00:01:23.760Tell us about what seems like a very English approach to non-hate crimes.
00:01:33.080The English approach hits the nail on the head.
00:01:35.860Before I dive into the Edmonton police, I will say that they started around the year 2000.
00:01:42.680The police started recording non-crime hate incidents.
00:01:48.880And what started out, you know, with good intentions, it was to, I guess, stop the spread of hate in society, I guess, use the law or law enforcement to get people to be nicer to each other.
00:02:03.460right almost all laws have have good intentions but it got to the point where uh just last year
00:02:12.500thousands of people uh so 25 years later we've got thousands and thousands of british people
00:02:19.820who've had the police knocking on their door because they sent an anti-immigration tweet
00:02:26.100we've got people spending time in jail
00:02:55.320you're talking about a non-crime hate incident why do the police trouble themselves with non-crimes
00:03:03.260well this is the big problem that i see with the edmonton police and apparently there are
00:03:08.860police forces all over canada anecdotally that are saying uh if you have a non-hate uh a crime
00:03:16.900if there's a racial slur if there's an offensive joke if there's a you know you people should go
00:03:22.480back to where you came from or all of the worst drivers on the road belong to this or that racial
00:03:29.040or ethnic group, that those types of comments should be reported to police. The big problem
00:03:34.020with that is that police already have limited resources to do law enforcement in relation to
00:03:41.280actual crimes. I hear anecdotally that if your car is stolen or you come back to your home to find it
00:03:47.080broken into and family heirloom jewelry taken away, the home is ransacked, that your car is
00:03:54.560vandalized. Police practically shrug their shoulders. You can fill out a report, but they
00:04:00.200don't have the resources to investigate, to go looking after this. So they're already
00:04:04.800shorthanded in relation to real crimes. So if you have a speech that is offensive, hurtful,
00:04:13.820uh unkind ugly false uh that is not criminal police should not be uh inviting people to
00:04:23.260report any non-crimes simply by virtue of the fact that their resources are limited and they
00:04:28.440don't have enough resources as it is now to to fight actual crimes well again i think the
00:04:37.640question is still if it's not a crime and they're short-staffed anyway why do they do this
00:04:47.000i think it's the woke neo-marxist ideology of equity diversity inclusion that has infiltrated
00:04:53.480uh canadian culture canadian institutions the police the crown prosecutors the judiciary the
00:04:59.320universities certainly the government-funded media and this woke neo-marxist ideology of
00:05:07.080equity diversity inclusion basically says that society is in a state of war oppressors versus
00:05:14.680oppressed and the oppressors are men and straight people and light-skinned people
00:05:20.840and the victims of oppression are women and dark-skinned people and lgbtq people and so0.88
00:05:27.800we're in a state of war this ideology is what gets the groups an institution like the edmonton
00:05:34.920police to put on its website uh send us non-criminal you know send us report speech that
00:05:45.480that you find offensive that is not criminal and by the way the the edmonton police and every other
00:05:50.680police force in canada they do have a responsibility to enforce the criminal code hate speech provisions
00:05:56.920so if somebody said that a certain identifiable group uh you know based on their religion or race
00:06:03.960that that they should all be massacred we're advocating for genocide we're saying that
00:06:08.520these people are you know horrible when you have willful promotion of hatred police have a right0.97
00:06:14.840and an obligation to investigate okay the problem here they're not saying report hate speech and
00:06:22.760then define hate speech and make it clear what it is they're saying just deport uh report to us
00:06:28.200racial slurs and you know offensive jokes and what are they going to do about it it's not illegal
00:06:36.360so well they keep the information on file which is creepy and it lays the foundation for
00:06:42.600becoming more aggressive in the future because in the united kingdom starting in the year 2000
00:06:49.720the you they were not the police were not immediately at that point arresting people
00:06:54.680and locking people up over there or threatening people over their uh tweets on social media but
00:07:01.560over time that's where it led to and so what the edmonton police are doing right now and other
00:07:06.520police forces uh that lays the foundation for moving towards a place where you have police
00:07:13.080knocking on your door uh because they don't like what you said about canada's immigration policy
00:07:19.180So to be clear, if a person makes a comment about Canada's immigration policy that somebody reports as being hateful but non-criminal, the police knock on the door, then what?
00:07:35.260First thing you do when you've got police knocking on your door is take out your cell phone and hit the record button or have a family member record the interaction.
00:07:44.140That's very important so that you don't become a victim of bullying and intimidation.
00:07:47.940just in case there's a bad police officer that's going to bully you, threaten you,
00:07:54.240and intimidate you over what you've said.
00:07:57.060So first response, turn on your cell phone and start recording the incident,
00:08:03.600and then listen to what the officer has to say.
00:08:05.820And you can say, look, am I being charged with criminal hate speech
00:08:10.240under Section 319 of the criminal code?
00:08:13.580And if the answer is no, you say, okay, what do you want?
00:08:17.940And if the policeman was to say, well, you know, we're just concerned about, you know, what you said on Twitter yesterday, say, you know what, I don't want to continue the conversation.
00:21:00.100I wonder if that is still a widely held view these days.
00:21:06.000Do people actually care about free speech anymore?
00:21:10.460We've probably had a cultural shift away from appreciation for free speech and the same, but that's similar too. We've moved away from healthy appreciation of religious freedom, freedom of association, peaceful assembly, travel movement.
00:21:27.540There were an awful lot of Canadians who, you know, cheerfully and enthusiastically gave up their rights and freedoms in 2020 during the lockdowns.
00:21:37.480Having said that, I think most Canadians still appreciate and cherish freedom of speech.
00:21:44.080One of the challenges is that people don't understand that if you give the state, the government, the power to determine what is true or false and what you can and cannot say, that that will be used against you.
00:21:56.680And what I mean is you have you have people saying we can't we can't have hateful we can't have racist speech.
00:22:06.840OK, give you an example. People hear that and go, well, I'm not a racist. I'm against racism.
00:22:11.540I don't see I don't say racist things. So, yeah, let's have a let's pass a law against racist speech.
00:22:18.720Well, now you've got a problem because now the government gets to decide what is or is not racist.
00:22:23.100and somebody could say, you know, we need fewer immigrants in Canada, or we need to better screen
00:22:28.820immigrants. So we're only getting people who love Canadian values. The government could say,
00:22:35.740well, that's racist. It isn't a racist statement, but the government could say it is, and now you're
00:22:40.300in trouble. So there's a practical example. People don't think it through. They think, well, you're
00:22:45.660just going to go after racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic speech. And I don't say any of those
00:22:52.920bad things myself so you go ahead and you censor those people well if the government can shut up
00:22:59.300one group because they are now uh you know politically weak or because they're unpopular
00:23:05.400then government can shut up anybody else and everybody else as well i guess that's one of
00:23:10.860the reasons when all the famous free speech cases that you ever review uh you tend to sort of not
00:23:18.280like the guy who was charged very much. Those difficult cases are where these things are
00:23:23.720determined. So I do wonder, John, whether people care about it as much as we used to care about it,
00:23:36.120days gone by, that they're happier with control and knowing where the limits are and don't much
00:23:45.080care about remember that old uh saying attributed uh to to um
00:23:53.560voltaire i didn't actually say it but uh somebody else much later but you know i may not agree with
00:23:59.640your opinion but i will defend with my life your right to to express it i don't think people think
00:24:05.560like that anymore do they you have fewer people thinking that way we have to remember and don't
00:24:13.320Don't get me wrong. I mean, free speech is in trouble in Canada. Absolutely.
00:24:17.300And all of our rights and freedoms, many of them are under very aggressive assault because of this woke neo-Marxist ideology that we have to fight back against tooth and nail.
00:24:28.460Well, peacefully, we fight back against peacefully. We don't use violence, but we have to fight very hard against it.
00:24:35.560We have to remember as well, though, we compared to other countries in the world today and compared to other time periods in history, we Canadians in 2026 have an awful lot of free expression left over.
00:24:49.180The fact that you and I are having this interview, the fact that people are freely criticizing the government and government policy, the fact that there's this citizen pushback against police wasting resources on trying to keep track of non-criminal behavior, we have a lot of free speech left in Canada.
00:25:08.540So as long as we continue to exercise it, then that is the key to preserving it.