EZRA LEVANT ｜ Andrew Lawton breaks down Bill C-9's threat to religious freedom and free speech
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
172.47316
Summary
A journalist who became a freedom-fighting MP. A feature interview with our friend Andrew Lawton. You're watching The Ezra LeVant Show. Well, one of my favourite journalists is a Freedom-oriented journalist. But then he got this big idea that maybe he would become a parliamentarian, and indeed, he succeeded. Wow! Has he ever become a star in that place, fighting for the same values that he did as a reporter? You probably know who I'm talking to. His name is Andrew Loney and he's the MP for Elgin-St. Thomas-London-South.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Tonight, a journalist who became a freedom-fighting MP, a feature interview with our friend Andrew
00:00:21.960
Lawton. You're watching The Ezra LeVant Show. Well, one of my favorite journalists is a freedom-oriented
00:00:43.500
journalist, but then he got this big idea that maybe he would become a parliamentarian, and indeed,
00:00:49.220
he succeeded. Wow! Has he ever become a star in that place, fighting for the same values that he did
00:00:57.080
as a reporter? You probably know who I'm talking to. His name is Andrew Lawton. He's the member of
00:01:01.820
parliament, let me see if I can get this right, for Elgin, St. Thomas, London, South, and what a
00:01:06.260
delight to catch up with him after a very busy first, I guess, half a year. Andrew, nice to see
00:01:12.660
you again. Congratulations, by the way. Likewise. Thanks very much for having me, Ezra. You know,
00:01:17.960
one of the things I'm really grateful for is that you have not lost your civil liberties spirit.
00:01:23.760
Sometimes when journalists enter parliament, they suddenly lose their principles. All the things
00:01:28.920
they talked about when they were writers, I think of our friend Charles Adler, who Trudeau put in the
00:01:33.600
Senate. You, in fact, have done the opposite. You have leaned in to your civil libertarian side and
00:01:39.200
have made that a focus. Why don't you share with our folks who might not be following parliament closely,
00:01:43.920
tell us about some of the battles that you've faced, some of the questions you've asked in committee,
00:01:49.120
some of the question period stuff. This is for folks who don't know. Bring them up to speed and don't be
00:01:54.240
shy about throwing to clips. If we don't have those clips here immediately, we'll add them a little bit
00:01:59.360
later before we publish this because you've had some exciting moments. So bring us up to speed. Tell me about
00:02:04.700
the battle. Oh, well, look, I, first off, I appreciate it, Ezra. I mean, when I made the
00:02:10.540
decision to run, a big part of my decision was, can I continue to be a champion and an advocate for
00:02:17.600
the things that I've always cared about and the things that I use my platform as a journalist to
00:02:22.400
champion? And I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't going to be able to do that. And that was a key part
00:02:28.600
of why I decided to run in the first place. It was, where can I make the biggest impact? And in my
00:02:33.840
maiden speech to the House of Commons, I actually said that the reason I went to Ottawa was to make
00:02:39.400
Canada a freer country. That was a commitment that I made to myself, to my constituents and to all
00:02:45.380
Canadians. Let's have a quick clip of that. And again, the maiden speech, that sort of, everyone
00:02:50.120
watches that one. Your folks back home watch it. Other MPs, they want to take your measure. Here's a
00:02:55.480
clip from Andrew's maiden speech. My writing is made up of incredible communities filled with
00:03:01.520
incredible people. And I get to represent them. Everyone, regardless of how they voted. The farmers,
00:03:08.840
the artists, the entrepreneurs, people who have just made Canada their home for the first time, and
00:03:15.280
people who helped settle this country and settled the community generations ago. But it's people in
00:03:21.120
these rural and smaller communities in particular who have felt most neglected by the last 10 years of
00:03:27.800
liberal government. And it was their struggles that motivated me to jump into politics. As a journalist
00:03:34.720
and broadcaster, I could not spend an election with the stakes so high on the sidelines. I had to have a
00:03:40.740
hand in the solutions. Like most in this chamber, I spent the campaign knocking on doors. I spoke to
00:03:47.800
thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in my writing. And I want to share, Mr. Speaker, a few of the
00:03:54.400
stories that have stood out and that I carry with me today. One was a retired teacher from St. Thomas,
00:04:01.320
a woman who said she had voted liberal every single election in her entire life. And I asked her,
00:04:08.340
why not now? And she said, I just can't. Now, a good politician probably would have taken the vote and
00:04:14.680
walked away. But I asked as a journalist one further question. Why? She said, because my sons are 28 and 30
00:04:21.560
years old, and they live with me, and unless things change, they're never going to be able to move out.
00:04:28.240
That is one conversation I had that is so similar to countless more. People whose families could not
00:04:34.900
develop and thrive the way that most Canadians dream, the way people in my writing dream, because of
00:04:40.700
liberal government policy that has made home ownership just fantasy rather than a dream and an aspiration.
00:04:47.100
Well, excellent. Now, how have your fellow MPs, and there's some conservative senators too,
00:04:52.460
how have they reacted to you picking up the torch of free speech? Have they joined in? Have they
00:04:58.080
encouraged you? Have some said, oh, fella, better calm down or something? What's been the reaction?
00:05:04.020
No, it's been incredible. I mean, we obviously look as a conservative party. We didn't win this
00:05:09.380
election, but we did tremendously well in terms of our raw vote total. We made inroads in
00:05:15.520
communities that are not used to electing conservatives. Largely, I think the reason
00:05:20.980
that that was so successful and so important and gives us something to build off of is because
00:05:25.940
we need to be able to have these conversations about what's at stake. I was talking about freedoms
00:05:32.600
for gun owners in rural communities and across the country, freedom of expression, freedom of the
00:05:37.980
press. And then we had this really dangerous government bill that was put forward called Bill
00:05:44.420
C-9, which is a bill that, again, the noble intentions surrounding it, as you've been covering,
00:05:50.900
as I was covering as a journalist, you know, the unbridled, brazen hate that's been directed to the
00:05:57.120
Jewish community in particular, but also we've seen arsons and vandalism of Christian churches in the
00:06:02.380
last five years. There are a number of communities that I think have been crying out for action, but
00:06:07.420
the answer to that was not a bill that censors what Canadians can say. So Bill C-9 has become a bill
00:06:15.040
that I've become very vocal and active on, especially now that it's expanded to remove
00:06:20.820
longstanding religious freedom protections. And certainly the support from my colleagues
00:06:25.140
in the Conservative caucus on this battle has been tremendous.
00:06:28.500
Now, let me ask you, because when I was young and starting to learn about civil liberties,
00:06:36.240
when I was in my 20s, let's say, I had a chance to meet a fellow named Alan Borovoy,
00:06:41.120
who at the time was the head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. I think it would be fair to
00:06:45.420
call him a man of the left. In fact, he was pretty progressive, as we'd say today. But he loved civil
00:06:51.080
liberties as much as anyone I've ever met ever. There was a time when civil liberties used to be a
00:06:57.200
nonpartisan issue, where people on the left and people on the right believed in it. Maybe wokeism
00:07:03.720
killed that on the left. But let me ask you, have you had any of the more high-minded liberals? I don't
00:07:10.500
even want to ask about the block or the NDP, because I think I know the answer there. But have
00:07:14.780
any more moderate liberals, more thoughtful, old-style liberals said, hey, Andrew, maybe we disagree with you
00:07:23.020
on a few things. But we love civil liberties too. Have you seen any hope across the aisle on this
00:07:28.520
stuff? Look, not in Parliament. Now, I'm going to make a division between liberals in the House of
00:07:35.580
Commons and people on the left who are not partisan liberals in Canada. Because outside of Ottawa, I would
00:07:42.400
agree there is, in general, among people on the left and the right, an understanding that freedom of
00:07:48.400
expression is important. Religious freedom is important. The right to protest the government, this is an
00:07:53.440
important fundamental right in a free society. And when liberal government, when the Justin Trudeau
00:08:00.200
government was pushing forward the Online Harms Act, a lot of the criticism came from people that no one
00:08:05.840
has ever mistaken for being conservative. People like Margaret Atwood, people like, oh, I mean, Andrew
00:08:12.580
Coyne and Neil MacDonald of CBC. So this is where I think we have to draw a line between some of these
00:08:19.900
cultural people on the left and the political left. The Liberal Party right now has been the party that's
00:08:25.700
been advancing these really significant moves away from freedom of expression and away from religious
00:08:32.080
freedom. This was a hallmark of the Justin Trudeau government, and that has been picked up by the
00:08:37.280
Mark Carney government. But on Bill C-9, the condemnation has come from left and right. You
00:08:43.160
know, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the BC Civil Liberties Association, which is even further
00:08:48.080
to the left, have condemned it. It's been condemned by Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, organizations
00:08:55.280
on all sides of the political spectrum, leaving me to wonder, why are the Liberals still standing by it?
00:09:01.500
And the only reason is because fundamentally, they do not support freedom of expression.
00:09:06.060
I want to come back to C-9 in a moment. And you're right, it's a concerning law. And I've read
00:09:12.660
through the law, I've talked about it in a monologue, but you've really engaged the government
00:09:17.020
with it. Let's put that aside just for a minute, because I want to ask one more follow-up question
00:09:20.400
about how civil liberties, if it is still something shared by other people. A lot of censorship comes
00:09:27.960
from government, of course, and that is regulated in part by the Charter of Rights, which limits how the
00:09:33.580
government can infringe on our freedoms. However, a lot of censorship in my observation these days
00:09:40.140
comes from tech companies, that is, private companies, not governments, whether it's YouTube
00:09:45.700
or TikTok or Facebook. Now, Elon Musk buying Twitter and making it very free-speechy has changed things.
00:09:54.840
It's really fostered communications and an international conversation. Have you had any
00:10:02.140
interaction with tech companies or their lobbyists since you've come to Ottawa? Where are they on the
00:10:09.760
free-speech issue? Because for a few years there, they were really the vanguard of censorship. That's
00:10:15.080
how it looked like to me. Yeah, I've met with a number of stakeholders. I met with YouTube. I've
00:10:21.620
met with Rumble. I've met with X. I have not had a meeting with anyone at Meta formally, but I've run
00:10:28.920
into people at Meta. And look, the position that I have expressed to them is one that I am firmly in
00:10:35.520
the mindset that we need to have freedom of expression. I have also been very clear on this,
00:10:41.820
that I do not believe government should be regulating what these platforms can have on
00:10:46.680
themselves. But I also want to take a step back here because I believe that one of the big problems
00:10:53.660
we've seen is when government forces tech companies to do, not to take a particular decision, but forces
00:11:00.620
them to regulate a particular aspect of what they do. And then those tech companies respond in a way
00:11:07.120
that they're the ones making the decision. And I'll use a prime example of this, which is the Online
00:11:12.860
News Act. The Online News Act did not force Facebook to take news off of its platform, but it created
00:11:20.640
a framework where that was the most logical thing for Meta to do. But if you're an independent news
00:11:28.240
platform and you're saying, well, hang on, now I've been banned from Facebook, the government says,
00:11:33.340
well, don't look at us. That's Meta. Meta made that decision. Well, yes, but they made that decision
00:11:37.840
as a response to government regulation. And I said the same thing when the Online Harms Act was
00:11:43.280
being put forward. If government is saying to tech companies, these are the hate laws in Canada,
00:11:49.060
and you have to figure out how you're going to keep this type of content from your platform,
00:11:53.700
it's going to force an overbroad interpretation by companies that don't want to deal with the government
00:12:00.440
and the government's regulatory regime. So you end up with censorship that is technically being
00:12:06.900
perpetrated by tech companies, but really your beef is with the government. So I think the more we can
00:12:13.060
disentangle government as a content regulator from social media companies, the better it is for Canadians.
00:12:20.540
Yeah. I mean, we're effectively banned on Facebook. It was a decision because the government would have
00:12:27.020
taxed Facebook for every link. But whether the government did it directly or it happened
00:12:32.800
as a side effect, we're still banned. Yeah, but you don't have the recourse. You don't have the
00:12:39.540
recourse available that you would. You cannot take Meta to court because Meta would say, well,
00:12:44.140
we're a private company. And you can't take the government to court because they'll say, well,
00:12:47.480
Meta made that decision. So this is the problem when government is basically deputizing tech companies
00:12:52.980
to do what the government really wants to do. Well, and not just that, a lot of smaller or
00:12:59.860
independent or startup media companies, they need that word of mouth, that free marketing that comes
00:13:05.520
from enthusiastic sharing. If you're an incumbent in the marketplace, everyone's already heard of
00:13:11.180
CTV Global and CBC. They don't really need advertising. They're not going to say they're a monopoly,
00:13:17.520
but they have big brand power. You're a little startup. You need that organic sharing. That's
00:13:23.360
how Rebel News goes. We don't have a marketing budget. Let's get back to C9. And I mean, that bill,
00:13:30.500
every weekend near my house in Toronto, and I live in a fairly Jewish neighborhood, there's a group of
00:13:37.060
pro-Hamas activists. I'm not saying pro-Palestinian because they're much further than that. They literally
00:13:42.140
had this recreation of the terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar in his final moments. Like these folks
00:13:48.080
openly support Hamas and they come into a Jewish neighborhood. They block the streets. They utter
00:13:54.420
threats. They disturb the peace. They violate noise bylaws. Sometimes they walk into residential areas
00:14:02.360
screaming at people. Other pro-Hamas protesters in Toronto have smashed windows in some extreme cases,
00:14:09.180
shot at a Jewish girls' school three times. I guess what I'm saying is there's a lot of what I would
00:14:15.100
call regular laws they're breaking, not hate laws, uttering threats, etc. My view is the way to deal
00:14:22.940
with those things is to enforce the law. And those laws are not being enforced, in my view, for political
00:14:28.660
or even demographic voter reasons. C9 seems to me, and you tell me if I'm wrong, was sort of to say,
00:14:36.080
hey, Jews, we're going to bring in a law against hateful words. So we'll fix the problem with yet
00:14:44.620
another law. My first reflex is, well, why don't you enforce the laws as they are? Why are you making
00:14:52.120
another law other than avoiding doing the hard work? I think the whole premise of the law is a
00:14:58.600
distraction from the fact that police and prosecutors aren't enforcing the current laws. What do you think of
00:15:03.860
that? I think you're right. I mean, Bill C9 is the Liberal government attempting to deflect
00:15:10.400
responsibility for how it has allowed anti-Semitic hate to fester over the last two plus years.
00:15:16.860
The lack of political leadership on this vile and often violent anti-Semitic rhetoric has been a failing
00:15:24.180
of political leadership. It has not been a lack of laws. And this is something that even a lot of the
00:15:30.980
Jewish organizations in Canada have been saying for the last two plus years, that we need to enforce
00:15:35.720
existing laws, such as the laws surrounding intimidation and harassment and mischief against
00:15:42.540
religious properties, incitement to genocide, which is already a criminal standard or criminal code
00:15:48.400
offense with a very specific meaning and a very high threshold, as there should be for anything
00:15:53.920
relating to speech. So what C9 does is it retreads a lot of things that are existing illegal under
00:16:01.500
existing laws. And again, if the existing laws are not being enforced, how do we know the new laws are
00:16:06.620
going to be? But the things that it does that are fundamentally different are things that will go
00:16:11.940
after speech that is right now protected. And this is where we get very concerned about not just the
00:16:19.660
lowering of the threshold for what constitutes hate speech. They're putting in a new definition of hate,
00:16:24.780
which lowers the threshold that's been used in Supreme Court jurisprudence on this. And also now a critical
00:16:31.700
change in this is that the Liberal government has made an agreement with the Bloc Québécois, and they passed an
00:16:37.540
amendment at one of the last meetings of the Justice Committee that will remove longstanding religious
00:16:45.360
freedom protections that have prevented people who, quote, scriptures the government finds offensive
00:16:51.660
from being criminally prosecuted. And this is a change that will target Christians, it will target
00:16:58.120
Jews, it will target Muslims, it will target anyone of faith in this country. And this is not protecting
00:17:04.380
anyone from hate. You are not protecting any community from hate if you're opening up, if you're opening them
00:17:10.420
up to prosecution. You know, Sean Fraser, the Justice Minister, says, oh, it's never being used,
00:17:17.720
the religious defense. Let's just actually talk about the substance of what's being proposed,
00:17:23.820
because there's a lot of misinformation that is being shared around there, suggesting this is
00:17:27.780
the criminalization of faith, which I don't think any parliamentarian would stand for.
00:17:31.260
No, but there will be concerns. Like, there are certain faiths, like I was raised Catholic,
00:17:35.040
right? You know, people, you know, adherence to that, strict adherence, think homosexuality is a
00:17:40.400
sin, gay marriage shouldn't be allowed, you know, same-sex adoption shouldn't be allowed,
00:17:44.540
and might have concerns that if preaching that or advocating that, that they could be targeted for
00:17:49.160
a crime. The religious exemption will protect them from that, but you argue the threshold's much
00:17:54.040
higher than something that way. Certainly, the threshold is much higher to willfully promote hate
00:17:58.140
against an identifiable group of people. There's a difference between saying you have a point of view
00:18:02.220
or reading scripture about same-sex marriage and actually promoting hate, vilifying or inciting
00:18:09.060
violence against a particular group. Moreover, the protections that this individual provision
00:18:14.340
could have potentially afforded a person would likely be protected by the charter or the existing
00:18:20.640
public interest exemption. From my point of view, we should recognize that religions in this country
00:18:25.900
promote messages of love, of peace, of inclusion, and I think it's a perversion of what
00:18:31.980
the world's major religions stand for, to have people suggest that somehow reading scripture or
00:18:37.080
holy text from a religion of your choice would somehow constitute willfully promoting hate.
00:18:42.000
I grew up in a Catholic household too, read scripture on Sundays. This is not what religion is about,
00:18:48.020
and I have faith that we're going to be able to move forward with the protections,
00:18:51.080
including the ones that were designed specifically to protect religious communities in this country.
00:18:54.460
You know, one of the things in the law that scares me, Andrew, is that someone can make an argument
00:19:01.980
in good faith, quoting their Bible or Jewish Bible or
00:19:07.080
Quran or other holy book, and they genuinely believe it. They don't mean it as an attack.
00:19:14.300
They're not using it as a sword. It's more a shield. Let me take three. I'm sorry.
00:19:23.080
Andrew, one of the things about the law is that it removes what has historically been a defense
00:19:28.980
to hate speech charges, which is religious belief. If you genuinely believe a passage of the Bible
00:19:35.700
or the Jewish Torah or the Muslim Quran, you could, to this day, plead that as a defense saying,
00:19:42.920
Your Honor, sorry someone felt I was doing something hateful. I'm actually just relying
00:19:47.840
on this scripture. This law would remove the religious defense. And a lot of people think
00:19:52.800
that's, I mean, again, the government would say, oh, that'll stop some of the anti-Semitic hate speech.
00:19:58.380
I don't think so. I think that this law will be selectively applied. And I'm just going to go on
00:20:03.840
record making a prediction that this law will be used against Christian street pastors, not against
00:20:11.260
these Hamas thugs who are threatening Jews every Sunday in my neighborhood. I don't know. I'm just
00:20:16.000
nervous that we're removing a defense. We're removing a freedom defense for everyone. When again,
00:20:24.340
as we said earlier, we don't need to change the law. We just need to enforce the laws that there are.
00:20:29.000
But it makes me really nervous that the government gets to decide what religious speech is hateful and
00:20:34.100
what isn't. Yes. And you're right to use the magic words there, good faith. The defense only applies
00:20:42.060
to good faith expressions of religious beliefs or citing religious texts. So the one that's often held
00:20:49.740
up by the liberals and indeed now, or by the Bloc Québécois and now the liberals as being the sample
00:20:55.800
case for this is a man in Quebec, Adil Charcawy, a hate preacher who called for basically Jews to be
00:21:03.940
eradicated, but he did it in the context of a prayer. And first off, there is no such thing as calling for
00:21:10.980
genocide in good faith. So even if you are using your religious justification, however distorted it
00:21:18.220
is to call for something so heinous, that is not in good faith. But more importantly, the defense does
00:21:23.940
not apply to violent speech. It does not apply when the criminal charge of inciting genocide, for example,
00:21:31.320
is engaged. It only applies to willful promotion of hatred. So we are talking about hate speech here
00:21:37.660
and with a government definition that is lower than the current definition, and testimony from people such as
00:21:44.420
Bruce Party, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, that this
00:21:50.360
combination will be used to go after people whose views government finds offensive. And that's why we've been
00:21:56.820
mounting such a significant defense of free speech, of religious freedom. I have a petition that we put forward,
00:22:03.560
which is to protect religious freedom. This petition has gotten in the first week, I think, about 10,
00:22:10.740
it was like 50,000 signatures. It was something massive like that. And from all over the country,
00:22:15.740
and still continuing, because people realize how important this is to protect these fundamental
00:22:21.320
freedoms. We've had Muslims, Jews, Christians, as I said, that have all reached out the Conference of
00:22:27.120
Catholic Bishops, again, an organization that does not get particularly political, speaking out about what
00:22:32.740
this means, that they're now being told by the government, that you have to watch what you say in your
00:22:38.620
sermons, you have to watch which verses of scripture you quote. This is from a liberal government who had a
00:22:45.280
member who's now a cabinet minister, talk about how ministers, priests, clerics who quote the Bible or the Torah
00:22:52.880
should be subject to criminal charges if they read verses that he deems as hateful. That's Mark Miller, now the
00:23:01.420
minister of Canadian identity and culture. So this is a very significant issue and one that we need
00:23:06.900
to put a lot of pressure on the liberal government to reverse course on before the House of Commons
00:23:11.700
comes back in January. Yeah, that was a crazy quote by Mark Miller here. Take a look.
00:23:17.080
I just want to dig in a bit about the concept of good faith, Mr. Ross. In Leviticus, Deuteronomy,
00:23:24.660
Romans, there's other passages, there's clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals. I don't know,
00:23:29.340
understand how the concept of good faith could be invoked if someone were literally invoking a
00:23:34.200
passage from, in this case, the Bible, but there are other religious texts that say the same thing
00:23:38.360
and somehow say that this is good faith. I mean, clearly there are situations in these texts where
00:23:44.680
these statements are hateful, they should not be used to invoke or be a defense, and there should
00:23:51.940
perhaps be discretion for prosecutors to press charges. I just want to understand what your notion
00:23:56.520
of good faith is in this context where there are clearly passages in religious texts that are
00:24:01.520
clearly hateful. You know, there is one famous case that I think went all the way to the Supreme
00:24:06.640
Court of Canada that was sort of a trial run for this. Let me remind you, tell me if you know the
00:24:11.100
one I mean. In the greater Vancouver area, there is a small Christian university called Trinity
00:24:17.620
Western University. It's a very good school, but as I mentioned before, they have a Christian ethos.
00:24:23.020
And they wanted a law school, but the thing about Trinity Western is their student code of conduct,
00:24:29.300
the student pledge, is not to have premarital sex. It's just part of the rules there. If you don't like
00:24:35.460
it, go to any other university in BC. So when this school applied for accreditation, including with
00:24:44.620
law societies across the country, basically they were saying, if someone graduates from Trinity Western
00:24:50.080
New Law School, will they be accredited at the Ontario Bar, at the Law Society of Ontario, Law
00:24:56.360
Society of Alberta, etc. And none of these law societies could find any flaws in Trinity Western's
00:25:03.960
teaching, in their academics, in their teaching of contract law and constitutional law and criminal law,
00:25:10.360
but they rejected Trinity Western based on their religiosity. And that basically killed the idea
00:25:21.300
that a Christian school could have a law school, not because they would be teaching things incorrectly,
00:25:26.280
but because they happen to have a student conduct pledge that you can't have sex outside of marriage.
00:25:33.480
And I think that's proof that the legal establishment in this country would use that as a weapon against
00:25:39.060
particular religious enemies. So obviously, they're going after Christian conservatives.
00:25:44.680
Obviously, this would be used by transgender activists against, say, pastors like Derek Reimer in Calgary,
00:25:52.140
who interrupted a trans book reading in a kid's library.
00:25:57.860
I think that not only is this not going to be used to stop hate crimes against the Jews,
00:26:04.380
I think it will be used to persecute Christians, as we've seen in Trinity Western and in other cases.
00:26:13.180
It's a reality is that we do not know how it will be used. And what I always tell people on the political
00:26:19.820
left who want to give government increased powers is imagine how the next government would use something
00:26:25.620
like this. And this is the same argument against the Emergencies Act. Say, you know, maybe the liberal
00:26:30.160
government didn't like the convoy protesters, but imagine how the next government that might not be
00:26:36.080
as amenable to you would react if protesters you did like were protesting. And that's the same argument I
00:26:42.260
use on anything related to free speech, is that I will support the right of people I agree with to
00:26:47.460
speak freely. I will support the right of people I disagree with to speak freely. I will support people
00:26:52.080
of my own faith to express their religious freedom. I will support people of other faiths to do it.
00:26:57.680
Because only if we protect these liberties for all, can we protect them for anyone. And this is so
00:27:04.400
tremendously important. And it's actually quite disheartening how short-sighted so many people are
00:27:10.060
who want to give the government of the day powers that they would never want another government of a
00:27:15.420
different political persuasion to have. But we are dealing with a threshold here that if this,
00:27:22.580
if Bill C-9 passes, and again, I'm fighting it quite hard as are my conservative colleagues,
00:27:27.400
but if Bill C-9 passes, this will be a full-on assault on religious freedom in this country.
00:27:33.520
Yeah, I'm worried about it. And there's other laws to come. I mean, in the last parliament before
00:27:38.340
Justin Trudeau quit and prorogued things, and there were other censorship bills making their way
00:27:44.040
forward, including the so-called online harms act. Do you have any information on that? That was a
00:27:49.340
much broader censorship law. Do you- Yeah, so here's one thing I will tell you that has not
00:27:54.160
gotten a lot of attention, is that under Bill C-9, this new hate offense they're creating doesn't just
00:28:00.220
apply in the criminal code, it applies to all acts of parliament. Right. Which means that there is now
00:28:06.500
a hate offense that can be tacked on to a Canadian Human Rights Act violation, that can be tacked on to a
00:28:13.120
Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission offence or infraction, CRTC. So there already is
00:28:20.340
through the back door, a way for C-9 to do what the Online Harms Act would have. And when I had
00:28:26.960
Sean Fraser before the Justice Committee on Bill C-9, I asked him about this, and he quite candidly said,
00:28:33.060
yes, Bill C-9 will affect what you say online, it will affect what you post on social media.
00:28:38.340
C-9 makes reference specifically with hate symbols to public spaces. Just to confirm,
00:28:51.820
Generally speaking, the law will apply equally online as it does in real communities.
00:28:57.200
So this bill will affect what people can say and write on the internet?
00:29:01.360
Just in the limited circumstances where there is the willful promotion of hatred against someone.
00:29:07.500
It will apply to the internet. The internet is within the jurisdiction of...
00:29:09.760
It would be possible that someone could commit a hate crime on the internet, certainly.
00:29:13.160
So, building off of Mr. Babber's points about the lower threshold for the definition of speech,
00:29:20.500
there is, under this law, assuming Bill C-9 passes, something that might not be legal to say today on the internet.
00:29:28.640
Or it might be legal to say on the internet, could actually be illegal in the future, under C-9, could it not?
00:29:35.960
No, that's entirely inaccurate, and I say that with no judgment to your perspective, but let me explain.
00:29:43.000
The only circumstance where you could imagine some online comment attracting scrutiny under this law
00:29:49.400
would attach to behavior that is criminal today, but would be punished less severely.
00:29:53.520
The symbols piece that you pointed to, for example, is attached only to the willful promotion of hate.
00:30:02.700
The willful promotion of hate is a crime today, but we want to recognize a distinct charge
00:30:06.740
where that same behavior uses certain symbols of hate to bring a higher degree of culpability.
00:30:11.680
So there is no new human behavior that would attract the scrutiny you're talking about.
00:30:14.840
I understand, but I'm building off of the discussion earlier on the definition.
00:30:18.700
Is your view that the change in wording, and there was a change in wording,
00:30:23.560
you made a deliberate decision to change the definition that was spelled out in Keekstra
00:30:29.700
Is your view that your definition in C-9 will not capture anything beyond
00:30:36.060
what is currently captured right now by the hate definition?
00:30:39.260
The definition was an attempt to codify, and the reason that there was a...
00:30:45.720
Is there at all a lower threshold or a broader net on hate in Canada after C-9 if it passes?
00:30:53.500
My view on the definition question, because the offenses I would give a different answer to you for,
00:30:58.520
but on the definition, my view is that it codifies the same behavior that is there today,
00:31:03.420
and it was meant to provide clearer guidance to law enforcement in the criminal code
00:31:07.600
to apply the existing standard that has been recognized by the Supreme Court.
00:31:11.140
Because the same arguments that are being used by you and your government to push Bill C-9
00:31:16.800
to protect people against hate, which on the surface sounds incredibly noble,
00:31:20.880
but these arguments are the same arguments that have led to the United Kingdom
00:31:25.500
having police literally knocking on people's doors over their tweets.
00:31:30.320
So what guarantee can you give Canadians that we are not headed down that very road,
00:31:35.000
especially in the context of other priority areas identified by you and your government,
00:31:39.680
such as the Online Harms Act, which was introduced twice, actually, in the last two parliaments?
00:31:44.820
So this legislation is not identical and kind to the reforms that have put place in the UK,
00:31:49.680
and we've actually looked at their experience and see that there are real challenges with how it's played out.
00:31:54.000
For example, we've got a different approach where some jurisdictions around the world
00:31:58.060
have adopted a more blanket glorification that could attract the scrutiny of liking a Facebook post, for example,
00:32:07.320
We instead tried to be very clear that we would not interfere with the Chartered Rights of Canadians
00:32:11.940
to freely express themselves, but at the same time make it easier to lay charges
00:32:18.800
To the extent that you think there is a better way to clarify and codify the existing definition,
00:32:25.680
do know that I believe in Parliament, and I don't care which party comes forward with these amendments.
00:32:30.020
If it creates a multi-partisan buy-in to codify the test, that's okay by me.
00:32:33.720
Can you guarantee that if C9 passes, no Canadian will end up being charged
00:32:37.660
because of something they've posted on Twitter or Facebook?
00:32:41.700
Well, if they commit the crime of willfully promoting hatred against another person.
00:32:46.500
A crime with a definition that you're changing.
00:32:49.360
But it's possible that they could be convicted for willfully promoting hate online today.
00:32:57.260
So certainly I would hope if someone commits a crime in the real world or online
00:33:03.040
that they would face the appropriate criminal penalty if in fact it's captured by the code.
00:33:09.960
I mean, they have the support of the Bloc and the NDP on most of this stuff, don't they?
00:33:13.340
So, you know, you can be hollering at the moon and they don't care.
00:33:17.520
They really seem intent on ramming this through, or do they?
00:33:22.040
I mean, we had a very, very important fight the week before Parliament rose.
00:33:26.360
The Liberals wanted to get Bill C9 just completely waved through without any scrutiny.
00:33:32.240
They actually denied us two of the meetings we were going to have to hear from witnesses on this.
00:33:37.460
And we had a lot of fantastic civil liberties lawyers lined up, including the Democracy Fund
00:33:42.600
and Mark Joseph, including Lisa Bildy of the Free Speech Union that we never got to hear from.
00:33:47.760
So that was, I think, a big part of why they didn't want us to have all of the time on this
00:33:53.500
And they were threatening to have the committee sitting right up until Christmas
00:33:59.140
But we told them this is a red line that we cannot cross.
00:34:02.360
So we were able to hold it off, but we need to ensure that the Liberals reverse course,
00:34:07.060
in particular on removing the religious defense.
00:34:09.800
That's the issue, the amendment that has really awakened a lot of Canadians that I don't really
00:34:14.740
think we're paying attention to this too closely because it is very personal.
00:34:18.560
When the government starts telling people of faith what views they can express, what scriptures
00:34:23.200
they can quote, that is something that anyone understands.
00:34:28.520
And I'm glad the Conservative Party has dedicated itself to free speech.
00:34:34.920
And I'm not saying that just to give a compliment.
00:34:40.840
I think that I've really never seen a poll where Canadians want more censorship.
00:34:48.780
I think every human being says, well, I can make decisions for myself.
00:34:55.440
As in everyone, but everyone wants to be their own censor, if you understand my meaning.
00:35:00.300
Everyone wants to make the choices for themselves.
00:35:07.240
What's the best way for people to stay in touch?
00:35:12.880
Yeah, people can head to my website, which is at andrewlaughton.ca.
00:35:18.780
You can also follow me on X or Facebook and YouTube.
00:35:21.900
I try to post all the work that I'm doing on those platforms.
00:35:24.180
Well, thanks for taking the time to keep in touch with us.
00:35:26.880
We're excited that someone with your history of being an independent-minded,
00:35:31.580
civil liberties-loving journalist is in Parliament.
00:35:36.060
Give us hope to the rest of us, independent journalists.
00:35:46.460
And hopefully we can get an update from you in a few months.
00:35:50.860
Merry Christmas, Ezra, and to all of your audience as well.
00:35:55.860
There he is, Andrew Lawton, one of the good guys, that's for sure.
00:35:58.200
We miss him as a journalist, but he's doing very important work in the Parliament.
00:36:04.320
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,
00:36:07.740
to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.