Check It Out: Censorship is not a solution

By Joan Janzen

A cartoon depicted a manager giving a comedian a bit of advice before he got on stage. “Don’t make jokes about people ’cause they’ll get offended. And don’t make jokes about environmental topics, religion, politics, health, and everything else. The rest is okay.”

Canadians aren’t sure what is okay, because there are so many censorship bills being brought before Parliament. Member of Parliament Michelle Rempel Garner addressed this topic on her podcast.

“An amendment to Bill C9 will criminalize religious beliefs. This is happening in Canada, a G7 country—criminalizing religious speech,” she reported.

At this point you may think, Well, I’m not religious, therefore it’s just one bill and is none of my concern. But it’s not that simple.

John Carpay, a lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, said in a recent online interview, “It’s just one of many bills. It’s not one big bill that takes all your rights away; it’s a creeping thing.”

MP Rempel expressed her concerns. “What they’re trying to do with Bill C9 is make you believe that in order to be safe you have to give up your right to free speech, and that’s censorship, not safety,” she said. “The federal government has a track record of censorship.”

MP Andrew Lawton also weighed in on this topic as he was interviewed on Faytene TV. He said, “I’m very mindful that the Jewish community has been crying out for action concerning anti-Semitism, but the problem has been a lack of enforcement of existing laws and a lack of political leadership around how we can use existing laws. Instead, the federal government is saying we need to overhaul the Criminal Code. And Bill C9 is their answer.”

Meanwhile, MP Rempel has been reminding Parliament of those existing laws for a long time. She said she’s had a law in front of Parliament for two years to update laws that are already in place, and add an amendment to address AI being used to create explicit imagery.

“The Liberals have had my bill in front of them in Parliament for two years,” she explained. “We would slightly change existing laws to prevent the non-consensual distribution of sexually explicit imagery and update it to include AI-generated imagery. They could have done this a long time ago. Instead, they keep putting in place censorship bills that will suppress information.”

MP Andrew Lawton said, in spite of noble intentions, the bill lowers the standard by which one could be charged with hate speech or a hate crime. “We cannot allow legislation that targets the very groups that it’s supposed to protect,” he added. He said Jewish rabbis have spoken out and said this bill does not protect the Jewish community. Instead, it targets them as much as it targets everyone else.

“We can’t give the government more power that could be weaponized against people expressing good-faith religious beliefs,” MP Lawton said.

Political maneuvers were reported when the National Post revealed the Liberal government struck a deal with the Bloc Québécois to remove religious exemptions from Canada’s hate-speech laws.

“There were already a number of concerns with Bill C9 before the religious speech defense amendment came in,” MP Lawton noted.

And thousands of Canadians were voicing their concerns to their Members of Parliament.

“Public pressure was forcing something they thought they could do very quietly and very easily, and then realized, If we do this we will be poking a hornet’s nest,” MP Lawton observed.

Part of that public pressure included a response initiated by Faytene Grasseschi called “12 Days for Freedom,” which began January 15th and extends until January 26. It calls on concerned Canadians to do something simple and easy, but effective: make five phone calls a day to Members of Parliament asking them to vote against Bill C9.

“It only takes about ten minutes a day and we can make tens of thousands of phone calls,” Faytene said. “This will have a major impact.”

Check out 4mycanada.ca for more information.

The Democracy Fund made this observation: Freedom of expression only begins when we tolerate views with which we disagree.