Juno News - Are we witnessing the END of free speech？

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Rupa Subramania show, everybody. I'm your host, Rupa Subramania. Now, last

00:00:21.820 week I had the privilege of testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee

00:00:26.760 on the Judiciary, Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, chaired by Representative

00:00:33.780 Jim Jordan of Ohio. I was testifying on behalf of the free press in the U.S., where I am a staff

00:00:41.720 writer. The other panelists included Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger of Twitter Files fame.

00:00:48.680 They documented how the U.S. government systematically worked hand-in-glove with Twitter during the

00:00:54.700 pandemic to censor content the government didn't like. I was invited to give an international

00:01:00.820 perspective and reflect on the erosion of free speech in Canada over the years, which I have

00:01:06.740 seen at first hand, and also what is happening in other Western liberal democracies. For Canada,

00:01:13.820 I shared three stories on the erosion of free speech that many of you will already be aware of.

00:01:19.320 Let's start with the Freedom Convoy protests of 2022, which saw the Trudeau government use draconian

00:01:27.400 emergency powers in the form of the Emergencies Act to crush a peaceful protest. Specifically,

00:01:33.740 I shared the story of Danny Bulford, who had been an RCMP officer and a sniper in the Prime Minister's

00:01:41.120 protective detail. In 2021, Danny decided to resign from the RCMP because he elected not to get the

00:01:49.040 COVID vaccine, and he joined the protests in 2022. Like many others, Danny was arrested and then released

00:01:57.080 without charge. And then, like hundreds of others, Danny found himself debanked by the federal government,

00:02:05.280 not knowing how he and his family would put food on the table or make their next mortgage payment.

00:02:12.100 Danny had no idea how long he'd be locked out of his accounts.

00:02:15.260 Think for a second how terrifying that must be. You've committed no crime, you've not been charged

00:02:23.500 with a crime, yet you're being punished by the state to slap you down and keep you in line.

00:02:29.640 Now, this is the kind of thing that happens in totalitarian states like China, but yet it is

00:02:35.420 happening right here in Canada. Fortunately for Danny, he got access to his bank accounts a week later,

00:02:41.840 but that doesn't make what happened to him okay. And remember, there were hundreds of people whose

00:02:49.740 lives were turned upside down just like this for holding a view the government didn't like.

00:02:55.380 I also discussed the harmful effects of the Online News Act, something we've talked about before

00:03:01.560 on the show, ostensibly trying to level the playing field. In reality, it's a big money grab by the

00:03:09.400 federal government, forcing social media companies to fork out hundreds of millions of dollars to the

00:03:15.920 legacy media, which already received millions of dollars in direct government subsidies.

00:03:22.240 Google recently made a deal with the feds, but Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram,

00:03:29.920 has refused, resulting in media content, news content being blocked for users in Canada.

00:03:36.520 This is impacting many small independent media companies that rely on Facebook and Instagram

00:03:43.380 for eyeballs and new subscriptions. I spoke to one journalist based out of Montreal. He's an

00:03:51.460 independent investigative journalist. Christopher Curtis runs an investigative digital media platform

00:03:58.120 called The Rover. His company is now dying a slow death, according to him, because of the Online News

00:04:04.720 Act. He might actually need to shut down and go back into construction work or drive an Uber to make

00:04:11.540 ends meet for him and his family. Ironically, Chris is very much on the progressive left, yet he's been as

00:04:20.300 badly affected by the Online News Act as any media company on the right. Censorship, you see, doesn't play

00:04:28.880 favorites. And this is a subtle form of censorship, because in the name of a level playing field, you in

00:04:35.700 fact advantage legacy media, which largely toes the party line, and disadvantage independent voices from

00:04:43.760 both the left and the right who challenge the consensus and the orthodox establishment narrative.

00:04:51.200 Finally, I also told the committee about the tragic death of Richard Bilkstow, which I wrote about for the

00:04:57.260 Free Press. Richard was a beloved Toronto school principal who taught mostly underprivileged kids

00:05:04.340 in the Toronto area. One day, his life went down into a downward spiral. What was his crime? Besides being

00:05:13.140 white and male, he had the temerity to push back against a DEI consultant who claimed that Canada was more

00:05:20.460 racist and more unjust than the United States. Just for doing this, he was publicly and repeatedly

00:05:27.360 humiliated and shamed by not just the DEI consultant, but also by his peers, people he had taught with

00:05:34.180 over the years. From being an honored school principal, he was shunned by his own colleagues and lost

00:05:40.800 numerous work opportunities. Eventually, Richard committed suicide tragically. This is yet another form of

00:05:49.300 censorship. Public humiliation of those who don't agree with the establishment progressive view that

00:05:56.580 views Canada as fundamentally racist country. There were so many other stories I could have told the

00:06:04.600 committee and some you've heard on the show before. I also talked about worrying trends in Europe. Look at

00:06:10.560 Ireland and France. Their governments are crafting new legislation to censor speech. Ireland's proposed new

00:06:17.440 legislation, expected to become law in a few weeks, would be the most draconian in the free world.

00:06:24.800 With a vague and opaque definition of hate, just about anything the government says is hate speech

00:06:31.860 can be considered hate speech and be punishable as a crime. This is frightening. What's more,

00:06:39.100 you don't even have to say anything. You just have to have a meme on your phone that you haven't shared.

00:06:44.460 Even that would qualify. As I told the committee, this is straight out of the minority report 0.94

00:06:50.760 featuring Tom Cruise, where in a society in the not too distant future, advanced beings called the

00:06:58.100 precogs determine that a crime is going to be committed and you are to be arrested even before

00:07:04.520 there is any crime just because you have the wrong thoughts in your head. Canada is actually not too far

00:07:11.060 behind this dystopian future. Our constitutional protections for free speech in Canada are weaker

00:07:17.560 than in the United States, which under their first and fourth amendments to the constitution

00:07:22.980 has the most robust protections for free speech anywhere on planet earth. The US Supreme Court over

00:07:30.740 the years has made it clear the bar for censoring speech in the public square must be very high.

00:07:36.960 There must be an actual and imminent threat of violence that can be traced directly to an act

00:07:44.380 of speech, such as telling people that you will pay them to go and kill so-and-so. Short of that,

00:07:51.380 the US protects all speech, even speech that would be considered deplorable and offensive.

00:07:57.240 Let's not forget that free speech is a core value of our Western civilization,

00:08:02.880 going back to the European enlightenment of the 18th century. Thinkers as diverse as David Hume,

00:08:10.220 Immanuel Kant, and Voltaire upheld the right of free expression and free and open debate as a

00:08:18.020 prerequisite for civilized society. We are sadly now on a slippery slope in Canada and many other places

00:08:24.500 in the West were gradually were giving up this core Western value. And my warning to the committee was

00:08:32.260 that Americans must be vigilant too, because if we lose America in this fight, then what hope do the

00:08:40.820 rest of us have? Lastly, and as if to prove my point, my testimony received white coverage in the US.

00:08:48.500 I was interviewed by Fox News and a couple of other media outlets, but it absolutely had zero coverage

00:08:57.380 in the legacy media here in Canada. Why? Because it didn't fit the narrative they wanted to tell

00:09:02.660 that everything is hunky-dory in Trudeau's Canada. And reporting on my testimony wouldn't fit that narrative.

00:09:10.100 QED.

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Juno News - December 10, 2023

Are we witnessing the END of free speech？

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