Juno News - Should pro-Hamas protests be banned？ (Ft. Josh Dehass)

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Rupa Subramanian Show, everybody. I'm your host, Rupa Subramanian.

00:00:23.440 Today, we're going to talk about the implications of the highly polarized global response to the

00:00:29.020 Israel-Palestine crisis and how it relates to debates about freedom of expression. We're seeing

00:00:35.800 protests in many major Western cities, including right here in Ottawa, both in support of Palestine

00:00:41.540 and or Hamas, and a smaller number, it would appear, in support of Israel. That deep division

00:00:48.460 in global geopolitics is mirrored on our streets and on our university campuses, where different

00:00:54.760 groups have expressed support and solidarity for whatever side of the conflict they're on. But

00:01:01.140 what happens when peaceful protest is banned, or when expressing solidarity with one side is met

00:01:07.280 with censorship? Where does that leave the peaceful and free expression of people's views? In a

00:01:13.680 controversial development, Germany and France have chosen to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

00:01:18.640 Meanwhile, the British Foreign Secretary has suggested that even carrying a Palestinian flag

00:01:25.660 in public may count as a criminal offense. Such developments raise serious questions about the

00:01:33.080 status of free speech and open debate in Western liberal societies. These bans have ignited fierce

00:01:41.540 debates about how to navigate the right to express dissenting opinions in a complex international

00:01:46.700 conflict. Now, pro-Palestinian rallies in Western countries are large, suggesting significant public

00:01:54.560 support. The sheer size of these rallies may lead other Western governments, and governments

00:01:59.880 elsewhere for that matter, to consider banning them. It's a precarious balance between preserving the

00:02:06.340 right to free expression and preventing peaceful rallies from becoming violent. For example, an initially

00:02:14.220 peaceful protest in Amman, Jordan, outside the U.S. and Israeli embassies turned violent as some

00:02:20.960 protesters burned tires and attempted to storm the Israeli embassy, which was broken up by the police

00:02:28.240 using tear gas. Meanwhile, here in Canada and in the U.S., these rallies predominantly are pro-Palestinian

00:02:35.460 also reflect demographic changes in Western countries, particularly among the young. Many young people on the

00:02:42.840 progressive left have thrown their support behind the Palestinian cause, some going as far as to label

00:02:49.680 Israel as an apartheid state, as a settler colonial state. In this ever-evolving landscape, it's clear that 0.81

00:02:56.200 emotions are running high, and people around the world are deeply concerned about the violence in the

00:03:01.460 Middle East, and free speech and individual liberties are once again under attack as they were during the

00:03:07.700 pandemic in Western liberal democracies. My own view is the following. I'm opposed to countries trying to ban

00:03:15.000 peaceful protests, and in some places even trying to ban the Palestinian flag. I'm also opposed to cancelling

00:03:22.540 students and professors for merely expressing their views, even if I find those views to be abhorrent.

00:03:28.940 Here's why. For one thing, censorship, banning, cancelling, all of this plays into the hands of

00:03:36.200 Hamas and other extremists, who would like nothing better than to see Western liberal societies go against 0.80

00:03:43.500 their own liberal values. It also goes against the classical liberal values of free speech and tolerance

00:03:50.400 that I strongly believe in, even if those views are ones that I strongly disagree with. I firmly believe that

00:03:58.780 we must uphold our classical small-l liberal values of free speech, tolerance, and open debate.

00:04:06.140 As long as someone is expressing their view peacefully, even if that view is something that

00:04:10.980 we strongly disagree with, their right to express themselves freely must be protected.

00:04:17.300 My guest today to help us untangle this debate is Josh Dehas. He is counsel with the Canadian

00:04:23.520 Constitution Fund, a former journalist, and a practicing lawyer. So Josh, welcome to the show. I want to start by

00:04:31.480 asking you about what's been happening in some countries, Western countries actually, where pro-Palestinian

00:04:42.720 demonstrations, rallies, they're proposing to ban them. The British Foreign Secretary mooted the idea that even

00:04:49.400 carrying a Palestinian flag in public could be considered a criminal offense. I want to ask you, how do such 0.96

00:04:55.960 actions, state actions, align with the principles of free speech and open debate? And what do they tell us more

00:05:02.360 broadly about the state of free speech in Western liberal democracies?

00:05:07.720 Yeah, so these rallies that we've seen, whether you label them, you know, pro-Palestinian rallies, or in some cases,

00:05:15.140 more accurately, pro-Hamas rallies, they're really testing our commitments to, you know, freedom of speech and

00:05:21.700 freedom of assembly in Western countries. And I think some leaders of some of these countries are failing

00:05:29.220 because they are, you know, proposing to ban protests ahead of time. And that's something that we really don't want to

00:05:39.380 see Western countries do. You know, for example, France, I was just reading this morning, Thomas

00:05:45.220 Chatterton Williams was writing about this. They've banned pro-Palestinian rallies in advance, saying that

00:05:53.620 they're somehow a threat to public order, and that, you know, violence is sure to break out. But that's not

00:05:59.700 necessarily the case. And what you have to remember is, if we let governments and police ban rallies

00:06:06.020 that we don't like, you know, these pro-Hamas rallies that are pretty, pretty abhorrent in a lot of ways, then they

00:06:13.540 will feel that they have the power to ban rallies when we want to protest the government, whether it's, you know,

00:06:19.380 something like the truckers protest or any other rally where we're trying to, you know, change public policy and

00:06:28.340 assert our rights to free expression and freedom of assembly. So it's very concerning. And that's not to

00:06:35.620 say that police don't have any power here, right? There's a lot of things they can do, Rupa, to

00:06:42.900 to prevent violence from breaking out. If somebody's at a rally and there's about to be a breach of the

00:06:48.180 peace, police can step in and they can make arrests and they can stop that from happening. And they have,

00:06:53.860 in fact, a duty to do that. And, you know, if people are promoting things like genocide,

00:06:58.500 that's illegal in Canada. And those people can be charged after the fact for that. But we really

00:07:05.300 want to be very careful about banning rallies of any type. Yeah, no, I'm fully with you on that.

00:07:14.180 Let's come back to Canada. What do our laws say about freedom of expression? What is protected under

00:07:21.300 freedom of expression and under freedom of assembly? Yeah, so our Charter of Rights and Freedoms

00:07:28.580 from 1982 protects freedom of expression, and it also protects freedom of peaceful assembly. And

00:07:36.100 those two rights are pretty closely related, but they are different. And so freedom of expression,

00:07:42.180 our courts have said, basically protects all speech, all expression, as long as it's not violent. And so

00:07:49.620 it goes really well beyond just, you know, speech or printing something in a newspaper, even,

00:07:56.420 you know, parking your car as a protest is in a prima facie way, protected under the Charter. Now,

00:08:03.300 we also have reasonable limits on Charter rights in Canada. So if the government can show that some law

00:08:10.580 that limits our freedom of speech is demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society,

00:08:15.620 they can impose certain limits. And also within like the free speech test itself, there are some

00:08:21.460 limits like you can't violence is not speech, you can't say I'm going to shoot someone and that's my

00:08:26.660 version of expression. And there are also, you know, reasonable sort of limits in terms of like,

00:08:33.140 time, and also the place where you can express yourself. So obviously, you're going to have a right

00:08:39.700 to express yourself like outside of the parliament building. Maybe you can hand out pamphlets inside

00:08:44.820 the parliament building. But you're not going to be allowed to express yourself through like occupying

00:08:50.260 the prime minister's office. So there are some, some limits on it. But generally, the limits are not

00:08:55.860 supposed to be content specific. So you should be able to say the most extreme and controversial things

00:09:02.260 and not lose protection for that. So the courts are not always great about upholding that contract

00:09:09.860 neutral rule. But basically, all free speech is protected except for these sort of reasonable limits.

00:09:16.420 And then assembly goes beyond that. And it's protected by a different section of our charter to see.

00:09:23.460 And there's not actually a lot of court jurisprudence on what freedom of assembly means.

00:09:29.860 So there is a bit of a debate, like, it's very obvious that it protects political expression. So

00:09:36.980 it's very obvious that freedom of assembly protects like going to Queen's Park here in Toronto or going

00:09:42.740 to the parliament buildings in Ottawa and holding a peaceful rally. Some people think it protects

00:09:49.940 more than that, though. So some people think it protects the Christmas dinner that you had during

00:09:55.220 COVID when the government was trying to tell you you couldn't get together with your families.

00:09:59.700 And so little of this has actually gone through the courts at this point that we don't know for

00:10:04.740 sure how the courts would interpret that. But it's clear that it covers at least the political

00:10:12.020 assemblies. And the word peaceful there is really key because,

00:10:16.260 you know, a riot is not going to be covered under peaceful assembly because it's violent.

00:10:22.100 And there are all kinds of questions of like what peaceful means. And you, Rupa, you were at the trucker

00:10:26.820 protest a lot covering that. And so you know all these arguments about how the horns were violence or

00:10:34.580 parking your truck in a particular place is violence. And personally, I think those are probably peaceful

00:10:40.900 activities. But again, they might be activities that you can limit under Section one of the charter.

00:10:46.260 So using all the other laws like, you know, you could use the criminal law if someone is, you know,

00:10:56.340 you know, doing something breaching the peace or if they're, you know, at the border blockading the

00:11:02.100 border. There are laws that can come into play that would not impact your freedom of assembly if you're

00:11:07.460 protesting on the border and blocking all the goods coming into Canada. So that doesn't mean we needed

00:11:12.580 to use the Emergencies Act, but because we have laws already in place, but not all of that was protected.

00:11:19.620 So what you're saying now confirms to me what I've long, I believe for a very long time that

00:11:27.700 the constitutional protection for free speech in Canada is a lot weaker here than it is in the US.

00:11:34.340 I wonder if you could, I mean, if you're able to speak to that, how does this compare to the US,

00:11:44.340 for example?

00:11:46.260 Yeah, so the US's freedom of speech is protected in their First Amendment passed in 1791. And it says,

00:11:54.580 Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. And that is stronger language and they don't

00:12:00.340 have limiting language. But there are some limits on free expression in the United States. And the

00:12:06.900 bar has just been set a lot higher by the courts. So the courts have come up with those limits and

00:12:12.020 they've set the bar in a different place in Canada. You know, for example, hate speech is completely

00:12:18.260 protected. It's not really limited in the United States. But here in Canada, we had a big constitutional

00:12:25.460 case on whether the hate speech provisions that predate the charter were unconstitutional now that

00:12:31.540 the charter says you have a right to freedom of expression. And this case was called Keegstra. It was

00:12:37.620 about this really nasty anti-Semitic teacher in Alberta who is, you know, teaching all the kids to hate 0.97

00:12:44.900 Jews and saying the most vile things about them that you can imagine. But the question was, like, should we use 0.85

00:12:51.460 the criminal law to put this person in jail for his words or does he have a right to free speech and

00:12:59.700 he should only basically just be fired? So, you know, it was a 5-4 decision and the Supreme Court

00:13:05.780 of Canada Chief Justice said, yes, he has free speech, but it's a reasonable limit on that speech because

00:13:13.060 in his view, you know, words can cause harm, they hurt people's feelings and they can lead to, in his view,

00:13:22.180 something like the Holocaust. And, you know, I can sort of see that argument. I can sympathize with 1.00

00:13:29.220 people that believe that. But there was a much better counterargument made in the minority by

00:13:35.620 Justice McLaughlin. And she was saying, you know, these laws are not going to be effective anyway. 0.77

00:13:43.140 You just draw attention to the hateful ideas by talking about them and making this guy into a

00:13:49.780 martyr. And, you know, Nazi Germany had hate speech laws and look how well that went in the 1930s. 0.71

00:13:58.260 But long story short, the Supreme Court upheld hate speech laws, which is something that is not a thing

00:14:05.860 in the U.S. So, there are some limits on speech in Canada that you wouldn't see in the States.

00:14:13.220 Yeah. I mean, going back to these rallies that are, you know, where Western countries'

00:14:18.580 governments are trying to ban them, I went to a rally this past weekend in Ottawa, a pro-Gaza rally,

00:14:25.940 and it was very informative. You know, I faced some resistance, you know, while trying to

00:14:32.820 interview people, you know, they were all suspicious of any journalist, very similar to my experience

00:14:41.860 through the Freedom Convoy, and I really had to work to gain their trust. And eventually,

00:14:46.740 I did manage to speak to a few people. But that's the whole point. You see, we wouldn't know what their

00:14:53.140 views are if you were to ban them, right? And so, you know, it was actually very informative,

00:14:58.100 and I was able to interview like 20 people, and I wrote about it. And, you know, other people have

00:15:04.020 thanked me for this, for this, for this reportage, because it's actually been very hard to find

00:15:09.960 Palestinian voices, pro-Palestinian voices to actually come on the record and speak to people.

00:15:17.300 Yeah, you know what, Rupa, I just read that article in the Free Press, and I clicked on some of the

00:15:22.280 videos. And it was really, really enlightening for me, because I'm pretty pro-Israel. I was horrified

00:15:31.740 about what happened. And, you know, I actually don't have, come to think of it, any Palestinian

00:15:38.300 friends or even close Arab friends. And I don't really go out and seek out their point of view,

00:15:44.540 necessarily. So, you know, it was really helpful for me to see that, you know, some of those people

00:15:49.000 at the rally, they are probably a little bit misinformed about what's happened here. And other

00:15:56.300 people, they're, you know, more or less brainwashed, and they have this really, really militant,

00:16:02.980 frightening point of view. But I was able to see like the arguments that they're making, right? So

00:16:08.740 they made some arguments that I hadn't thought about before. Now, if I want to try and convince

00:16:17.040 people to change their mind, I have a better point of view about what the actual issues are

00:16:23.220 here. And so, you know, that's, that's just one, one really good reason not to not to ban these

00:16:29.780 rallies. But there are other reasons. And the biggest one, obviously, is the one I mentioned

00:16:33.680 before, which is that as soon as you give governments or police the power to ban political

00:16:39.400 rallies that are unpopular with the powers that be, they're going to do it to to you one day,

00:16:45.760 right? Some government is going to be in power that you don't like, and that wants to suppress

00:16:50.480 your speech. And so it's good to have maintained the same rule and the same principle for everybody,

00:16:56.960 even in times like this, where it's frightening that there are a lot of people out there with

00:17:01.540 those views.

00:17:02.840 Yeah, no, absolutely. I find them abhorrent, but I want them out there. Because it actually helps me

00:17:10.420 understand the situation. And, but, you know, going back to, you know, many of the people that

00:17:16.000 I spoke to were young people, there were students at the university here. And let's, you know, I want

00:17:22.960 to talk about what's been happening at, at universities, you know, not just here in Canada,

00:17:28.760 but in the US, especially at the Ivy Leagues, such as Harvard, Harvard, there have been, there have been

00:17:34.960 attempts, there's been a naming and shaming of students involved in writing these pro-Palestinian

00:17:41.500 letters condemning Israel. In some cases, there have been attempts to censure them academically

00:17:49.200 for voicing their support for the Palestinian cause. Some major donors at these universities have

00:17:57.080 indicated that they, that, you know, that they will withhold future planned donations if universities

00:18:04.040 permit pro-Palestinian activism to continue unchecked. And of course, that also, that all

00:18:09.200 accords with, with their free speech, right? These donations are voluntary, and they're free to

00:18:14.900 withdraw them if they, if they think that it's not going to be used, you know, according to their

00:18:19.800 wishes. What is, what is your take on both sides of this debate on our campuses? I mean, do you think,

00:18:25.900 I vehemently oppose cancel culture of any kind, whatever side it is on. And I'm, I fully realize that the

00:18:33.600 people who are being canceled right now would never come to my defense if I were in that situation,

00:18:38.780 but I still uphold their right to speak freely. Yeah, it's a really interesting question. And,

00:18:45.120 and I got to say, like, I've never come across a situation that has tested my opposition to cancel

00:18:51.980 culture more, because some of the things I've seen, my own former professors at Osgood Law School here in

00:18:58.180 Toronto Tweet are just unforgivable. And I really, really, you know, part of me wants them to lose

00:19:06.700 their job and to face big consequences. But, but at the end of the day, universities need to be places where

00:19:14.140 you can express the most controversial ideas. And universities have, obviously, professors have free

00:19:22.100 expression. But in the university context, what we're talking about more, I think, is academic freedom, whether

00:19:27.440 you're talking about students or professors, and that's a similar concept, which is like, basically,

00:19:34.480 you know, professors and students can't be punished for their political or their religious points of

00:19:40.460 view. And what the only thing they can really be punished for is, you know, not teaching the subject

00:19:48.420 that they're supposed to teach. And this sort of developed because throughout history, the church was

00:19:55.800 always trying to control what people could think in universities, you know, you couldn't say that the

00:20:01.320 sun, you couldn't say that the earth was round, right, or else you face the inquisition. And lots of ideas

00:20:10.400 that come up on campus that seem absolutely wrong and absolutely crazy to everyone turn out to be right in

00:20:18.780 the long run. And so you need a space for that, where everyone is going to be able to express the

00:20:24.540 most controversial ideas without risking getting getting fired. So that's why we have academic freedom.

00:20:31.620 And I think I do support continuing with that that principle. I was thinking about this, like academic

00:20:39.900 freedom. If you go back to like the 1960s in Canada, there were no places where you could talk about,

00:20:47.580 like gay rights, like LGBT rights, which is what we call them now. And the only place you could do that 1.00

00:20:55.300 was on campus, like you couldn't talk about it in the newspapers, you talked about it at work, even if

00:21:00.860 you work for the government, you're going to get fired immediately. And over time, people have come to

00:21:05.280 realize that like gay people deserve equal rights, because they have had these these discussions that

00:21:13.760 first started on campus. So I think you should call out a lot of these students, more so the professors,

00:21:21.320 like students are there to learn, and they make stupid mistakes. And I think you should be able to 1.00

00:21:25.800 forgive people when they're in that learning process in their early 20s. But it's okay to call them out and

00:21:31.820 to say their speech is wrong. But they shouldn't be facing, you know, punishments for that. And

00:21:38.540 the same with professors, like I absolutely despise what some of these professors have said, but I don't

00:21:42.860 want to see them fired for it. Because, again, if you can fire a professor for an idea that you don't like,

00:21:50.940 then you can be fired for an idea that some other professor doesn't like.

00:21:55.180 Yeah, I mean, there's certainly an irony here, right, that many on the so called progressive left

00:22:01.580 who were busy canceling people that they disagreed with, and tarring people like me as far right and,

00:22:09.740 and that sort of thing. The shoe is now on the other foot, as they face cancellation by people on the

00:22:17.740 right. Um, and so I wonder, I mean, do you think, uh, the rights commitment to, uh, free speech, um,

00:22:27.260 has been selective? Do you think it was mostly a political thing and not a genuine commitment to

00:22:33.260 free speech? Because I've noticed a lot of people who are pro-freedom, um, and, you know, supported the

00:22:39.180 truckers' right to protest and were against vaccine mandates and big government and, uh, protesting and,

00:22:46.300 and, and, and, uh, you know, voicing their concerns against, uh, regarding government overreach

00:22:53.020 are quite okay with banning, uh, rallies and, uh, censuring people.

00:22:58.780 Yeah, I think, um, I think it's a good point. I think that, um, the, the right in Canada and the

00:23:07.100 US can be a little bit more principled about these things, but it's really hard. It's, you know,

00:23:11.980 it's hard to, to maintain these principles because we have this sort of human nature where

00:23:16.860 we want to punish people for, um, ideas we don't like. Like that's the natural approach is to get

00:23:23.340 angry and to say people should be punished for, for having these abhorrent ideas. You know, free,

00:23:29.420 free speech is not sort of the natural, um, human nature. It's something that takes,

00:23:35.100 takes work to commit to those principles and remind yourself, um, that even though someone

00:23:41.420 might have tried to cancel you, you shouldn't, you know, cancel them in revenge. And, um,

00:23:48.220 you know, I, I'm actually surprised by how many people have been supportive of the position that,

00:23:53.980 you know, we at the constitution foundation have taken, which is that, um, we don't like these

00:23:59.580 pro Hamas rallies, but people have a right to go out and, and, and say what they think,

00:24:04.060 as long as they don't breach the law. Um, and we've, we've had so many people write to us and say

00:24:10.540 that they, they support us and that we're, they're glad we're being principled in this particular

00:24:15.820 moment. And so, um, I do still, still have some hope for, for these things.

00:24:21.420 I want to get your take on, um, uh, incitement to violence and hate speech. Um, uh, I tend to,

00:24:33.100 I tend toward free speech absolutism. Uh, and I think that anti-hate speech, what is considered

00:24:40.140 as hate speech, it's, it's, these are very, it's a vague definition as far as I'm concerned. I've been

00:24:45.660 accused of hate speech, uh, you know, and you know, for, for some, some, some positions I've taken.

00:24:53.340 Um, is there a red line here, um, um, you know, beyond which free expression turns into hateful

00:25:02.060 incitement to violence that ought to be censored or censured, um, and even subject to criminal charges?

00:25:09.100 So first of all, I would just want to say, I absolutely agree with you that it's really,

00:25:15.180 really hard to define what's hateful. And this is, um, this has always been a problem for judges,

00:25:22.540 like the Keekstra case I mentioned before, um, justice McLaughlin was saying, we shouldn't have

00:25:29.100 this willful promotion to hatred, uh, section of the criminal code. We shouldn't be sending people

00:25:35.580 to jail for hate because hate is extremely subjective. And, um, you know, the, the,

00:25:44.300 the chief justice at the time, Brian Dixon in another case, uh, called, um, Taylor said, oh no,

00:25:51.340 it's actually fine. We can figure out what, what's hateful and what isn't. And it's not that subjective.

00:25:57.100 Everybody knows it means vilification, columny, and, um, detestation. It's like, well, those are just

00:26:04.700 synonyms for hatred, right? And if you or I go on Twitter, we know that people are constantly,

00:26:10.140 uh, accusing everyone of hate speech all the time. And so it's like a very dangerous thing

00:26:15.340 to outlaw hate speech. And I'm extremely opposed to, you know, human rights tribunals deciding what

00:26:20.780 you say online is, is hateful or not. And some of the proposals we've heard about that, like, uh,

00:26:27.260 bill C 36, but, um, you know, the Supreme court has decided there are, there are some limits that are

00:26:34.380 constitutional and those are where you're inciting to, to violence, like you say. So, um, for example,

00:26:41.820 section 318 of the criminal code, um, that says it's illegal to incite, um, incite people towards

00:26:50.460 genocide. So if you think about that, like, and I've seen some videos out there of protests where it

00:26:56.540 looks like this is happening, where people go to a rally and they say, you know, Jews are subhuman, 0.99

00:27:03.020 uh, Jews should be killed. Let's go find some Jews and kill them. That happened in, in London, 1.00

00:27:09.820 England recently to me that crosses the line into criminality. And that person is a threat in a

00:27:18.220 sense of they're about to commit physical violence against Jews. And they're encouraging other people 1.00

00:27:23.980 to commit, you know, physical violence or genocide. So I think that is a line. Um, I think that's a line

00:27:30.940 that's clear enough that the law is, um, is, uh, supportable. So I can see 318 being a justified

00:27:41.180 limit on free speech, but the one we were talking about earlier, which is the willful promotion of 0.94

00:27:45.660 hatred, which is what Keekstra considered. I don't think that's a justifiable limit and it's because

00:27:51.340 people are always accusing other people of hatred. And it's just such a subjective

00:27:56.860 thing. And you know, that the powers that be are going to use that, um, if they can to, you know,

00:28:03.020 suppress controversial, but perfectly legal and acceptable speech that helps us get to the bottom

00:28:09.580 of things in a democracy. Um, can you tell me a bit about, uh, Bill C 36, um, which is, uh, trying to,

00:28:18.620 um, make, uh, speech online, online speech. Um, it's, it's trying to regulate it. So, um,

00:28:25.580 could you explain to us what, what the implications of that are?

00:28:29.980 Yeah. So three C 36, I'm happy to talk about anytime someone wants to talk about, because 1.00

00:28:35.260 it's one of the most frightening laws I've ever seen proposed in Canada from a free speech perspective.

00:28:43.340 And basically just to give a little bit of background. So we used to have in the Canadian

00:28:48.460 and human rights code or the act, um, at the federal level, we used to have a prohibition on,

00:28:55.820 you know, hateful speech. So communicating hateful communications. And this predated most of the

00:29:02.620 internet and social media and, um, the Supreme court upheld that, that as, as legal in a case called

00:29:10.940 Taylor that I mentioned, but, um, it became a real problem, this section 13 of the, the human rights

00:29:19.020 act, because, uh, what you had was the Canadian human rights tribunal taking journalists to, um,

00:29:27.740 essentially to court and saying, you know, journalists, you can't print this, or you need

00:29:32.300 to print something else, or we're going to find you for printing something that we consider discriminatory.

00:29:37.580 And the most famous case of this was a guy named Mark Stein, who's now, he's often on American,

00:29:44.220 um, shows now, but at the time he wrote for McLean's magazine, which is the magazine that I

00:29:50.540 went to work for a couple of years after this incident. And Stein wrote this article called

00:29:56.540 the future belongs to Islam. And basically his thesis was, and I reread this a couple of months ago.

00:30:03.420 Um, his thesis was that Europe is demographically very rapidly becoming more Islamic because, 0.95

00:30:11.180 um, like European birth rates are really low and all of the immigration is from Muslim countries and

00:30:18.060 fertility among the Muslim immigrants was really high. So his thesis was very, very controversial.

00:30:24.300 It was basically that Europe is going to, um, no longer be a democracy. One day it's going to be a

00:30:30.460 theocracy because the demographics are just shifting towards an Islamic majority in Europe.

00:30:36.460 And, you know, this was 20 years ago and, um, it was a pretty inflammatory article, but the,

00:30:42.620 the idea that the government, government bureaucrats working for this human rights tribunal could come

00:30:48.300 to McLean's and say, this article is discriminatory. We want you to publish another article that we approve

00:30:55.100 of from these Muslim people who are angry with you and we're going to potentially find you. That was just 0.81

00:31:01.500 beyond the pale. And actually at that point, all the journalists from whether you were at the, you know,

00:31:06.380 national post or the Toronto star, all the journalists got together and said, this section 13 has got to go.

00:31:12.540 So Stephen Harper was elected. He got rid of section 13 and we no longer had this discriminatory speech provision.

00:31:19.820 And Justin Trudeau, for whatever reason, decided he wants to bring this back and make it even more

00:31:26.860 extreme than it was before and, and bring it back in the internet era where there are, you know,

00:31:32.380 millions of people who could potentially complain about, uh, so-called hate speech online. And so

00:31:38.060 he proposed this in a bill called C 36. The main part of the bill would be bringing back this section 13

00:31:44.300 and saying people can haul you before this tribunal where you might have to pay them $20,000 if you

00:31:51.580 said something they didn't like online on Twitter and they could find you up to $50,000 Rupa if you

00:31:58.060 tweeted something that was hateful. Um, and your accusers could be anonymous potentially. So you would have

00:32:05.180 anonymous people complaining about your tweets as being hateful and they get the commission goes after

00:32:12.460 you with, they help, they help this person go after you anonymously and you have to pay, you know,

00:32:18.220 potentially $20,000 to them. Um, and that was only half of it. There's also criminal code changes. So

00:32:24.940 a judge could decide that someone was about to commit hate speech and could put conditions on you

00:32:32.060 to ensure you don't commit hate speech, like an ankle bracelet or, um, a curfew or potentially even jail

00:32:39.260 you. And if you didn't comply, you would go to jail for, because they're concerned that you might

00:32:44.540 commit hate speech in the future. Like this law is just absurd. And it actually passed in parliament,

00:32:50.380 the first reading, but thankfully in 2021, we had an election. So before the bill could get all the way

00:32:57.100 through third reading in the Senate and signed off by, um, the governor general, the bill died. And so,

00:33:03.580 uh, for now it's gone, who knows if they'll bring it back. Well, that's, uh, you know, what the bill,

00:33:10.860 of course itself is frightening the way you've, you've described it. And, uh, it, it, you know,

00:33:16.700 and this leads me to my next question, which is, you know, for, for something like this to even come

00:33:22.300 about, it has to have a fair amount of support. Um, and why is it that in this country, we are just

00:33:29.660 willing to go along with, with this kind of thing where we're so incredibly compliant that we don't,

00:33:37.340 we don't see these attacks on our individual liberties in the same way, say, say, you know,

00:33:42.380 our, our, our American friends feel very strongly, you know, when you, when you take away their right

00:33:47.660 to do something, you know, especially when it comes to things like guns. Uh, but, um, but, you know,

00:33:53.580 here we just seem to go along with this, this, uh, bill C11, which is now law once again, just passed,

00:33:59.500 you know, uh, and there was a lot of noise towards the end, but in the end it passed, it's now law.

00:34:05.500 And I, and that again is, you know, an attack on free speech. And now this bill C36 could,

00:34:11.980 could come back at some point, I imagine. And I just don't see people agitating against this kind

00:34:19.180 of thing, you know, what's going on. Yeah, it's a, it's a good question. I think, um, a big part

00:34:24.780 of it goes to Canadian culture and we're just a different culture. Like the Americans have a

00:34:29.500 revolutionary origin, whereas Canadians have, um, their origin in, you know, supporting the British

00:34:36.460 and not having a revolution. And also, of course we have the whole component of Canada. That's, um,

00:34:42.940 that's a Quebecois. And another part of, so another part of it is, you know, the, the US,

00:34:49.340 they really do teach the constitution in their schools and people have little printed constitution

00:34:56.220 books. Um, and they sort of regular people know the text, whereas here, you know, our constitution is

00:35:03.420 a bit more complicated. We have the charter, but it's pretty new. It's only, you know, 30,

00:35:08.700 40 years old or so. So we just haven't built up that, that culture of, um, respect for the

00:35:15.580 constitution that, that Americans have. So I think it's pretty cultural at the same time.

00:35:22.780 You know, you can see the argument for some of these restrictions. Like if you don't think much

00:35:28.140 about free expression, you don't worry much that the government's going to come after your expression,

00:35:33.820 because for example, maybe you support the current government and you agree with everything that

00:35:38.780 they say. Um, I can see people saying we need to crack down on hate speech online. You know,

00:35:45.580 it's harmful. It hurts people's feelings. It makes them feel like they can't go on Twitter

00:35:50.300 and participate because it's too toxic or, um, you know, people think abhorrent things about my

00:35:56.300 religion or my gender or my sexual orientation. And therefore the government should be trying to do

00:36:02.140 something, but doing something is very different than, um, eliminating people's free speech, right?

00:36:08.700 You can, you can do other, you can do other things to count counter hateful speech than suppress speech.

00:36:16.380 Yeah. Well, um, yeah, I mean, uh, it's a, it's a pretty dispiriting situation for sure. Uh,

00:36:23.900 especially here, uh, we always seem to be like different than everybody else, uh, when it comes

00:36:29.500 to free speech. Uh, but now, I mean, in the context of this current crisis, um, you have even France,

00:36:36.940 uh, you know, trying to ban, uh, um, protests and rallies that, uh, are marching in, in favor of the

00:36:44.700 Palestinian cause. But Josh, I, I really appreciate you coming on the show, uh, and offering your

00:36:50.940 insights. Uh, it's been a very informative conversation for me and hopefully for our viewers

00:36:56.460 and listeners as well. And I really hope to have you back on my show soon. Thanks so much,

00:37:02.700 Rupa. Take care. Yeah, no worries. Thank you. Thanks so much.

00:37:06.940 Bye.

Juno News - October 21, 2023

Should pro-Hamas protests be banned？ (Ft. Josh Dehass)

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