Liberty and “hate speech”: as mild-mannered Canada morphs into China
It’s been happening step-by-step under Trudeau, but this prospect is especially alarming (hat tip Instapundit):
I remembered seeing something about Trudeau’s digital censorship bill on Michael Shellengerger’s Public site earlier this year, but the idea of police arresting people on the basis of retroactive searches apparently didn’t register. “No way,” I thought …
… [T]he retroactive punishment clause … places a responsibility on Canadians (or visitors to Canada, as I’d learn) to delete any old statements on the Internet that may constitute illegal hate speech under the new bill.
Blaive noted, however, that while you can delete a past offense, the new Canadian law also punishes future or potential crimes. She wrote:
… “If the courts believe you are likely to commit a ‘hate crime’ or disseminate ‘hate propaganda’ (not defined), you can be placed under house arrest and your ability to communicate with others restricted… If the court believes there’s a risk you may get drunk or high and start tweeting under the influence — although how is unclear, given you can’t use your phone or a PC — it can order you to submit regular urine samples to the authorities. Anyone who refuses to comply with these diktats can be sent to prison…”
Extremely alarming. But Canada has many more restrictions on speech than the US, and has been going in this direction for quite a while.
The legislation has been presented as aimed at protecting children, and most of its most Draconian elements have not been reported on by the MSM, for the most part:
Official Canadian sites stressed the Online Harms Act created “stronger protections for kids” and “a new vision for safer and more inclusive participation online.” Initial CBC coverage was almost indistinguishable from that federal press release, quoting Justice Minister Arif Virani saying “We cannot tolerate anarchy on the Internet,” and “the mental health and even the lives of our kids are at stake.” …
The only mainstream American publication to reference the worst elements of the bill was a March 14 New York Post piece that hit the key notes of life imprisonment and pre-crime …
Canada rarely doles out life prison terms for murder, but C-63, it seemed, was imagining life for offenses that weren’t even crimes, so long as they’re committed with hateful intent. … Add a fuller expanation of the financial rewards of up to $20,000 for snitching (the bill uses the term “informant” twice), combined with penalties up to $50,000 for the accused, and it seemed no one outside of Ezra Levant’s perpetually downranked Rebel News had given all the scary elements of the bill real coverage.
Those articles on Levant’s site, which is almost never mentioned in American media without the prefixes “far right” or “extremist right” and almost never appear in early Google searches, are also the only ones I’ve seen so far that report the seemingly crucial fact that many of the child protection and/or pornography provisions that got the most official coverage appear to already be against the law in Canada. The angles sold by Trudeau and Justice Minister Arif Verani about protecting children and making hate offenses criminal are mostly all on the books already.
So the ostensible reason for the legislation appears to be a sham. The real reason? Control of the population by the left through the mechanism of selective prosecution and fear of prosecution.
Canada has a ‘Charter of Rights and Freedoms’. It isn’t worth anything or their judges do not enforce it.
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I believe the last Conservative government eliminated some of the travesties in Canadian statutory law and then the subsequent Liberal governments restored them. Current polling indicates the next government will have a Conservative majority. About the 1st thing they should do is comprehensive repeal of all statutory permissions to harass people for speaking their mind.
The lamps are going out all around the world in the democracies. Shall we see them lit again in our lifetimes?*
*Probably not in my lifetime. I’m not sure I have all that many years left to me. *sigh*
well his parents, actual ones, were craven Fidel and Maoist apologists, so it’s not really a surprise, I suspect the hand of Freedland nee Chemezov in these mechanizations,
“When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.” Thomas Jefferson
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” H.L. Mencken
We must be tenacious about defending the freedoms in our Constitution, since English-descended nations lacking the Constitution also lack freedom.
well you saw that show piece by the extinction rebellion players re the magna carta, they have no concern for liberty,
Apparently the Magna Carta is now hate speech … or something.
–“Elderly priest, ex-teacher smash case holding original Magna Carta in climate change protest”
https://nypost.com/2024/05/11/world-news/priest-retired-teacher-smash-case-holding-original-magna-carta/
The Online Harms Act is a shining example of the intent of ‘the Left’ to seize totalitarian control of the Canadian population (ultimately all populations) by any means necessary, starting by pretending that this grossly misnamed Act is simply ‘for the children’, and aided and abetted by the ‘news’ media (which long since has been fully colonized by ‘the Left’) carefully concealing its enforcement provisions.
Presumably all those ‘reporters’ and ‘editors’ are confident that they’ll be well represented on the ultimate Politburo and Central Committee, so that their moral superiority can dish out the righteous punishments, without concern of ever facing them themselves. Sounds a lot like they’ve never soiled their gleaming souls reading up on how humans behave when given such one-sided powers.
Conservative Pierre Poilievre, with his sharp tongue and strong spine, is one breath of fresh air in that suffocating body politic.
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How about an American visiting? Something I may have liked on Facebook?
“…for the children…”
Yep, the government ALWAYS wants to help.
Especially kids.
Count on it.
No doubt it’s why they’re pushing child mutilation so hard…for the good of those children, for their families, for society overall…
Richard Aubrey, exactly the sort of prospect that makes me nervous.
American visitor being arrested under this BS? I would support conquering Oh Canada and hanging all commies.
Rebel News is the only Canuck source worthwhile.
My historical thesis is that in the American Rebellion, the Loyalists fled to Canada. Their allegiance to the State and to the Crown seems genetically inherited. Canadians, noble in WWII, have turned into sheep. I blame their government,as current news confirms.
yes the National Post was good until they stole it from Conrad Black and gave it to the Asper brothers, then it became nearly as bad as the Globe and Mail, see the Australian as a close analogue,
The replacement of Trudeau by Poilievre can’t come a moment too soon.
I would appreciate hearing from any Canadian readers here. How well does this stuff play to the typical Canadian?
The first clause of that charter that actually does anything establishes that Parliament can override the Charter by simply saying so; the only caveat is that the law sunsets in five years.
The five years is there to ensure there’s a Parliamentary election between the law’s signing and need for renewal, with the implication that if it’s an intolerable violation the election of the new Parliament will reflect that.
And because we know that everyone will be one issue voters on this one topic (full sarcasm, yes) the Charter has only slightly more figurative teeth than it does literal. Because if (and only if) Parliament doesn’t bother to note that they’re violating the Charter, courts an use the Charter to remove the law.