Last month marked the inauguration of a new concerted effort to fight against the erosion of free speech rights in Canada. The new Free Speech Union of Canada has officially launched its website and membership is now open.
Last year, the famed British free-speech advocate, Toby Young (now Lord Toby Young) reached out to a group of us in Canada to see if we might be interested in creating a partner organization to the Free Speech Union, which he and colleagues had set up some time ago in his country, and which has since spawned sister organizations in Australia and New Zealand, among other locations.
The United Kingdom has witnessed a terrible erosion of free speech rights as hate speech regulations have led to numerous ridiculous arrests and fines for individuals who do little more than speak out about the increasing violence associated with attacks by Islamic fundamentalists in that country.
On Feb. 19, a 74-year-old woman, Rose Docherty, was arrested and put in handcuffs in Scotland for the crime of holding a sign outside a hospital that performs abortions, which read: Coercion is a crime, here to talk, only if you want.” Her crime? Violating a “safe access” law, for which she now faces a possible £10,000 C$18,600) fine. A 20-year-old was arrested at a soccer game for committing a “hate crime” for yelling “Oi, you Chelsea rent boys,” which was considered by the courts as a homophobic slur. He has been banned from attending soccer matches for three years. And at last two men have been arrested for burning the Qur’an, one charged with “causing racially and religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm, or distress.” If convicted, he faces up to two years in prison. Even people who are not arrested are subject to police visits for “non-crime hate incidents.” A columnist for the Daily Telegraph received a visit for a tweet she had sent a year earlier. The Free Speech Union in the U.K. estimates there are 65 such incidents each day in the United Kingdom.
One might have hoped that Canada would learn its lesson by observing the judicial mayhem across the pond, but the opposite has been the case. The current government had tried since last February to pass Bill C-63, the proposed Online Harms Act. It died when Parliament was prorogued in January; in some ways, it was even worse than its British counterpart legislation.
An article in The Atlantic described it as addressing a cross between George Orwell’s 1984 “thoughtcrimes’ and the Philip K. Dick’s Minority Report “precrime.” The bill prohibited speech “likely to foment detestation or vilification” on the basis of race, religion, gender or other protected categories, and gave the Canadian Human Rights Commission the power to punish anyone who breached this rule. It also made anyone who breaks any federal law in a way that is “motivated by hatred” liable to imprisonment for life. And worse still, it provided that, if someone could persuade a provincial court judge that they had “reasonable grounds” to believe that you would utter hate speech, the judge could require you to enter into a court order to “keep the peace and be of good behaviour.” Conditions for that order could include house arrest and wearing an ankle monitor.
Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms includes the right to free expression, but it has proven to be less robust than the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. If we are to ensure free speech is not further eroded in this country, we have to take an active stance defending it. For this reason, my colleagues and I officially formed the Free Speech Union of Canada.
I am honoured to be the inaugural chair of the board, which includes Toby Young and lawyers Marko Vesely and Bruce Pardy, as well as Lisa Bildy, who is the inaugural executive director. The advisory board contains seasoned journalists like Jonathan Kay and distinguished academics including Steven Pinker and Eric Kaufman.
The union is a non-partisan, non-profit membership organization, with funding coming from membership dues and independent donations. It will lobby to defeat anti-free speech legislation such as Bill C-63. Beyond that, it will actively promote public events and discussions designed to defend free speech and provide resources to assist others in understanding their rights and the impact of free-speech violations. Finally, it will work to help provide legal assistance for individuals whose free speech rights have been trampled upon.
Ultimately, we might be able to encourage the passing of legislation to protect free speech in spite of the weaknesses of the Canadian Constitution.
I wish such an organization were not necessary, and I long for the day when it will be redundant. But until that happens, eternal vigilance does appear to be the price of freedom in this country.
Reprinted from the National Post
