Juno News - Carney’s “anti-hate” bill should concern EVERYONE

00:00:00.000 Welcome to The Fighter. I'm your host, Chris Sims. I am the Alberta Director for the Canadian

00:00:12.660 Taxpayers Federation. We are always fighting for lower taxes, less waste, and more accountable

00:00:18.480 government. And it's that last part that we're going to talk about here real quick. Accountable

00:00:23.660 government. How do we hold government to account? Well, by using our voices, by signing petitions,

00:00:32.000 by writing emails, by holding peaceful rallies, by pushing back on the government saying,

00:00:38.740 smarten up, quit wasting our money, quit hiking taxes and climbing up into our grills,

00:00:45.100 quit trying to control our lives. We need less government, more accountable government here in

00:00:49.660 Canada, because we can't afford otherwise. That's why we have got to have a conversation about Bill

00:00:56.120 C-9. Now, largely, from what I can read, it's mostly members of faith communities, okay,

00:01:03.780 who are concerned about the risk of their free expression being impinged by Bill C-9. But wait,

00:01:12.840 don't you remember how it was just a few years ago where the Canadian Taxpayers Federation were

00:01:18.880 warning you about things like the government planning on having a new tax on pickup trucks,

00:01:24.940 new tax on SUVs. Taxpayers Federation were warning that the consumer carbon tax was costing you way

00:01:32.820 too much money and it wasn't reducing emissions. Yeah, those issues, those seemingly like, you know,

00:01:40.480 just strictly money issues, that was catching us some heat. Us pointing out that the government

00:01:47.100 had a report on its website that was thinking about a brand new tax on pickup trucks, we were

00:01:53.060 called misinformation and disinformation for that. And that wasn't true. The report was right there

00:01:59.920 on the government website. Back when we were fighting against the consumer carbon tax, and I

00:02:05.440 mean, me and my team, we were doing thousands of interviews over the years on this stuff.

00:02:09.460 We were called climate change deniers. We were called monsters for wanting to save you $15 when you fill up a family minivan at the gas pump. Like what? So if we're being called misinformation and disinformation by the federal government, by the way, the ones doing the taxing and the thinking on this stuff, and we're being called, you know, climate change deniers, using that D word in there, and monsters.

00:02:39.460 How slippery and steep is that slope when it comes to free expression?

00:02:43.320 We need to be able to express ourselves freely to have sometimes uncomfortable conversations amongst adults.

00:02:52.100 Otherwise, the government's grip on your ability to express yourself gets tighter and tighter.

00:02:59.760 And then your ability to hold that government to account becomes weaker and weaker.

00:03:06.780 We can't let that happen.

00:03:08.140 But Bill C-9 is largely going to affect, from the sounds of it, according to the lawyers, it's largely going to affect faith groups.

00:03:18.800 So where do we go from here?

00:03:21.000 What's going to happen with this law?

00:03:23.300 How will it affect Canadians?

00:03:25.460 We're going to talk to the experts on this stuff.

00:03:28.080 Let's find out.

00:03:28.900 It's time to modernize Canada's rules on nicotine.

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00:03:50.100 Now, despite this, Canadians are banned from accessing this critical information and sometimes even banned from the products.

00:03:57.940 Nicotine pouches remain banned in convenience stores across the country and current laws ban

00:04:03.380 communication about the risk of these products compared to cigarettes. It's absolutely ridiculous. 0.89

00:04:09.200 The evidence is here. The tools exist. Canadians deserve to have the freedom to know about them, 0.73

00:04:15.440 to learn about them, to even just understand them. It's a free country. We should be able

00:04:19.680 to have this information. So learn more about this campaign and our friends over at Unsmoke

00:04:25.780 by visiting their website, unsmoke.ca.

00:04:29.220 And thank you so much to Unsmoke for sponsoring this episode.

00:04:32.180 Joining me now is Josh DeHaas.

00:04:34.660 He is the interim litigation director

00:04:37.200 with the Canadian Constitution Foundation,

00:04:39.920 unless you don't know.

00:04:41.220 They're the ones that have won twice in court

00:04:44.500 saying that the Emergencies Act was,

00:04:46.840 and we shouldn't have done it.

00:04:48.400 That's the official legal term, right, Josh?

00:04:50.500 That's right.

00:04:51.160 That's what we call it.

00:04:52.460 Okay.

00:04:52.800 I needed you on the show right now because I just saw your update, your outstanding update

00:04:58.720 that came from the CCF. Folks, if you don't donate yet, if you're not a member, if you're

00:05:03.040 not supporting the Canadian Constitution Foundation, what are you even doing? They're

00:05:07.140 there fighting for your basic rights all the time. So I got your update on Bill C-9. Now,

00:05:14.680 I'm pretty up to date on stuff where they're trying to impede on my ability to freely express

00:05:20.100 myself, our supporters of the Taxpayers Federation being able to have free speech, freedom of

00:05:25.060 assembly, freedom of expression. But I will admit, Josh, Bill C-9 has got me spun around.

00:05:32.320 Walk us through what is Bill C-9 and what just happened with it, please.

00:05:38.960 Bill C-9 is the Combating Hate Act. So this is the Carney government's signature piece of

00:05:45.480 anti-hate legislation and uh there has been a lot of hate in canada in recent years especially since

00:05:51.880 october 7th we've seen all of these really nasty protests uh you know pro-terror uh groups taunting

00:05:58.840 you know jewish people whether they're in their synagogues or holding these protests even in some

00:06:03.960 cases outside of uh you know seniors care homes just because the seniors there happen to be jewish 0.93

00:06:10.680 So instead of just enforcing the laws that we already have against, you know, mischief and intimidation and terrorism, the government decided they wanted to do some virtue signaling.

00:06:21.100 So they came up with a bill that adds a new intimidation offense, which is just like the old offense, which bans intimidation where you intend to provoke a state of fear in a religious group or whatever by standing outside that building and acting in an intimidating way.

00:06:41.000 So we think that's totally redundant sort of virtue signaling. But at the same time, trying to address that real problem, they, in negotiations with other parties, decided they were going to remove the good faith religious speech defense from hate crimes in Canada.

00:06:58.700 And this is a defense that exists for the purposes of allowing people to continue to read passages of the Bible and talk about, you know, traditional religious views on things like sexual orientation or gender identity.

00:07:16.100 and you know this has always been there in this legislation saying that you know if you're charged

00:07:22.400 with one of these crimes you can get off it's a defense to say you were in good faith having

00:07:28.180 a religious discussion and so the bible was never off limits the quran all the religious texts were

00:07:34.460 not off limits well now if you say certain parts of those religious texts that could be construed

00:07:41.220 as hateful. And depending on the context, once this bill becomes law, which should be weeks from

00:07:47.900 now, now that it's passed in both houses, that's no longer a defense. So there are situations where

00:07:53.520 religious people could potentially face hate crime charges, depending on context for passages from

00:08:00.760 religious texts. And then it did one more thing, Bill C-9. So what it does is it bans what are

00:08:07.160 called hate symbols and terror symbols and this includes you know a very thick like telephone book

00:08:13.500 worth of flags of various terror groups you can no longer wave those around if it's considered

00:08:19.440 hateful and also you can no longer display certain symbols like swastikas if it's considered hateful

00:08:27.680 you could still display them like for education purposes or things like that and a last minute

00:08:33.340 edition added just last night by the Senate and agreed to by the current government is banning

00:08:39.320 nooses. So it'll be illegal to display a noose if it's considered to be hateful. So you can still

00:08:47.180 draw a noose or something like that. But if there's context where the police and the crowns

00:08:53.580 think that you did it because you're hateful, that noose is now something that could land you in jail.

00:08:58.520 And it's just a really slippery slope for freedom of speech when you start banning symbols and content and flags and, you know, nooses and people, if you can ban that, you can ban just about any other symbol, right?

00:09:12.080 So we're really concerned that the government's done this because we don't think it actually stops anybody from being hateful.

00:09:18.880 It doesn't stop anybody from becoming a terrorist because they saw, you know, they can't see that terror flag anymore.

00:09:25.420 And it actually might even make them harder to find and harder to know how big the problem is.

00:09:30.720 So we thought this bill was virtue signaling and virtue signaling that impacts your free expression and religion rights.

00:09:36.420 So, again, to be clear, this reminds me a lot of the so-called Online Harms Act, where they'll pull in some original Trojan horse at the front of the parade, and they'll say something like, this is for people's safety, don't you want to protect people from terrorism?

00:09:57.440 Well, duh, sorry to be inelegant, but of course. Similar to the Online Harms Act, they were trying

00:10:05.020 to say, oh, we need to protect children from online predators and images of child sexual abuse.

00:10:11.520 Of course, like, I don't know anyone that doesn't want those laws there and strengthened. But the

00:10:18.280 issue there is, why not just strengthen those laws? Or why not just enforce those laws that

00:10:23.740 are already pre-existing why start continually tacking riders onto these bills and adding extra

00:10:30.600 things to it just play devil's advocate for a minute yeah so like why would they in in this

00:10:36.760 case i think what's happening here is that they are not thinking these things through they want

00:10:42.160 to get some some what they see as easy wins and then they just you know people who could who can

00:10:47.920 oppose a hate speech right like who can say well it's okay to be hateful i mean we don't think it's

00:10:53.180 okay or good to be hateful. The problem is just that when you do things like that, you put at

00:10:58.180 risk all this other speech that is lawful and that people should be able to debate or talk about

00:11:03.540 religious speech. And so that's what tends to happen here is there are these sort of Trojan

00:11:11.760 horse issues with these bills. Online harms is an interesting one because the government said

00:11:17.940 they will bring back some sort of online harms legislation in the near future. And now, once

00:11:24.720 again, they're saying, well, who could be against online harms? We're just trying to protect kids

00:11:29.260 from, you know, social media and AI. We just want to put in a limit on the age where you can

00:11:35.060 access social media. And I think we would all agree there's some age under which kids should

00:11:39.940 not be on social media, right? So who could oppose that? But then at the same time, they're going to

00:11:44.480 sneak into that bill a digital safety commissioner who would uh you know threaten huge fines on

00:11:50.100 social media companies that try to that don't that don't censor speech the way that the digital

00:11:55.320 safety commissioner wants something that we've seen in australia where they you know they they

00:12:00.380 censor any speech about the gender issue basically and uh if you don't do that there are huge fines

00:12:06.200 so you know they just keep doing this they they find some something that there's consensus on

00:12:11.340 among Canadians or near consensus. And then they sneak in these other aspects to control your

00:12:16.940 speech and control what you can say or do that threaten your constitutional rights.

00:12:22.420 Now, I'm obviously the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We're an advocacy

00:12:27.500 organization and we can get pretty fighty. Like we can get pretty blunt with our language. And

00:12:33.040 I'm seeing a slippery slope here because I've experienced it before. It wasn't too long ago

00:12:39.180 were the Taxpayers Federation. It was about three years ago. We found a government report

00:12:44.080 that was recommending a huge new tax on pickup trucks and SUVs. So we went crazy on it and said,

00:12:52.080 absolutely not. We can't be doing this. This is wrong. No new pickup truck tax, no SUV tax.

00:12:58.140 And a minister of the crown, a minister within the Trudeau government went online and said,

00:13:04.700 You are committing, I forget what term it was, either misinformation or disinformation, like from a longtime advocacy group coming from directly from a member of the government.

00:13:15.520 And it was not great.

00:13:18.280 That is a very uncomfortable place to be, especially when the government at the same time is saying things like we're going to crack down on misinformation and disinformation because they decide what is misinformation and disinformation.

00:13:31.980 So that was really problematic real fast, which is why we need to have some of these uncomfortable conversations about freedom of expression.

00:13:42.140 So with Bill C-9, I started seeing a lot of emails coming in and I wasn't following it. At the Senate, what was happening at that committee within the Senate? Yes, there are Senate committees, people, and you pay for them.

00:13:57.040 What was happening with Bill C-9 at the Senate where they were trying to amend it?

00:14:03.620 Yeah, so for people that don't follow closely how this works, the government creates most of these bills.

00:14:10.300 So that's, you know, the Carney government in the House of Commons.

00:14:12.880 And they say, we want this bill to pass and they have to, you know, debate it.

00:14:17.200 And there's three readings in the House, three votes.

00:14:20.940 It also goes to the Senate where the Senate is, you know, sometimes called the Chamber of Sober Second Thought.

00:14:26.140 Maybe not all that sober, maybe not all that much thinking going on, but that's what it's there for.

00:14:32.060 Not when we're paying for their disco bills, Josh.

00:14:33.480 Not when we're paying for their discotheque bills.

00:14:35.300 Sorry, go ahead.

00:14:36.220 We're paying for a lot of bills.

00:14:38.180 Well, you guys know we're paying for it.

00:14:39.660 Senators are very expensive.

00:14:41.540 They're very well paid.

00:14:43.120 It's a patronage appointment in a lot of cases where you do something nice for the politicians and they make you a senator.

00:14:50.020 But when they're doing their job right, they're supposed to study these bills and make them better.

00:14:55.560 In this case, they looked at this bill and they tried to mostly make it worse and worse in really horrifying ways.

00:15:02.840 I mean, adding the nooses part of this was that originally needed in the Senate.

00:15:07.280 But a much bigger risk to free speech that thankfully was voted down by by the Senate as a whole came out of the Human Rights Committee,

00:15:15.820 where they said they were going to make it a crime to downplay, justify, or condone residential

00:15:22.960 schools, essentially outlaw what they call residential school denialism. And, you know,

00:15:29.760 Chris, I'm sure you agree that residential schools were wrong and that, you know, horrible abuse has

00:15:35.080 happened in residential schools. It's like the darkest chapter of Canadian history. And we're

00:15:40.920 still trying to learn everything that happened in that and um it's it's an important conversation

00:15:47.020 to be had but what this would have done is say those people that talk about how you know wait a

00:15:52.580 minute at Kamloops what really happened there were there really bodies discovered uh was this really

00:15:57.100 as bad as we say it was were there some you know priests who had good intentions that could be

00:16:03.040 considered downplaying or condoning residential schools and that would have become a crime if

00:16:09.240 if people were charged with that, they could have gone to jail. So the Senate committee added that.

00:16:15.320 Then it goes to the whole Senate for a vote. And that was like fairly narrowly voted down by the

00:16:21.840 Senate. So it will not be part of the law. They might, you know, try again at some point. There

00:16:26.980 was an NDP member who has a bill. I believe she still has a bill trying to push this through. So

00:16:32.640 it could still happen. But thankfully, it's not in this bill C9.

00:16:36.760 I got to wade into this for a second on that term denialism. Number one, that term comes from being a Holocaust denier. So people need to know the verbal context for that. Number two, I'll bring this back to my own experience, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and I know these topics are upsetting for people.

00:16:57.720 We're having an adult conversation about these things. I remember just a few years ago when it was the Taxpayers Federation and a couple of other politicians that were fighting something as straightforward as the consumer carbon tax.

00:17:11.560 and i was on the air several times mainstream talk radio mainstream television and people were

00:17:18.860 calling in and saying you are a climate change denier and we had leading voices in the media

00:17:26.300 media world saying climate change deniers should be illegal seriously or they should be put in jail

00:17:32.940 i was called a monster this was about attacks which is now gone by the way the liberal prime

00:17:40.000 Minister Mark Carney got rid of the consumer carbon tax. So I'm pointing this out again as

00:17:45.260 that slippery slope where you can really race down it fast. And as far as the current issue,

00:17:51.760 where they tried putting that through, I need to give a shout out to Aaron Peet. He's been on this

00:17:57.260 program before. He's spoken to Juno News before. I talked to him way back when he was a kid and he

00:18:03.220 was just starting his own podcast. He is now the chief of the local First Nation where I grew up,

00:18:09.060 It's basically right in between Hope and Yale, British Columbia.

00:18:12.420 And he came out and said, whoa, we cannot put this into law.

00:18:17.880 We cannot start restricting people's free expression because I don't want to speak for him.

00:18:22.560 But to paraphrase, he basically said, reconciliation means a lot to me.

00:18:29.880 And if we do this, it is going to hold back true people to people reconciliation.

00:18:37.000 How did we come that close?

00:18:39.060 to having the Senate do this?

00:18:42.040 Yeah, I think the Senate is,

00:18:44.200 some senators are just out of touch

00:18:46.820 with regular Canadians.

00:18:48.720 The good news on that point is,

00:18:50.580 you mentioned Aaron Peet.

00:18:52.040 I heard through the grapevine,

00:18:53.300 I was talking to people on the ground

00:18:56.640 trying to figure out what's going to happen

00:18:58.080 with this amendment.

00:18:59.220 And a lot of Indigenous people

00:19:00.660 pushed back to their senators

00:19:02.240 and said, this is not helpful.

00:19:04.660 They want people to know

00:19:06.100 what happened in residential schools.

00:19:07.680 They want people to know

00:19:08.420 about the intergenerational trauma that that caused for many indigenous Canadians. They want

00:19:13.540 the people to know about the abuse and the fact that communities are still suffering as a result

00:19:18.960 of what happened in those schools. Lost their languages in many cases. Right. Like, anyway.

00:19:24.820 You were, many people were, you know, they, instead of growing up in their communities with

00:19:29.560 their parents, they were growing up far, far away because they were in these schools and,

00:19:33.640 you know sometimes involuntarily uh sometimes not but in any event we we need to be able to

00:19:41.480 have discussion i mean this is the point of of free speech the reason it's protected is so that

00:19:46.720 we can get to the truth and the reality is you know we go generations thinking one thing as a

00:19:53.780 as a sort of consensus viewpoint and then all of a sudden enough people because they're able to 0.62

00:19:58.240 speak out and convince others you know society realizes something like residential schools is

00:20:03.140 wrong like if you went back 100 years the typical canadian would think they're a good thing right so 0.87

00:20:08.740 it's because you're able to have those conversations and the government isn't stepping in and censoring

00:20:13.540 you that you get to the truth of the matter so if they had passed this amendment i think there

00:20:19.140 probably wouldn't have been that many criminal prosecutions for it but people would have stopped

00:20:23.460 talking and that would have just uh you know led to conspiracy theories you know you know why are

00:20:29.460 they trying to shut down our speech what you know none of this can be true since the government is

00:20:34.740 you know won't even let us talk about it and uh it doesn't it doesn't do any good to shut down

00:20:39.940 free speech it just makes it harder for us to get to the truth and to you know have that

00:20:44.580 reconciliation for example and cause more division and resentment which is the last thing we need

00:20:49.700 um i gotta ask you so to be clear that part isn't in here correct that part is out so the bill is

00:20:55.860 is passed in the House, it's passed in the Senate. There was a minor amendment to add the word

00:21:00.260 nooses, so there still will be a motion just to officially pass the bill again in the House of

00:21:05.780 Commons, but it's essentially going to become law in its current form without that denialism crime

00:21:11.580 thing. Thank goodness. Okay, so we've talked a lot about, you know, Taxpayers Federation examples and

00:21:17.240 people being able to freely express themselves, but I did want to give you a chance now that the

00:21:21.660 law has been passed and they're just waiting for the one checkmark box from the House of Commons

00:21:25.760 And then I imagine, does it just leapfrog straight to the GG for the Royal Assent or does it go back through Senate?

00:21:32.120 No, it'll just, it'll, the Senate's got their one, one chance, right, to do this.

00:21:36.940 And they made that minor amendment.

00:21:38.360 The government's already said we agree with that amendment.

00:21:40.340 So it's basically a checkbox and then it'll go to the GG and then it'll be law 30 days after, after it's signed.

00:21:46.760 OK, I wanted to give you the floor with the last word here, because largely, to be clear, Bill C-9 has been pushed back on by, I would argue, people of faith, people who are really worried about their own freedom of expression within religious contexts being impinged.

00:22:03.340 So that's not the Taxpayers Federation wheelhouse, but that is a part of free expression and free speech.

00:22:10.440 If someone's watching and if our audience is watching and they're, you know, a faith based organization or they're a member of a faith group and they quote from the Bible, which, by the way, is the foundational text for three major religions that I know of.

00:22:24.240 Lots of Canadians are parts of those religions.

00:22:26.900 What would you say to them if they are now worried about their expression being curbed by the government?

00:22:32.720 Like, what happens after this becomes law?

00:22:35.620 Yeah, so what I would say is it's really fact-specific, unfortunately, whether or not it's something that you would be actually charged for.

00:22:43.580 What I would say is just reading a passage from the Bible on its own is very unlikely to lead to criminal charges, so that's the good news.

00:22:51.240 The other good news is that we pushed back, and as a result, the government has maintained the requirement for attorney general consent before there are charges.

00:23:00.920 So that's just one more step that makes it less likely you'll get charged. And we also push back against their attempt to lower the definition of hatred because it's only where that speech from the Bible or whatever can be considered inciting hatred that you could be charged.

00:23:20.800 And the definition of hatred has been kept quite high thanks to advocacy from the CCF and others.

00:23:28.100 So it's really that more extreme speech in conjunction with the Bible passages that's going to get you in trouble.

00:23:35.360 But, you know, if you have your own concerns, you might have to consult a lawyer before you put yourself at risk.

00:23:44.520 So I wish I could tell people better news,

00:23:47.280 but it's going to be sort of case by case

00:23:50.640 whether or not this leads to charges.

00:23:53.180 Josh, where can people find your work?

00:23:55.420 How can they listen in on your podcast,

00:23:57.480 which is outstanding?

00:23:58.440 Where can they find your work at the CCF?

00:24:00.160 And most importantly,

00:24:01.100 how can they support the Canadian Constitution Foundation?

00:24:03.760 Because again, folks, it was these guys

00:24:06.160 that fought the Emergencies Act and won twice in court,

00:24:10.080 where it was found to be illegal and unconstitutional.

00:24:12.800 So definitely give them your support if you can.

00:24:15.200 Yeah, thank you so much, Chris.

00:24:16.600 I really appreciate it.

00:24:17.420 So going to our website and hitting the donate button,

00:24:20.720 it's a blue button at the top of our website at theccf.ca is the best way to support us.

00:24:26.760 And you can also sign up for our Freedom Update newsletter,

00:24:30.680 which you'll find on our website and also our podcast, Not Reserving Judgment,

00:24:34.920 which is available on Apple, Spotify and also YouTube.

00:24:38.420 and we look at legal cases each week

00:24:41.300 and give you our bad legal takes

00:24:43.060 where we make fun of some bad legal judgments

00:24:45.540 and it's a lot of fun.

00:24:47.240 So thanks for all your support.

00:24:49.580 Everybody needs a bit of joy.

00:24:50.900 We have to be happy warriors

00:24:52.140 and I can endorse.

00:24:53.720 Go listen to that podcast.

00:24:55.500 It's not reserving judgment.

00:24:56.660 It's funny.

00:24:57.660 Like listening to free, seriously,

00:24:59.100 listening to smart people 1.00

00:24:59.980 make fun of stupid decisions 1.00

00:25:01.340 is entertaining and lighthearted. 1.00

00:25:03.140 So thank you so much, Josh, for your time.

00:25:05.240 Thank you.

00:25:06.460 Once again, folks,

00:25:07.580 it's because you're watching Juneau News. It's because you're watching the Canadian Taxpayers

00:25:12.480 Federation on YouTube that you're getting information, insight, and advocacy like this.

00:25:18.780 Remember how upset people were with the Emergencies Act and the government had the gall to freeze

00:25:25.460 people's bank accounts for assembling and expressing themselves? It was the Canadian

00:25:30.880 Constitution Foundation that was leading the charge against that nonsense in court,

00:25:35.560 and they have won twice. They're following that case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada,

00:25:42.700 just as you've seen coverage both on True North and Juno News on all of these issues,

00:25:48.360 which frankly can sometimes become uncomfortable. Sometimes these issues aren't easy to talk about.

00:25:55.040 That's called journalism. That's called freedom of expression. Because if we all get the information

00:26:01.100 that we need, the W5 information, without all of the emotions attached to it, then you as an

00:26:07.500 individual can make up your mind and think for yourself and act and vote accordingly. So that's

00:26:14.500 why it's super important. If you don't support us yet, be sure to subscribe to Juneau News,

00:26:20.740 subscribe to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, and most importantly,

00:26:25.620 share this show with people who need to know.

00:26:31.100 You

Juno News - June 10, 2026

Carney’s “anti-hate” bill should concern EVERYONE

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