Juno News - October 28, 2025Trudeau gone, but free speech still under attack？
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Summary
A free speech chill continues in places like the UK and Canada, and we have real questions to ask ourselves in regards to, you know, what are we willing to fight for? And can we stand firm enough to prevent some of the cultural and free speech backsliding of the past few years? Juneau's Melanie Bennett has a terrific new episode on what's happening in the UK right now, and what could soon be coming to Canada under bills like C9.
Transcript
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Hi, Juneau News. Alexander Brown here, host of Not Sorry. Great to be back for another
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week. I'm the director of the National Citizens Coalition. I'm a writer, a campaigner, communicator,
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and always thrilled to be here and really excited for you to take advantage of this
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promo code, junonews.com slash not sorry for 20% off. It's a good one. There's so much
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great reporting at Juneau News. Always happy to talk about it and share that work. We have
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a lot to discuss today because anything but ordinary Canadians, concerned parents, our
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common sense, classical liberal, conservative, even libertarian minded, they have every right
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to be concerned. A free speech chill continues in places like the UK and Canada at present.
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And we have real questions to ask ourselves in regards to, you know, what are we willing
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to fight for? And can we stand firm enough to prevent some of the cultural and free speech
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backsliding of the past few years? Juneau's Melanie Bennett has a terrific new episode
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on what's happening in the UK right now and what could soon be coming to Canada under bills
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like C9. Can rude speech about migrant crime get you two years in prison? Why are English
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flags ripped from citizens' hands as hate symbols? And is digital ID a kind of revenge against a
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populist uprising? And could that happen here? In another piece for Juneau News, Sue Ann Levy
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writes about the Toronto schools swapping arithmetic for inappropriate levels of social indoctrination.
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Fifth and sixth graders are allegedly being sent to weeks-long workshops on racism as if they
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are guilty of anything of the sort at such an innocent age and as if it's appropriate to continue
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to pile on subsidized and industrialized guilt to the young and blameless, while seemingly attempting
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to lead some down a potentially unhealthy path of social contagion and self-loathing. This is a moment
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for critical thinking. This is a moment, as I harp on about in episode after episode, to not repeat
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the mistakes of the last 10 years. MPs and entrenched interests, many of whom are the exact same ones
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who got us here in the first place, we can't trust them to police themselves. On that, we're talking to
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the guy you want to be talking to, Professor Bruce Party. Thrilled to have him on the show. This is a great
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discussion. Stay for the whole thing. And first, a word from our sponsor.
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I want to give a quick word from our sponsor, Albertans Against No Fault Insurance. So did
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you know that the Alberta government is overhauling its auto insurance system under a new model called
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Care First coming to effect in 2027? Most Albertans injured in car accidents will no longer be able to
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sue the at-fault driver. Instead, decisions about your care and compensation will be made by the
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insurance company, not your doctor, not the courts. Critics say this system puts insurance companies
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first and removes key rights from victims and their families. Bruce Party joins the show. Bruce is a
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professor of law at Queen's University, executive director of Rights Probe, senior fellow with
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the Fraser Institute and MLI. He's a prominent critic of legal progressivism and the managerial state.
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He was a real leader to me in Canada during the irrationality and overreach that took over during
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Canada's COVID-19 response. Bruce, thank you for joining us.
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Terrific to be here with you. Thank you for the invitation.
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It means a lot. It's almost hard to get into a topic of the day on the shared worry of that legal
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progressivism at the moment and that expansion of the managerial state. I wish we only had one to
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pick from. And I know our audience shares in those concerns because I had Dr. Caroline Elliott on the
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show over the weekend, prominent media critic on Canada's growing DRIPA issue and the behind-closed-door
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expansion of Aboriginal title. You wrote recently in the Fraser Institute that Aboriginal rights are now
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more constitutionally powerful than any charter rights. You also expanded on this idea of some
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people are more equal than others for the Aristotle Foundation. Why do you feel that way and why does it
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concern you? Right. Well, Caroline is absolutely right about the Aboriginal question. Things are
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proceeding very quickly in a particular direction. They've been on this track for a long time,
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but it's really becoming acute now, as Caroline no doubt mentioned.
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The idea that is entrenched in our constitution that people of different lineage or identity should
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be given different rights than other people. I mean, it is constitutionally entrenched in this
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country. It's been around for a long time. And so it's very difficult to challenge because it's
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constitutional. It's deeply embedded in the culture. People think it's the natural order of things,
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but of course it's none of those things. And it is, it is a very dangerous and damaging
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idea. If you transplanted this idea to other places, other countries, other, other moments in
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history and said, right, all of you people who have some kind of connection to the past through your genes
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and through your parents have these rights. And those of you who don't have that connection have
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these different rights, you know, that, that is the kind of society that you do not want, because
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that is not a society governed by the rule of law. Let's just make this clear. The rule of law,
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like it's a very broad idea, lots of aspects to it, but one of them is that the same laws apply to
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everybody. And you've immediately breached that idea. You've, you've determined that,
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that some people have a different special status than other people. And that's all based upon
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identity group, group affiliation lineage, and so on. That, that is a, that is a terrible idea upon
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which to base a country, but we have section 35 and section 35 embeds that idea in the constitution.
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Yeah. And so it, I was just talking to someone in politics about this,
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where they were lamenting that issue, but it's, it's, they were saying, I don't think you,
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the average person understands that it is in the charter, that there is this foundational
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kind of whoopsie here where we've created these protected classes and maybe you had something
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second last and maybe you have a self-identifying feature and now your rights are more important
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than others. Well, in fact, so that there is, there is a section of the charter that is relevant
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here, but in fact, section 35 itself, which, which is the guarantee is not even in the charter.
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And so that, that, you know, people might hear that and think, well, that means it's not as
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important as a charter right, but actually it's more powerful than a charter right for this reason.
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Yeah. It is not even subject to section one, which is the reasonable limits clause and section 33,
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which is the notwithstanding clause. In other words, legislatures, both provincial and federal
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can use section 33 to say, well, we're legislating the following thing. We're our statutes in case it's,
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you know, infringes upon these particular rights, you know, two and seven to 15 of the charter,
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we're going to just put this in the, in the, in the bill and say, that doesn't matter. That's
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what section 33 allows you to do. You can't do that with section 35. So if the courts come out
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with a decision about Aboriginal title, there is nothing that a legislature can do about it.
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Nothing. The courts control this period. Wow. And the direction that the courts have been taking
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us over a long period of time is where we're ending up now. Now that's not to say that legislature
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have the legislatures have been opposed to this. They have not, especially in BC, right? So in BC,
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there are other things going on as well, pushing us in the same direction. The, the, the government of
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BC has been making agreements with specific Aboriginal groups over specific territory, like Haida Gwaii,
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for example, that, that, that either recognize Aboriginal title or promise to do so in the future.
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And there's a pretend going on in these agreements that private property rights will be honored.
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Problem is that Aboriginal title and private property are inconsistent. The two things cannot
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coexist because Aboriginal title is communal. Private property is obviously private and
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Aboriginal title cannot be surrendered to anyone but the crown. So the idea that you're going to
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have this private fee simple title on a piece of land that is also covered by Aboriginal title is,
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is a complete pretend. It's not true. If you are an owner of fee simple title in an area in which the
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BC government has recognized Aboriginal title, you've got a problem and don't, don't be persuaded
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As somebody who lives in the, the BC lower mainland right now, and is very much a renter because I'm
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of a certain age and not a foreign speculator or a multi-billionaire, there's a real chill going up
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amongst the 20 year olds, 30 year olds, 40 year olds going, okay, like best case scenario,
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we can actually afford a, you know, a dog crate condo one day, what's going to happen to the land
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beneath our feet. And so I know you've tweeted something recently to this effect. I, I think of
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these sort of protected classes and where, gee, to know it's enshrined in the charter is, is alarming
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to a, to a layman like myself on, on DEI initiatives, government DEI, corporate social DEI. Are, are we
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not engaging in a kind of soft bigotry of low expectations? Would, would you like to see more
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space for meritocracy in our culture and in our institutions?
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Yes, sure. So DEI. So there's a lot of misunderstanding about this amongst the broader Canadian
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population, right? So a lot of people think that there is a basic legal proposition that the same
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rules apply to everybody and you can't discriminate against people on the basis of their, their race
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or their religion or their sex. Okay. Not true in Canada. It is true in the United States.
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They have a constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the law. And that's what their
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Supreme court has recently confirmed that it means. In our country, we have section 15 of the
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charter. Now section 15, one of the charter appears by its words to say essentially the same
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thing as the American guarantee does. It, it, it provides for equal treatment of the law of people
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without discrimination. Okay. But we also have 15, two and 15, two is an exception to 15, one. And it says
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in not exactly the same words, reverse discrimination is okay. Depending upon who it is you're discriminating
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in favor of and against, but that's not the whole of it. What's happened over time is the Supreme court
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has taken this exception in 15, two and made it the general rule in 15, one. They've made 15,
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one mean the same thing essentially as 15, two. So it is a constitutional imperative in this country
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that we are, that, that, that governments are allowed. And in fact, sometimes required
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to treat different people differently, as long as you are discriminating against the right groups.
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And I'll bet you can, I'll bet you can guess what the right groups are.
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Yeah. And who gets the, yeah, the dictation of the right groups.
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Yes. That's right. And so this is what DEI means. DEI diversity, equity, and inclusion does not mean
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diversity, equity, and inclusion. It means discriminating against these groups in favor
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of those groups. It does not mean equal protection of the law. It means equity, which is the opposite.
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Equity means we're going to treat people differently so as to try to provide for equal or comparable
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outcomes between groups. Yeah. Okay. This is the opposite of a merit-based approach.
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Yeah. It is constitutionalized. Just like the Aboriginal rights provision, this is constitutionalized
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largely thanks to the Supreme Court. So, so if you are, if you are, if you are a person in the wrong,
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in, in, in the wrong constituency, if you are, especially, especially if you are a white,
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white, straight, Christian male, then everything is stacked legally and constitutionally against you.
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It was already hard enough out here as a 30-year-old working hard in a Canadian city with all its
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problems. It's, I, you highlighted, I loved this speech you just gave and, and expanding on these,
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these levers of power and things being stacked against you. A, a 2022 Globe and Mail Freedom
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Convoy op-ed before the Justice Committee recently. I know that author in his words,
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it set off alarm bells whenever someone, I know it sets off alarm bells whenever someone stumbles
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across it. Now, would you be so kind to tell us this audience about that op-ed? Who wrote it?
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Who wrote it? And why the heck does it worry you? This is, this is an, this is a column published
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by the Globe and Mail in February, 2022. The title is time to stop the sedition by enforcing the law
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and following the money. Yeah. Right. And it said in the column, people have been terrorized
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for over a week. Yeah. Right. February, 2022. Right. So who is the author talking about? Well,
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of course the trucker convoy, right? Seditionists and terrorists. Yeah. And of course the trucker
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convoy, no violence, no weapons, no, no assaults, no storming of parliament, you know, road hockey,
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parking violations. Yeah. And, and unkind words about the government, right? Traditionists and
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terrorists. And of course, you know, who is the author of this column? Mark Carney, now the prime
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minister. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's so alarming when you read that. I, I remember that piece coming
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out and I was in Ottawa. I was living in Toronto at the time. I was doing media. I'm a third party
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director with the national citizens coalition, which is very much an organization that does not
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love big government and big government overreach. And I was writing columns and I went, you know
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what? I'm just going it. I know that they're seemingly conflating this into a January 6th and
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maybe I end up on some endless list and maybe I actually am. And I don't know about it, but
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I'm going, I want to talk to these people. I want to cover it. I was doing radio. I did the great
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Brady show a few times, uh, really expanded my, my audience and got to know some great
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journalists. And the moment I got there, Bruce, and I could appreciate that our professional
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class in Ottawa did not like all the noise and the yobbs and the, the great unwashed to
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them. Seemingly I arrived to what felt like a music festival. It felt like a particularly
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were you able to attend it? Did you, I was there. I was there most of the time. I think I saw
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you dancing on the truck by the, uh, that's possible doubt at the quarter by the Rito
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center. It, to me, it, it was like a French Canadian music festival. You had all these
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folks who'd been, especially the curfew. You could see the damage psychologically to, to
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the rights of these people, to their, to their raison d'etre that they, they couldn't even
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leave the house after dark. And I was talking to crunchy granola moms and light workers and
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new immigrants who felt like this reminded them of the communist country that they left
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Canada. They, and they're going, uh, all the old alarm bells were going off for them.
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People were hugging. There were a very large Mohawk contingent, which I'm sure you saw as
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well. Yes. Yes. Yes. Terrific beating of the drums and, and mixed with the, the deafening
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horns at, at times was, uh, was quite interesting. And so it's,
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Well, my, my impression was of a whole bunch of people who were so happy to have found each other.
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Yeah. Because a lot of them had been going through this period thinking, am I the only
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one who thinks this? Yeah. But actually they weren't, they were so alienated. So, uh, ostracized
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that they, many of them drove across the country to, to raise the, raise those concerns to feel
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so misrepresented that they, I, I find it very emotionally powerful that they, they drove to
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our, uh, you know, our, our, our hall of power to honk out front, to dance, to hug, to reestablish
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human connection, thriving through minus 40 and barren tundra. It was darn cold too. The, the lens
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on my, my camera kept freezing. I'm sure. I'm sure it was very cold. Yeah. I remember those days.
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It was people heating their hands by trash barrel fires and, and just soup kitchens. And, and so
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it's, uh, it worries me so much. Uh, and I'm so thankful that you highlighted before the justice
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committee, those carny words, because as a free speech advocate, we're so many people are talking
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bill C nine right now, the concerns with bill C nine, you yourself, what do you see as the primary risks
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that bill C nine sort of poses to freedom of expression, particularly in how it might expand
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the policing of online and public discourse. Right. So you'll see the psychology here. Yeah. The,
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the, the convoy was called by various different kinds of people. You, you know, the, the Kearney
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column called them seditionists and terrorists. Yeah. The Ottawa police chief called, called it violence.
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Ontario's premier. Similarly, a supposed conservative castigated them as well. And the,
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and the police chief was challenged at the, at the commission. Yeah. On that statement. He said,
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well, okay, violent. Well, where were the, where was the violence? Words are violent. Are you talking
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about like communal code violence? And the, and the, and he just right back right off and no, well,
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not actual, not actual violence. Yeah. You know, the violence that the community felt. And of course,
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as the ministers of the government, we're talking about the, the, the, the violence of a political
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rhetoric. Yeah. Right. We are now into the territory where words are violence. Yeah. And
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you need violence to repel violence of the words that you spoke. Right. So this is uncharted territory.
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Yeah. I mean, we've been in this territory for a while now, but nevertheless, we have crossed the
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threshold of saying, you can say what you want, as long as you're not threatening violence.
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Well, the truckers did not threaten violence and they did not commit violence. And yet the
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emergencies act was triggered because the government perceived an emergency. Now they were right to
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perceive an emergency to their political fortunes. Yeah. But that's not the kind of emergency the
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emergency act was designed to respond to. You hear, you had a group of, of, of ordinary people
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coming together to say to the government, you know, no, we're, we're not going to go along with
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this anymore. We don't trust you anymore. We're not complying anymore. We challenge the legitimacy of
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what you're doing. Now that is a real political threat when it comes from a, a, a groundswell,
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grassroots gathering of ordinary people right in front of your, of your national legislature.
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Yeah. Okay. So that was the emergency, but C9 is a set of amendments to the criminal code,
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which are very problematic. One of them tries to give a definition of hatred. Now we have had on
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our books for, for a good while, um, a, a, an offense of, of hate speech essentially. Yeah. Which for my
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money, we should not have, they do not have that in the United States. In the United States, the first
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amendment protects language that in this country, we would call hate speech. Hate speech is not a
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thing in the U S is it is constitutionally protected speech, but our Supreme court has said, well, yes,
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if you're going to, if you're going to police hate speech, it doesn't fringe free speech, but section
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one says reasonable limits. So if you do it to this extent, it's okay. And if you do it to this extent,
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it's not okay. And they tried to give a description of where the line was, you know, hopelessly vague.
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Yeah. But, but the, but this bill doubles down on that vagueness. It, it basically says hatred.
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Number one, hatred is an emotion. So note this, we are now policing emotions. Hatred is an emotion.
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It says so right in the proposed definition. So we're no longer just policing acts and, and mens rea.
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You're like, if you commit an act of violence with intent, you know, that constitutes the offense.
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Okay. That is not this. This is the emotion of hatred, the emotion of, of, of, of, of, of detestation
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or vilification that is stronger than disdain or dislike. Okay. Well, so now they're here.
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They're trying to draw the line. And this, this resembles the language in the Supreme court decision,
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but it's not exactly the same. Very close though. So, but here's the problem. So they've said detestation
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is criminal, but dislike is not. So there's your line, but hold on. Wait a minute. What does detestation
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mean? If you look it up, it means intensely dislike. So here's our legal line. You're allowed,
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you're allowed to express and have the emotion of dislike, but it's criminal to intensely dislike.
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Okay. Now, where's the line between dislike and intensely dislike? Nobody knows that,
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that we have a thesaurus deciding this evidently is that's deeply, deeply concerning. I'm like,
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are there any adequate safeguards? No, no, no, no. I mean, the, the, the safeguard that people
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will cite is well, but this won't happen that, you know, won't be convicted of anything related to this
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except by a court. So the court is the gatekeeper here. And therefore we can be confident, confident
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that, you know, things won't go awry. Well, problem is that it is the Supreme court of Canada that has,
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that has sent us down this path in the first place. Yeah. And, and are willing to give ground
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to governments that want to censor speech. All right. Now there's another aspect and there's,
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there's several aspects that proposed amendments in this, in this C9 bill, but another one is a one
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that would be able to target protests. So this one says that if you, if you, uh, near, near a building
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or something, you're, you're, you're, let's say you're protesting, if you intend to quote, create
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a state of fear, then you could be guilty of this criminal offense. Now creating a state of fear,
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here's what they do not mean. They don't mean creating a state of fear of violence. They don't
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mean that somebody has made threats because we already have an offense for that. That's a,
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that's an assault. You can't threaten violence. That's makes sense. You can't go up to somebody in
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the street and say, you know, I'm going to hurt you unless you give me your wallet. You can't do
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that. This is not that this is, if you create a S a state of fear in somebody of what, well,
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who knows the state of fear, maybe the kind of state of fear that the residents of Ottawa complained
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about when the truckers were there, like the state of fear of these ugly, horrible, offensive ideas,
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some honking and the, the, the, the, the, the, the rhetoric of a political ideology.
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Yeah. Right. Now, now you're into the, the thought police and, and the potential is this
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kind of a section could be applied to a future version of the trucker convoy.
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The worry is too, for me as, as the non charter expert here is it's also the way they refer to their
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opposition. Everything is, is fear-based and this sounds like political violence and you're blowing
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a dog whistle. If they're using the same language there, if they're using the same language of
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these special interests who receive big government subsidies to do some, some hate research and to
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ostensibly log roll for more government power and to get more things passed, you know, does it,
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Well, so they're going to, so the, the number of prosecutions of, of, you know, hate speech under
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the criminal code is very small. It's something that, I mean, there was a, there was a, a bill in
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the last parliament, C63, that, that was also a, you know, a, a, a, a, a speech bill.
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And it was even more problematic than C9 because it included, uh, amendments to the Canadian Human Rights
00:25:21.520
Act. And it's much easier to get a complaint against you under the human rights,
00:25:25.120
um, um, tribunal commission regime than it is to be prosecuted for a criminal offense,
00:25:31.760
because at least with the criminal offenses, you still have beyond a reasonable doubt as
00:25:35.520
a threshold. You have evidentiary requirements and so on and so forth. You all have, you still
00:25:39.920
have all the protections that attach to a criminal prosecution, not so with a human rights complaint.
00:25:47.280
And so that would have been a much more problematic. And by the way, this may be coming back
00:25:52.080
in a new bill, but more good news. Okay. Yeah. More good news. But that, that, that is the,
00:25:57.040
is the kind of thing that's going to, going to affect a, a larger, broader, uh, number of people.
00:26:03.840
Um, I, you, you'd still hope that the number of actual criminal prosecutions
00:26:09.200
wouldn't get out of hand, but there's no guarantee, but the human rights thing,
00:26:12.480
I think is, is, uh, more problematic even Bruce party. That was a lot to digest. I I'm trying not
00:26:19.440
to red pill myself, black pill myself. I I'm let's hope we're wrong about a few of these things. I, I,
00:26:26.160
you were such a prominent figure who, who stood a thwart the worst of the COVID years and violations,
00:26:31.360
violations of the charter. I wanted to ask you, has, has Canada gotten over, you know, some of its
00:26:36.960
issues with the madness of crowds. Are we better, are we better equipped to deal with social contagion
00:26:42.640
that do we, or do we still have much to learn? But I, I think what we're, we're hearing right now is,
00:26:47.440
uh, you know, it's going to be a challenging few years.
00:26:50.880
Oh yeah. I don't think there's been a reckoning of the, of the, of the COVID, uh,
00:26:56.480
yeah, disaster. I don't think, I doubt that there's going to be one. Um, it just, just, it's
00:27:03.520
too difficult for the powers that be to own up to what happened. And in fact,
00:27:09.600
I've, I've been saying that COVID rather than a mistake is viewed by the powers that be by the
00:27:16.080
administrative state as its greatest triumph. I mean, after all they controlled the game,
00:27:21.520
they got away with it, what it aspires to do. Right. So it's, it's not like they think it was
00:27:25.760
a system, uh, you know, a series of mistakes. No, we're relying on them to police themselves
00:27:30.400
on this to show. That is the key. That is the key problem with, with the way we are governed with
00:27:36.160
the way our constitution works with our, with our, our, our systems of law. We are re we are
00:27:42.640
depending upon the people with power to restrain themselves. Yeah. And, and that is not a good way
00:27:51.920
to proceed. And sadly they figured out that they can really, you know, push that as far as humanly
00:27:57.440
possible. Professor, thank you so much for joining us. This was incredibly insightful. My pleasure.