Juno News - Mark Carney's war on freedom of speech

00:00:00.000 And welcome to this edition of Straight Up with Mark Bertrone. I am your host. Thank you so much

00:00:09.440 for tuning in. Ontario Premier Doug Ford wants Prime Minister Carney to put his elbows back up.

00:00:15.920 He says Carney has all but surrendered to Trump. Let's listen. We have to use our strengths as

00:00:22.020 President Trump wants to destroy our auto sector, take down our steel sector, go after our

00:00:27.100 manufacturing sector. But we can't sit back and let President Trump continuously increase tariffs

00:00:32.780 and the Prime Minister's decreasing tariffs. That doesn't cut it. It doesn't cut it, says Doug.

00:00:38.660 He wants to get tough with the Americans on trade. But when he tried to retaliate last March using

00:00:45.060 energy as the club to get back at the Americans, it failed miserably. Back then, he threatened to

00:00:51.340 impose a 25% surtax on energy exports from Ontario to neighboring states. Will he revisit that

00:00:59.080 response? Earlier last March, Ford warned the U.S. governors in Michigan, Minnesota and New York

00:01:06.680 that Ontario was prepared to add a 25% surcharge to the electricity we export to their states if

00:01:12.820 the Trump tariffs were not removed. Trump responded in a hurry by upping the ante to

00:01:19.440 another 50%. Quote, colossal 50% tariff on Canada and Ford backed off. Meantime, conservative leader

00:01:28.820 Pierre Paulyet says the PM failed to protect auto sector jobs during his trade talks with Trump.

00:01:35.340 Just over an hour ago, a report came out that the U.S. Commerce Secretary said there will

00:01:41.460 be no relief for Canadian-made automobiles going into the United States. The Prime Minister

00:01:48.400 is back down on counter tariffs, back down on the DST, back down on defence. Yesterday promised

00:01:54.980 to push a trillion dollars of private sector investment out of our country. How is he going

00:01:59.860 to look those Canadian auto workers in the eye and tell them how he got nothing for them

00:02:04.200 in return? Mr. Speaker, it is a sad day in this House. When the Leader of the Opposition suggests

00:02:12.080 that standing up for the defence of this country, when the Leader of the Opposition suggests

00:02:18.380 that spending for, to defend our borders, that spending to defend our filament in NATO, that that

00:02:26.300 is backing down on defence, we will, shame, shame. Mr. Speaker, at least he finally got up.

00:02:34.200 But he didn't address the question about auto workers. As we know, Mark Carney has a strong

00:02:39.120 affinity to the traditions and laws of Britain, the UK, having served as governor of the Bank

00:02:44.260 of England. Based on his actions in Canada, some people are wondering if he is attempting

00:02:49.780 to import some of the UK's recent, frankly, draconian moves to crack down on speech in that country.

00:02:58.080 Which the government does not approve of. Christine Van Gein is the litigation director at the Canadian

00:03:03.240 Constitution Foundation, which serves as a voice for individual rights and freedoms in

00:03:08.880 Canada's courtrooms. She argues that on September the 19th, the Carney government tabled Bill C-19,

00:03:16.480 the Combating Hate Act. It makes five changes to the criminal code, each one troubling for free

00:03:23.120 expression. Welcome, Christine. Thanks so much for having me on. All right, let's talk a little bit

00:03:28.080 about what troubles you about the Combating Hate Act, the changes to it. Yeah, so if your listeners

00:03:34.640 might recall, there was a piece of legislation in the last parliament called Bill C-63, and that made

00:03:40.560 some changes to criminal law related to hate speech. And as a civil liberties organisation, we have concerns

00:03:48.400 generally about putting people in prison for their words, even if their words are horrible. And, you

00:03:55.200 know, there's all kinds of things that people might say or believe that I think are wrong. But I don't

00:03:59.520 think that the right approach is to put people in prison because of the things they say. So there are

00:04:05.920 sort of five major changes that this new bill, C-9, brings in. And so it's sort of similar to C-63,

00:04:14.640 but it's only criminal prohibitions and it deals with five really specific types of things. So the

00:04:21.840 first thing that C-9 does is it removes the requirement for the attorneys general to provide

00:04:30.080 their consent when a hate propaganda charge or a hate crime charge is laid. So under existing law,

00:04:38.000 the attorney general needs to consent to laying one of these charges because hate speech offences by

00:04:44.320 their nature are very subjective. They are vague. They are prone to misunderstanding by police,

00:04:52.240 by prosecutors and by judges. And one of the guardrails against abuse was that the attorney

00:04:57.680 general needed to consent to these charges being laid. That has been removed. This is actually a huge

00:05:04.960 issue in England. If your listeners have been tracking what's happening in that country,

00:05:09.840 because police are arresting around 30 people a day in that country for speech crimes. And one of

00:05:16.160 the big things that the police have actually said is that they are having difficulty knowing when it is

00:05:21.360 appropriate or not appropriate to lay a charge. So it was really important that we had that provision

00:05:28.160 in Canada to kind of help the police put a restraint on abusive charges. That is now being removed.

00:05:34.800 The second thing that is really major change in this bill is it criminalizes willfully promoting hatred

00:05:45.120 by displaying certain symbols in public. Now, you probably know some of the symbols that are going

00:05:51.840 to be prohibited. One of them is listed specifically. It's the swastika. And we read news reports every

00:05:58.560 single year about some weirdo, some crank who has flown a swastika flag on his front porch. And every

00:06:07.440 year when we read those reports, we're reminded that as awful as it is, a swastika is not illegal. This 0.95

00:06:14.320 change in the Bell C9 would change that. It could make the flying of that symbol alone a criminal offense.

00:06:24.640 And it also would criminalize a number of other symbols, mostly the symbols of listed terrorist

00:06:32.160 entities. And look, I am not someone who wants to defend the flying of those symbols. I think it's

00:06:38.800 repugnant. But we are actually less safe if we do not know what our fellow Canadians think. We are not

00:06:46.080 safer because people are silent about their repugnant views. It is better to see those things in plain sight.

00:06:53.040 Now, there are a few other changes, some extreme sentencing available, life imprisonment for

00:06:59.120 speech crimes, as well as what some have characterized as a bubble zone law, but it really is more like a

00:07:08.240 redundant law that would criminalize obstructing access to certain religious facilities. Obstructing access

00:07:16.640 and intimidation are already these blockades and intimidation are already criminal offenses in

00:07:22.080 Canada. So that part of the law is a little bit redundant.

00:07:26.160 I'm just wondering why the government wants to remove those guardrails around the solicitor general.

00:07:35.200 I mean, why would they do that? Do you know what the rationale for that is?

00:07:40.880 So my feeling is taken together. The purpose of all of this is to generate more charges,

00:07:47.840 more prosecutions and more convictions for unwanted speech. It's actually quite difficult under the

00:07:54.720 existing hate law prohibitions under the criminal code to obtain a conviction. They're quite rare.

00:08:01.440 Charges themselves are quite rare because of this, a journey general requirement to consent to the

00:08:05.920 charges. So we don't even see a lot of charges, let alone convictions. This is a clear indication

00:08:12.880 by this government that they want that to change.

00:08:15.920 So this was going to have, in your view and the view of others, a chilling effect on speech

00:08:20.800 altogether. Once they see more convictions around this, they're going to start to self-center,

00:08:25.520 which is not self-censor rather, which is not what we want in a country like Canada.

00:08:30.320 Yeah. I mean, I think that there will be a chilling effect, but I think more broadly,

00:08:34.160 it's just deeply illiberal to put people in jail for their views, for their opinions,

00:08:39.520 even if their opinions are offensive. If someone has a extremist view, if someone has a radical,

00:08:46.480 racist view, it's much better that we know who those people in our community are

00:08:51.440 so that we can either avoid them or we can try to explain why their views might not be right.

00:08:58.160 We can educate others about better ideas. You know, Europe has famously outlawed things like

00:09:06.960 Holocaust denial. And I have to tell you, it did not reduce Holocaust denial in Europe. It is one of 0.71

00:09:12.320 the places where those terrible ideas flourish the most. And it kind of gives the ideas a lot more power

00:09:20.880 because people who have these repugnant ideas can whisper in your ear, I can tell you what the

00:09:26.240 government doesn't want you to know and tell you in secret without the benefit of those ideas being

00:09:31.360 challenged and taken apart systematically in public. We all benefit from seeing a bad idea get torn down.

00:09:39.440 And now we're losing that collision between truth and falsehood that John Stuart Mill kind of

00:09:47.520 praised in his great work on liberty. We benefit from seeing bad ideas taken down.

00:09:55.120 Yeah. I certainly take your point about burying stuff and making it more powerful. We think we're

00:10:01.200 getting rid of it, but in fact, we're just putting it into the shadows, pushing it into the shadows

00:10:06.160 where it can fester and grow. You know what I mean? I mean, that's essentially what you're saying.

00:10:12.960 Well, also when people who have these kind of fringe or radical ideas are sort of shut off

00:10:19.920 from the rest of society, they end up only interacting with one another and that radicalizes

00:10:26.080 them further. It's better to know what people think so that we can, you know, present them with a

00:10:32.320 different viewpoint and present them with the truth. That ends up being a much better society than one that

00:10:38.400 uses censorship to have one government approved viewpoint put out there.

00:10:45.680 And I guess it opens the door to deeper levels of censorship. In other words,

00:10:52.400 if they can stop you from saying things that are obviously abhorrent, then they can gradually,

00:10:58.480 slowly, but surely expand that to include any opposition to the government. I mean, isn't that the

00:11:04.240 case? Governments, they start off with what appears to be well-intentioned policy, but over the course

00:11:12.160 of time, as they attack those who want to criticize them, you know, it's an easy step into tyranny.

00:11:22.800 Yes. So when the technical, when the government held their technical briefing about this legislation,

00:11:28.880 about C9 on the issue of the prohibition of these symbols. So only two symbols are listed in the

00:11:36.240 legislation specifically, and that's the swastika and the SS lightning bolts, the Nazi SS lightning bolts.

00:11:43.200 And the other prohibited symbols are listed by regulation in the list of prohibited terrorist entities.

00:11:50.400 Now, when that was presented in the stakeholder technical briefing, one of the first questions that

00:11:57.360 was asked was why is the Confederate flag not on that list? And look, I understand that the Confederate

00:12:03.120 flag is used by some as a hurtful symbol and a racist symbol, but it's also used by others to have

00:12:10.480 a different meaning. And I think that the idea of banning, once we start down the path of banning symbols,

00:12:18.480 it becomes quite unclear where that is going to end, because many people are offended by many different

00:12:25.040 symbols that do not offend the vast majority of people. So I'm very concerned about this, the path

00:12:32.640 that we're heading down with this prohibition on symbols. And again, it gives these symbols much more

00:12:37.600 power than they should have. Yeah. You make a great point about some people finding certain things

00:12:43.920 offensive. I mean, most of us, the vast majority of people find a swastika offensive. So that's an easy one. 0.80

00:12:51.600 But what happens if certain religious groups find the symbols that promote other religions

00:12:58.800 offensive? You know, is it possible that they could say, well, that's offensive to me? If it's offensive

00:13:04.160 to me, then there should be a law against it. Go ahead. Yeah. So right now it would only be listed

00:13:10.560 terrorist groups that would have their symbols prohibited. But my concern is sort of, where is this

00:13:17.200 going? Where is this going to end? And it's not going in a good place. I don't think it's a good

00:13:22.560 idea to ban symbols, even if we do not like those symbols. I actually think if someone in my

00:13:28.720 neighborhood is a Nazi, I definitely want to know who that person is. Yeah, I would absolutely say 0.95

00:13:34.480 that. That's yeah, you'd want to know. I don't want my child going up to sell that person girl guide 1.00

00:13:41.040 cookies. I really think it's we're we're less safe when we don't know these things.

00:13:47.440 You also make a great point in your op ed about what's happened in the UK. And wow,

00:13:53.760 has that gone downhill in a hurry? I mean, you've had hundreds of people jailed essentially for posts

00:14:00.320 that they made on Facebook. And I mean, to your point earlier, they may have been badly worded or,

00:14:05.040 you know, people say they put all sorts of things online. And here they are finding themselves behind

00:14:11.120 bars. And you can't help but think that this UK loving prime minister of ours wants to bring some

00:14:18.400 of that to Canada. Is that a fair statement? Yeah. So I mean, I have specifically talked about Mark

00:14:25.520 Kearney's love of the UK in in this op ed. I think it's an interesting kind of connection that he does

00:14:33.360 clearly have this big admiration for the United Kingdom. And look, I spell color with a U as well.

00:14:41.760 But I think that we should look to the UK as a country that on censorship is well down the wrong

00:14:51.040 path. They have been arresting. They recently arrested a sitcom writer for some jokes he posted

00:14:58.240 on Twitter about transgender individuals. They've and that's not the first time they've arrested

00:15:04.080 someone for making jokes on Twitter. There was another man in 2010, Mr. Chambers, who was arrested

00:15:10.160 for making a joke about how angry he was that his flight was canceled. He was going to blow up the

00:15:15.440 airport. He was convicted of communicating a threat. And ultimately, that was overturned. But really,

00:15:25.600 really troubling. There was a case of a teenage girl who posted an Instagram video of herself

00:15:32.080 singing some rap lyrics. She was charged under these provisions. That also ultimately was overturned.

00:15:40.880 And of course, there are, for those of you who don't know, there is this thing in England called a

00:15:46.880 non crime hate incident, where if you say or do something online, that someone doesn't like,

00:15:55.120 they can report it and they think it's directed at a marginalized community, they can report this to

00:16:02.560 the police who will come and knock at your door and put your name on a list. You will not be charged,

00:16:08.000 you might be investigated, you might need a lawyer for that. But it's not, it does not even require a

00:16:13.840 criminal offense. And your employers, many employers might have access to these lists and see if your

00:16:21.120 name is on it. And it is really, really disturbing how this has been used. It was used to go after some

00:16:28.720 teenage girls who were in an argument on Snapchat. It was used, it has been used to go after journalists.

00:16:35.760 It is just terribly abused. And the UK is a country that we got a large part of our constitutional

00:16:43.520 culture from. But they are going to a very dark place when it comes to censorship. The idea that

00:16:50.000 the police will come and knock on your door because of something mean you wrote on the internet is,

00:16:54.880 should disturb us all. That's, that's the kind of thing we expect from authoritarian states, not

00:17:00.080 from Western liberal democracies that were part of the founding of our country.

00:17:05.760 Yeah, what a great point, because that's all we heard about when people spoke about the censorship

00:17:11.040 in places like East Germany and China today, that if you said the wrong thing to the wrong person,

00:17:17.600 you'd get a knock on the door in the middle of the night in the Soviet Union or whatever,

00:17:21.360 and people would never hear from you again. And I think in the UK, the government seems to be

00:17:25.520 particularly nervous or sensitive about criticisms related to their immigration policies.

00:17:31.520 I have people have written stuff about that. You know, they could be crass, they could be insulting,

00:17:37.200 but you know, they're allowed to criticize their government's policy on anything. And yet,

00:17:41.360 here they are essentially being prosecuted for simply saying they don't like the immigration laws.

00:17:47.280 Or if they're not prosecuted, put on a list, put on a list that could affect your employment for a

00:17:54.000 very long time. And I don't think the government should be keeping lists of people with naughty

00:17:59.440 thoughts.

00:18:00.880 Yeah, absolutely. So what are you doing? And what's your organization doing to get this out? Besides

00:18:08.400 appearing on the show and other shows and doing other interviews, and of course, you're writing about

00:18:14.080 it? Are you speaking with government officials about the dangers of going down this road?

00:18:20.080 So we do not engage in direct lobbying, but I would love to appear at committee to give my perspective

00:18:25.200 on the problems with censorship generally, and the problems with this particular bill.

00:18:30.320 We also have been tracking some other pieces of legislation that the Kearney government has

00:18:36.720 introduced that have impacts on freedom of expression. These are the border bills and the cybersecurity

00:18:44.320 bills. Now, the border bill more relates to a problem with surveillance and infringements on

00:18:51.440 people's constitutionally protected privacy rights. And Bill C-8, which is the cybersecurity bill,

00:19:01.920 has provisions in it that are very concerning that would empower the government to revoke internet access

00:19:07.760 for certain people in certain conditions. And that one we are very troubled by because we don't know

00:19:12.880 how it might be used by either this government or by a future government. So with that particular,

00:19:18.800 with those particular pieces of legislation, we have been encouraging members of the public to write

00:19:25.040 to their members of parliament and raise their concerns about that legislation. We actually have

00:19:31.600 created an online portal where you can go to the ccf.ca slash stop bill C-2-C-8 and you can put in your postal

00:19:44.800 code. It will tell you who your MP is and help you send a letter to your MP asking for changes to that border

00:19:50.880 bill and to the cybersecurity bill. The government has already responded to some of the concerns we've

00:19:56.800 raised about the border bill. They seem to have reintroduced it again without some of the more

00:20:03.920 concerning surveillance provisions, but we still think C-2 needs to be withdrawn because it could be

00:20:10.560 resurrected. Now, with respect to the hate crimes provisions, we want to wait to see what happens with

00:20:17.360 that. We would like to see changes at committee. I'm honestly not optimistic. I think that this has

00:20:23.280 been a big priority of this government. C-63, the Trudeau version of this bill, made it very clear that

00:20:30.480 what the government wants to see is more charges, more criminal charges for speech that they don't like.

00:20:36.400 And the only thing we can do is encourage people to write to their member of parliament and speak out

00:20:42.080 and say why this is a bad idea. It's always difficult to make free speech arguments when the

00:20:48.080 speech involves something that we don't like. But those are the cases. That is the speech that gives

00:20:54.640 meaning to that right. No one is ever going to try to silence ordinary, unobjectionable speech. It's only

00:21:01.680 speech at the fringes that gives the right any meaning whatsoever.

00:21:05.280 Right. How do people support the terrific work you do over there?

00:21:09.200 You can visit the ccf.ca. You can donate to our work. We're a registered charity and all of our

00:21:16.480 litigation is funded through charitable donations. You can also sign up for our email updates at the

00:21:22.800 ccf.ca slash freedom updates. Or you can subscribe to my YouTube channel. Just look up the Canadian 0.99

00:21:29.840 Constitution Foundation on YouTube. We've got about 100,000 subscribers and I talk about interesting

00:21:35.200 developments in constitutional law to help further explore these issues and consider what we can do.

00:21:41.280 Christine Van Gein, thank you so much for coming on the show. We really do appreciate it.

00:21:44.960 Thank you.

00:21:45.360 And that is it for this edition of Straight Up with Mark Petroni. Appreciate you tuning in,

00:21:49.360 my friends. Let's do it again tomorrow, shall we? See you then.

00:21:52.480 Watch out.

00:22:10.920 Do it again tomorrow, shall we?したFirred?

00:22:12.640 Do it again tomorrow...

00:22:12.960 Love yourself, do it again tomorrow..

Juno News - October 09, 2025

Mark Carney's war on freedom of speech

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript