale that way.
00:24:39.580 And it's not my analogy, but I've heard other creators use it, which is, would we consider it censorship?
00:24:46.180 If the government went to a bookstore and said, these are the books that need to go in your front window and these books need to go in the back shelf.
00:24:55.780 I think most of us would consider that to be censorship.
00:25:00.500 And that's essentially what C11 does, but in a digital way.
00:25:06.620 Yeah, and cloaking it also in things that sound all nice of just, oh, well, promoting Canadian voices and promoting Canadian content.
00:25:16.800 And you get a lot of people where there may be a constituency for that.
00:25:20.960 But most of the content creators I've talked to are the ones that are the most vocal in opposing this because they figured out the way to do what they want to do with it.
00:25:29.320 And, you know, I'll ask you, Aaron, on this, what do you think the motivation is?
00:25:33.920 You know, because, again, when they get up there and say that this is all about making sure that, you know, Canadians have access to Schitt's Creek or something, like, you know it's not true.
00:25:42.860 But do you think their goal is censorship?
00:25:45.700 I think their goal is to control what you think by controlling what you see.
00:25:52.260 I think the initial, there's an initial goal of C11, and then I think there's how it will be further abused over time.
00:25:58.760 I think once you give the government that kind of power to play with the algorithms that control what people say or control what people see, so control what they think,
00:26:08.320 I think the government will inevitably combine some of their other stated objectives, like controlling what they see as disinformation or harmful speech and weave that into the new powers they've granted themselves under C11.
00:26:21.660 I think the initial point was actually, was also political.
00:26:25.760 It was to sideline conservative content and conservative points of view, but specifically from the United States.
00:26:33.300 So, in this country, as we know, because much of the mainstream media is, I don't know if you added all their subsidies together, Andrew, what kind of number you'd get at.
00:26:42.360 We're going to, in the, in the over a billion dollars a year, just with the CBC alone, there is a lot of conservative content comes from our friends in the United States.
00:26:51.220 People that might be watching Ben Shapiro or Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson.
00:26:55.980 Those videos, and I'm sure disproportionately the political content that comes from the United States tends to lean conservatives.
00:27:05.040 I just know from people that I speak to on these issues.
00:27:08.300 So, that content is going to be absolutely hammered out of YouTube's algorithm, out of Facebook's algorithm, and really hidden on back pages.
00:27:17.640 And I actually think that was the, what, the primary motivation was news, was politics, because this is political legislation.
00:27:25.060 And it was specifically was targeted at conservative content coming from outside of Canada.
00:27:30.240 But like you said, I think whatever happens in the early days, in the medium term, the long term, Justin Trudeau is not looking to use this bill to amplify my documentaries or Christine Scott Denner.
00:27:40.340 This very, this very, this very podcast or segment, I might add, with True North.
00:27:45.680 So, I imagine there will be additional clauses added later on.
00:27:49.820 And just to talk about the way that things are cloaked, one of the most insidious examples of this, and we're seeing this in the UK right now, we're seeing the discussion, albeit not the legislation yet in Canada, is online safety or online harm.
00:28:03.740 And, you know, one of the big discussions that's been going on through the government's consultation on this is this master omnibus internet regulation bill that's going to manage the harmful content on the internet.
00:28:16.560 And if you look at how they define it, they include under the same category, potentially misinformation and disinformation, hate speech, and child pornography, which is something that is universally regarded as a harm, that will be covered by this.
00:28:31.120 Expression. How the, abuse, that's an image of a crime, it's not a form of expression.
00:28:36.180 Exactly.
00:28:37.100 That's according to the Supreme Court.
00:28:38.920 Exactly. And they want to use the same blunt instrument, so that if anyone, it's like the Holocaust and all things, so that if anyone speaks up and says, well, I oppose this bill because I don't like the definition of hate speech, they're going to be accused of supporting child pornography or something like that.
00:28:53.560 But this brings us to the way that terms are weaponized. Hate speech is one of the biggest examples of this, and increasingly misinformation as well, because both of those things on the surface, most Canadians, especially non-political ones that don't know these trigger words, will say, oh yeah, I don't like hate speech.
00:29:10.760 Yeah, of course hate speech is not allowed. And we have in Canada a criminal mechanism in which hate speech is prohibited. But the definitions that the government likes on this aren't always the criminal definition. And this is where these terms can become the subject of very key fights. Are they not, Christine?
00:29:28.320 Yeah, so the hate speech in Canada was clarified most recently in a 2013 case called WhatCot, which involved, I believe it was a man distributing liars in Saskatchewan. It had homophobic material.
00:29:47.040 And the Supreme Court upheld their Saskatchewan ban on hateful publication, but they narrowed the scope of hate speech to quote them, detestation and vilification. And the majority concluded that this term of hatred is not too subjective to be defined because it's possible to identify what the majority justice Rothstein described as, to quote, the hallmarks of hatred, such as saying that the group is, you know,
00:30:16.780 plotting to destroy Western civilization, labeling an entire group of people liars or cheaters or criminals, or calling them a parasitic race, things like that, lesser, lesser beasts. This is all from the cases or not terms that I would ever use. But that was how that definition was clarified. But it's important to remember that the definition of hate speech is not codified in law. It comes from the case law.
00:30:46.780 And in my view, I don't think I agree with the majority. I think that there is some subjectivity in there, even though they say that those courts says that there are these, you know, objective ways of knowing hate speech. I think that inherently there is a subjective element to it.
00:31:07.420 Well, and beyond that, I mean, shortly before, I can't remember if it was the 2019 election or the 2021 election, I think it was the latter, the government introduced on the last day, an online, or not an online, a hate speech bill that reintroduced to the Human Rights Act in Canada, this Section 13, which was amended to use the language from Watcott.
00:31:30.540 So they're saying, no, no, no, we're charter compliant. But we also know that Human Rights Commissions, as a general rule, do not have a history of really planting their feet firmly and saying, we are going to interpret this law through the lens of free speech.
00:31:44.700 Yeah, so in 2021, Parliament introduced Bill C-36, which was the online harms bill. And it did all of those things that you explained earlier, it lumped hate speech in with misinformation, along with terrorism, you know, planning terrorism online, or like, I guess, beheading videos, things like that.
00:32:06.200 And they also included child sexual abuse imagery, or what sometimes people call child pornography, in the same legislation. And in my view, the idea of combining all of these very, very different types of content in the same legislation, is to immunize criticism of the inclusion of misinformation, which, by the way, the government is the largest purveyor.
00:32:33.060 Politicians are usually the largest purveyors of misinformation. So it was to immunize them for criticism over misinformation, and hate speech, they put in terrorism and these child sexual abuse images. Because, I mean, who would, who could, honestly, who could object to further criminal sanction on, on sharing images that are, are abusive and disgusting.
00:32:59.520 So, that bill ultimately did not pass, but it was, the plan was to bring back Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act. The bill died as a result of the election, but the government has begun new consultations.
00:33:17.520 So there is a possibility, so there is a possibility that we could see this in the future. And with this government, which has this pretty wild track record on trying to regulate the internet, and not carrying what the cost is, I think we may, we may see this in the future. This government's got a couple years left.
00:33:38.420 We, we've spoken a lot in this show about the government's role in, in the war on free speech. I wanted to just, in the final moments here, move to other sources of resistance to free speech.
00:33:50.720 And you've done a great job in your documentary, Aaron, of focusing on some of that. You talked to Jamil Javani about the way corporations can really contribute to this. And also, big tech. I mean, I know that on C18, a lot of the people in this call tend to believe that the government is the problem and not the tech companies, necessarily.
00:34:07.960 But big tech has played a very significant role in shrinking the bounds of discourse. And I know you've had, on a number of your videos, flags put up by YouTube. You've been downgraded in rankings. And in a climate in which we are using that to engage in the marketplace of ideas, these companies have tremendous power.
00:34:26.920 They do have tremendous power. We don't have the power to regulate them as perhaps the United States does or the European Union does here in Canada. There's a lot of different threats. I mean, Christine mentioned these human rights tribunals.
00:34:44.940 We have a case where a comedian was essentially fined $40,000 for telling a joke and a decision that was reversed barely by the Supreme Court. It probably would have been found guilty today.
00:34:57.700 And another point that I just want to make before going into these, because I think it's so important, Andrew, in this country, because not enough people talk about it, is, you know, the charter that we have here that protects these fundamental freedoms, and we saw this during COVID as well, you know, the charter doesn't really grant you any inherent protection.
00:35:14.400 It's the Supreme Court that interprets and enforces it. And not enough people, in my opinion, pay attention to the Supreme Court, pay attention with who we're putting on to the Supreme Court. Obviously, in the United States, this is an issue that people are acutely aware of.
00:35:29.740 We have the same political dynamics here in Canada. And to me, it was very concerning, just to reference, go back to that comedian case that by a 5-4 decision, four of our nine Supreme Court justices voted to uphold a decision that fined a comedian $40,000 for telling a joke.
00:35:47.040 I think it's a very disturbing trend. Of course, you mentioned, we can also talk about these regulatory bodies going after Jordan Peterson. I know Christine's involved in that.
00:35:59.180 We have a nurse in British Columbia, Amy Hamm, who basically for, you know, believing in two genders, which was kind of pretty... 0.98
00:36:08.280 Not even. Her crime was liking J.K. Rowling, basically.
00:36:11.480 Right. Yeah, putting up a billboard that said, I love J.K. Rowling, which, you know, was pretty straightforward and standard issue up until five minutes ago.
00:36:21.280 So, you know, is being dragged in front of, you know, 90 hours of hearings and having her livelihood and her career threatened. 1.00
00:36:28.500 Being a nurse, nothing even to do with that, these political views. So there's lots of different vectors where free speech is under attack. 0.99
00:36:35.860 As Christine mentioned, which is why her organization is so important, this is something that's always been happening and it's always ongoing,
00:36:42.000 which is why we always have to be on the defensive, always have to be on guard to protecting this fundamental freedom.
00:36:47.360 Well, I think you're bang on about that. And I'll just ask in general, both of you, where you believe the biggest threat to free speech is.
00:36:56.460 And it can be something grand like government or it can be, you know, cancel culture, society,
00:37:01.280 or even just a very specific instrument that on a micro level is there. But where is the biggest threat?
00:37:09.720 Oh, I don't know, because I think the threats come from every direction.
00:37:13.360 But I'll just give an example that it's often overlooked, which is what we call the curse of the local tyrant.
00:37:22.120 It's local city councils who have outsized authority to get involved in your life.
00:37:30.360 So there have been all kinds of examples that we've worked on. A town in Ontario that ordered a woman to take a forget Trudeau flag off of her house.
00:37:43.640 It didn't say forget, it said a different F word, but you can use your imagination.
00:37:48.400 She has a absolute right to express her dissatisfaction with the prime minister.
00:37:53.760 It is a very, very special and rare thing that we in Canada can criticize our political leaders.
00:38:02.460 We're using whatever words we choose. And we are the minority in the world that we can do that.
00:38:08.020 Most places in the world, if you did that, you could go to jail. Your family could go to jail.
00:38:14.540 You could be executed for expressing dissatisfaction with your prime minister, not prime minister, but your national leader.
00:38:25.400 So when local petty tyrants try to get involved in your life like that, I think that's one of the closest touch points most people have to their government.
00:38:36.900 Just another example of that is in Calgary, where the Calgary City Council has banned protests about specific topics near libraries.
00:38:49.260 Libraries where you're supposed to go and exchange ideas and discuss, you know, philosophy and different concepts and different approaches to life in the world.
00:38:59.480 Well, now, if you want to protest about a climate extinction or a tax issue or have a labor strike, you're allowed to do that in front of a library.
00:39:09.260 But if you wanted to protest, for example, child marriage as a religious practice, you could get not just a fine of up to $10,000, but a prison sentence up to one year.
00:39:22.120 That's the local government sending people to jail for protesting a topic that they don't approve.
00:39:28.360 That is absolutely crazy.
00:39:31.980 So I just want to remind people that we often forget about our local and municipal governments, but they have a really big impact on freedom of expression.
00:39:41.740 I don't forget about them.
00:39:43.060 I have like a long running crusade against bylaw enforcement officers, the most recent example of which was them putting the sticker on that I was recycling incorrectly.
00:39:51.520 So they weren't taking my recycling that day.
00:39:53.440 But anyway, you're getting me on my my my regular old hobby horse here.
00:39:56.800 Aaron, we'll go to you on this.
00:39:58.580 What do you believe is the big threat to free speech?
00:40:01.580 Where is it coming from?
00:40:03.460 You know, there's a lot to choose from, Andrew, but I actually think it's one we haven't chatted about or one of the side effects of some of these policies.
00:40:10.140 And that's self-censorship.
00:40:11.160 That's people censoring themselves, not expressing what they actually think about a particular issue because they're afraid of of certain forces and factors that will come down upon them.
00:40:25.040 And specifically, you mentioned council culture, but I think specifically these regulatory bodies.
00:40:30.860 So what we see, how they've been weaponized, whether they're, you know, law societies, whether they're the B.C. College of Nurses and Midwives in the case of B.C., whether it's the Ontario College of Psychologists in the case of Dr. Jordan Peterson.
00:40:46.440 I think it is a very troubling development that you have these organizations that have been weaponized by those who seek to to limit the Overton window of the ideas and beliefs that we can discuss by going after people's careers,
00:41:04.260 by going after people's livelihoods, by going after their ability to put food on their table and feed their family.
00:41:11.380 And I think that is probably the most troubling development, as well as I have to say the composition of the Supreme Court, because at the end of the day, as we've all said here, freedom of speech, freedom of expression.
00:41:22.940 It is the most fundamental freedom.
00:41:24.400 It is the source of which all of our other freedoms flow from.
00:41:29.160 And at the end of the day, they are the guarantor of that.
00:41:32.320 If they're not standing up for free speech, if they don't stand up for our other constitutional rights, then they basically cease to exist.
00:41:40.560 So those are the those are the two.
00:41:43.220 Yeah. And I think they're the Mike Ward case, which was the comedian that you mentioned, is really the cautionary tale on that.
00:41:49.500 You can wave your charter in the air and say, I have a right to freedom of expression all you want.
00:41:53.400 But that was a single judge that decided whether you have the right to tell a joke in Quebec that people find offensive.
00:42:01.780 And I think that was very important.
00:42:03.740 I mean, if you had that go the different way, if you were, as you said, Aaron, to have that case adjudicated today, the charter wouldn't matter.
00:42:11.160 The common law wouldn't matter.
00:42:12.700 Magna Carta wouldn't matter.
00:42:14.000 You would not have that right.
00:42:15.380 So I think there is reason to be pessimistic.
00:42:18.160 But I also think there's reason to be optimistic in the sense that we have two fantastic fighters in this battle for free speech, Christine Van Gein and Aaron Gunn.
00:42:26.240 And I assure you, your civil liberties are in as good hands as they can be with those two.
00:42:31.960 Christine Van Gein from the Canadian Constitution Foundation, one of the featured guests in Aaron Gunn's new documentary, The End of Free Speech in Canada.
00:42:40.180 And where can people see it, Aaron?
00:42:42.840 You can check it out on YouTube and Facebook, at least for now.
00:42:46.780 And type it into the search bar.
00:42:51.780 It should pop up.
00:42:52.680 And if it's not popping up, then Bill C11's already gone to work.
00:42:57.000 Yeah, C11 might not put it on your homepage.
00:42:59.100 But you can find it if you look for it.
00:43:01.380 Well, Aaron, great job on the documentary.
00:43:03.880 Christine, it's always great to hear your voice.
00:43:06.060 It was good to see you in it.
00:43:06.900 I'm glad to have you on today.
00:43:08.300 Thank you both so much.
00:43:10.000 Thank you.
00:43:10.480 Thank you, Robbie.
00:43:10.980 All right.
00:43:11.960 That does it for us.
00:43:13.160 For today, we'll be back with more of The Andrew Lawton Show next week here on True North.
00:43:17.240 Thank you.
00:43:17.840 God bless.
00:43:18.400 And have a great weekend.
00:43:19.400 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:43:21.780 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.