00:00:00.000Welcome to The Fighter. I'm your host, Chris Sims. I am the Alberta Director for the Canadian
00:00:12.660Taxpayers Federation. We are always fighting for lower taxes, less waste, and more accountable
00:00:18.480government. And it's that last part that we're going to talk about here real quick. Accountable
00:00:23.660government. How do we hold government to account? Well, by using our voices, by signing petitions,
00:00:32.000by writing emails, by holding peaceful rallies, by pushing back on the government saying,
00:00:38.740smarten up, quit wasting our money, quit hiking taxes and climbing up into our grills,
00:00:45.100quit trying to control our lives. We need less government, more accountable government here in
00:00:49.660Canada, because we can't afford otherwise. That's why we have got to have a conversation about Bill
00:00:56.120C-9. Now, largely, from what I can read, it's mostly members of faith communities, okay,
00:01:03.780who are concerned about the risk of their free expression being impinged by Bill C-9. But wait,
00:01:12.840don't you remember how it was just a few years ago where the Canadian Taxpayers Federation were
00:01:18.880warning you about things like the government planning on having a new tax on pickup trucks,
00:01:24.940new tax on SUVs. Taxpayers Federation were warning that the consumer carbon tax was costing you way
00:01:32.820too much money and it wasn't reducing emissions. Yeah, those issues, those seemingly like, you know,
00:01:40.480just strictly money issues, that was catching us some heat. Us pointing out that the government
00:01:47.100had a report on its website that was thinking about a brand new tax on pickup trucks, we were
00:01:53.060called misinformation and disinformation for that. And that wasn't true. The report was right there
00:01:59.920on the government website. Back when we were fighting against the consumer carbon tax, and I
00:02:05.440mean, me and my team, we were doing thousands of interviews over the years on this stuff.
00:02:09.460We 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.
00:02:39.460How slippery and steep is that slope when it comes to free expression?
00:02:43.320We need to be able to express ourselves freely to have sometimes uncomfortable conversations amongst adults.
00:02:52.100Otherwise, the government's grip on your ability to express yourself gets tighter and tighter.
00:02:59.760And then your ability to hold that government to account becomes weaker and weaker.
00:03:28.900It's time to modernize Canada's rules on nicotine.
00:03:31.840Alternatives to cigarettes like heated tobacco vaping products and oral smokeless products don't burn tobacco or produce smoke.
00:03:40.000Now, they aren't risk-free, but the growing body of scientific evidence shows that they have the potential to be substantially less harmful than smoking cigarettes.
00:03:50.100Now, despite this, Canadians are banned from accessing this critical information and sometimes even banned from the products.
00:03:57.940Nicotine pouches remain banned in convenience stores across the country and current laws ban
00:04:03.380communication about the risk of these products compared to cigarettes. It's absolutely ridiculous.0.89
00:04:09.200The evidence is here. The tools exist. Canadians deserve to have the freedom to know about them,0.73
00:04:15.440to learn about them, to even just understand them. It's a free country. We should be able
00:04:19.680to have this information. So learn more about this campaign and our friends over at Unsmoke
00:04:25.780by visiting their website, unsmoke.ca.
00:04:29.220And thank you so much to Unsmoke for sponsoring this episode.
00:04:52.800I needed you on the show right now because I just saw your update, your outstanding update
00:04:58.720that came from the CCF. Folks, if you don't donate yet, if you're not a member, if you're
00:05:03.040not supporting the Canadian Constitution Foundation, what are you even doing? They're
00:05:07.140there fighting for your basic rights all the time. So I got your update on Bill C-9. Now,
00:05:14.680I'm pretty up to date on stuff where they're trying to impede on my ability to freely express
00:05:20.100myself, our supporters of the Taxpayers Federation being able to have free speech, freedom of
00:05:25.060assembly, freedom of expression. But I will admit, Josh, Bill C-9 has got me spun around.
00:05:32.320Walk us through what is Bill C-9 and what just happened with it, please.
00:05:38.960Bill C-9 is the Combating Hate Act. So this is the Carney government's signature piece of
00:05:45.480anti-hate legislation and uh there has been a lot of hate in canada in recent years especially since
00:05:51.880october 7th we've seen all of these really nasty protests uh you know pro-terror uh groups taunting
00:05:58.840you know jewish people whether they're in their synagogues or holding these protests even in some
00:06:03.960cases outside of uh you know seniors care homes just because the seniors there happen to be jewish0.93
00:06:10.680So 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.
00:06:21.100So 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.
00:06:41.000So 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.
00:06:58.700And 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.
00:07:16.100and you know this has always been there in this legislation saying that you know if you're charged
00:07:22.400with one of these crimes you can get off it's a defense to say you were in good faith having
00:07:28.180a religious discussion and so the bible was never off limits the quran all the religious texts were
00:07:34.460not off limits well now if you say certain parts of those religious texts that could be construed
00:07:41.220as hateful. And depending on the context, once this bill becomes law, which should be weeks from
00:07:47.900now, now that it's passed in both houses, that's no longer a defense. So there are situations where
00:07:53.520religious people could potentially face hate crime charges, depending on context for passages from
00:08:00.760religious texts. And then it did one more thing, Bill C-9. So what it does is it bans what are
00:08:07.160called hate symbols and terror symbols and this includes you know a very thick like telephone book
00:08:13.500worth of flags of various terror groups you can no longer wave those around if it's considered
00:08:19.440hateful and also you can no longer display certain symbols like swastikas if it's considered hateful
00:08:27.680you could still display them like for education purposes or things like that and a last minute
00:08:33.340edition added just last night by the Senate and agreed to by the current government is banning
00:08:39.320nooses. So it'll be illegal to display a noose if it's considered to be hateful. So you can still
00:08:47.180draw a noose or something like that. But if there's context where the police and the crowns
00:08:53.580think that you did it because you're hateful, that noose is now something that could land you in jail.
00:08:58.520And 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?
00:09:12.080So we're really concerned that the government's done this because we don't think it actually stops anybody from being hateful.
00:09:18.880It doesn't stop anybody from becoming a terrorist because they saw, you know, they can't see that terror flag anymore.
00:09:25.420And it actually might even make them harder to find and harder to know how big the problem is.
00:09:30.720So we thought this bill was virtue signaling and virtue signaling that impacts your free expression and religion rights.
00:09:36.420So, 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?
00:09:57.440Well, duh, sorry to be inelegant, but of course. Similar to the Online Harms Act, they were trying
00:10:05.020to say, oh, we need to protect children from online predators and images of child sexual abuse.
00:10:11.520Of course, like, I don't know anyone that doesn't want those laws there and strengthened. But the
00:10:18.280issue there is, why not just strengthen those laws? Or why not just enforce those laws that
00:10:23.740are already pre-existing why start continually tacking riders onto these bills and adding extra
00:10:30.600things to it just play devil's advocate for a minute yeah so like why would they in in this
00:10:36.760case i think what's happening here is that they are not thinking these things through they want
00:10:42.160to get some some what they see as easy wins and then they just you know people who could who can
00:10:47.920oppose a hate speech right like who can say well it's okay to be hateful i mean we don't think it's
00:10:53.180okay or good to be hateful. The problem is just that when you do things like that, you put at
00:10:58.180risk all this other speech that is lawful and that people should be able to debate or talk about
00:11:03.540religious speech. And so that's what tends to happen here is there are these sort of Trojan
00:11:11.760horse issues with these bills. Online harms is an interesting one because the government said
00:11:17.940they will bring back some sort of online harms legislation in the near future. And now, once
00:11:24.720again, they're saying, well, who could be against online harms? We're just trying to protect kids
00:11:29.260from, you know, social media and AI. We just want to put in a limit on the age where you can
00:11:35.060access social media. And I think we would all agree there's some age under which kids should
00:11:39.940not be on social media, right? So who could oppose that? But then at the same time, they're going to
00:11:44.480sneak into that bill a digital safety commissioner who would uh you know threaten huge fines on
00:11:50.100social media companies that try to that don't that don't censor speech the way that the digital
00:11:55.320safety commissioner wants something that we've seen in australia where they you know they they
00:12:00.380censor any speech about the gender issue basically and uh if you don't do that there are huge fines
00:12:06.200so you know they just keep doing this they they find some something that there's consensus on
00:12:11.340among Canadians or near consensus. And then they sneak in these other aspects to control your
00:12:16.940speech and control what you can say or do that threaten your constitutional rights.
00:12:22.420Now, I'm obviously the Alberta Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. We're an advocacy
00:12:27.500organization and we can get pretty fighty. Like we can get pretty blunt with our language. And
00:12:33.040I'm seeing a slippery slope here because I've experienced it before. It wasn't too long ago
00:12:39.180were the Taxpayers Federation. It was about three years ago. We found a government report
00:12:44.080that was recommending a huge new tax on pickup trucks and SUVs. So we went crazy on it and said,
00:12:52.080absolutely not. We can't be doing this. This is wrong. No new pickup truck tax, no SUV tax.
00:12:58.140And a minister of the crown, a minister within the Trudeau government went online and said,
00:13:04.700You 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.
00:13:18.280That 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.
00:13:31.980So that was really problematic real fast, which is why we need to have some of these uncomfortable conversations about freedom of expression.
00:13:42.140So 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.
00:13:57.040What was happening with Bill C-9 at the Senate where they were trying to amend it?
00:14:03.620Yeah, so for people that don't follow closely how this works, the government creates most of these bills.
00:14:10.300So that's, you know, the Carney government in the House of Commons.
00:14:12.880And they say, we want this bill to pass and they have to, you know, debate it.
00:14:17.200And there's three readings in the House, three votes.
00:14:20.940It also goes to the Senate where the Senate is, you know, sometimes called the Chamber of Sober Second Thought.
00:14:26.140Maybe not all that sober, maybe not all that much thinking going on, but that's what it's there for.
00:14:32.060Not when we're paying for their disco bills, Josh.
00:14:33.480Not when we're paying for their discotheque bills.
00:14:43.120It's a patronage appointment in a lot of cases where you do something nice for the politicians and they make you a senator.
00:14:50.020But when they're doing their job right, they're supposed to study these bills and make them better.
00:14:55.560In this case, they looked at this bill and they tried to mostly make it worse and worse in really horrifying ways.
00:15:02.840I mean, adding the nooses part of this was that originally needed in the Senate.
00:15:07.280But 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,
00:15:15.820where they said they were going to make it a crime to downplay, justify, or condone residential
00:15:22.960schools, essentially outlaw what they call residential school denialism. And, you know,
00:15:29.760Chris, I'm sure you agree that residential schools were wrong and that, you know, horrible abuse has
00:15:35.080happened in residential schools. It's like the darkest chapter of Canadian history. And we're
00:15:40.920still trying to learn everything that happened in that and um it's it's an important conversation
00:15:47.020to be had but what this would have done is say those people that talk about how you know wait a
00:15:52.580minute at Kamloops what really happened there were there really bodies discovered uh was this really
00:15:57.100as bad as we say it was were there some you know priests who had good intentions that could be
00:16:03.040considered downplaying or condoning residential schools and that would have become a crime if
00:16:09.240if people were charged with that, they could have gone to jail. So the Senate committee added that.
00:16:15.320Then it goes to the whole Senate for a vote. And that was like fairly narrowly voted down by the
00:16:21.840Senate. So it will not be part of the law. They might, you know, try again at some point. There
00:16:26.980was an NDP member who has a bill. I believe she still has a bill trying to push this through. So
00:16:32.640it could still happen. But thankfully, it's not in this bill C9.
00:16:36.760I 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.
00:16:57.720We'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.
00:17:11.560and i was on the air several times mainstream talk radio mainstream television and people were
00:17:18.860calling in and saying you are a climate change denier and we had leading voices in the media
00:17:26.300media world saying climate change deniers should be illegal seriously or they should be put in jail
00:17:32.940i was called a monster this was about attacks which is now gone by the way the liberal prime
00:17:40.000Minister Mark Carney got rid of the consumer carbon tax. So I'm pointing this out again as
00:17:45.260that slippery slope where you can really race down it fast. And as far as the current issue,
00:17:51.760where they tried putting that through, I need to give a shout out to Aaron Peet. He's been on this
00:17:57.260program before. He's spoken to Juno News before. I talked to him way back when he was a kid and he
00:18:03.220was just starting his own podcast. He is now the chief of the local First Nation where I grew up,
00:18:09.060It's basically right in between Hope and Yale, British Columbia.
00:18:12.420And he came out and said, whoa, we cannot put this into law.
00:18:17.880We cannot start restricting people's free expression because I don't want to speak for him.
00:18:22.560But to paraphrase, he basically said, reconciliation means a lot to me.
00:18:29.880And if we do this, it is going to hold back true people to people reconciliation.
00:21:38.360The government's already said we agree with that amendment.
00:21:40.340So 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.
00:21:46.760OK, 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.
00:22:03.340So that's not the Taxpayers Federation wheelhouse, but that is a part of free expression and free speech.
00:22:10.440If 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.
00:22:24.240Lots of Canadians are parts of those religions.
00:22:26.900What would you say to them if they are now worried about their expression being curbed by the government?
00:22:32.720Like, what happens after this becomes law?
00:22:35.620Yeah, 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.
00:22:43.580What 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.
00:22:51.240The 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.
00:23:00.920So 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.
00:23:20.800And the definition of hatred has been kept quite high thanks to advocacy from the CCF and others.
00:23:28.100So it's really that more extreme speech in conjunction with the Bible passages that's going to get you in trouble.
00:23:35.360But, you know, if you have your own concerns, you might have to consult a lawyer before you put yourself at risk.
00:23:44.520So I wish I could tell people better news,
00:23:47.280but it's going to be sort of case by case