Arjun Singh: Left wing values have invaded Canada’s legal system and diminished our charter rights
Why Canada should abolish Section 1 Author of the article: Arjun Singh, Special to National Post Publishing date: Sep 23, 2021 • September 23, 2021 • 4 minute read • 370 Comments
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Photo by The Canadian Press
By all accounts, vaccine passports are here. Quebec, with the most provincial chutzpah, first introduced them, and B.C. followed suit. As have Ontario and Alberta, after Doug Ford’s U-turn from his “Hard no” earlier this year and Jason Kenney’s similar opposition . Outside government, scores of businesses are mandating vaccinations for employees, with proof being required — else, they be terminated.
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One would think, in governments’ cases, that the law would safeguard citizens’ freedoms. Indeed, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that Canadians have the “freedom of conscience and religion” (Section 2a), freedom of movement within Canada (Section 6) and “equal protection … before the law” (Section 15). At the very least, this would prevent the imposition of vaccine passport requirements on citizens — vaccinated or otherwise — for travelling, let alone while accessing basic services: for most charter rights are fundamental. Quebec’s programme and the Trudeau Liberals’ recent federal vaccine mandate for flights and trains, thus, ought to be dismissed.
But this is Canada: where, for years, left-wing Liberal values have slowly invaded our legal system. This was true for Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliot, as it is now. Hence, in 1982, when the charter was introduced, its first section included the following proviso: “The Canadian Charter … guarantees the rights and freedoms set out subject only to reasonable limits … as can be justified in a free and democratic society.” In essence, the charter rights of anyone may be limited for what the state considers “reasonable.”
By itself, this clause is only partly dangerous. Absolute freedom, in any context — especially if causing physical harm — is undesirable; as the ever-pithy Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “the right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.” But, as most would agree, allowing the government to judge whether its own acts are “reasonable” is, itself, an invitation for power to abuse such privilege. From Quebec’s strict curfews to Ontario’s police crackdowns, the pandemic and its oppressive responses in the name of “science” have laid that truth bare.
In response, one would expect the courts, upon petition, to step in and stop government overreach, being the constitution’s supposedly “non-partisan” referees. Until 1986, in Canada, that was true — until left-wing jurists, after rewriting the law, captured the judiciary that interpreted them. That year the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision by Trudeau appointees, established the Oakes Test in R. v. Oakes to determine what restrictions on charter rights were “reasonable.” Among others, it allowed the curbing of charter freedoms in the name of “a commitment to social justice and equality” and “respect for cultural and group identity.”
With this decision, a faction of activist judges — seeing the constitution as a ‘living tree’ to be pruned without the people’s consent — reset the foundations of freedom overnight, bending them towards progressive politics. Instead of having minimal restraints for public order, all charter freedoms could now be legally impeded in the name of contested left-wing concepts like “social justice” and protecting “group identity.”
Worse, neither did the court define what these terms meant, enabling the left — via its dominance of social science academia — to influence their meanings, suiting the moment’s political objectives. As its late Chief Justice, Antonio Lamer, himself said, Section 1 empowered judges to “make essentially … a political call.” In effect, the constitutional “referees” changed the rules mid-game, to ensure their side would always win.
Thus, with Oakes, the dangers of Section 1 were fully unleashed, and have since beat a toll on Canadians’ civil liberties — capturing our constitution for the supremacy of “woke” social mores. “Whoever would overthrow a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech,” said Benjamin Franklin; and, true to form, it was one of the first casualties. In the Keegstra and Andrews decisions, the Supreme Court used Section 1 to allow the criminalization of speech “inciting hatred” — an ambiguous offence, at best, which effectively curbs free speech for the sake of hurt feelings. Once more, in the Little Sisters case, Section 1 rubber-stamped the Chretien Liberals’ banning of LGBTQ books’ import for their “obscenity.” This spate has continued, with governments and courts in concert over the years using Section 1 to curb the presumption of innocence until proven guilty (R. v. Stone), conservatives’ participation in elections (Harper v. Canada) and, most recently, to ban travel by citizens during COVID-19 (Taylor v. The Queen).
In defending such overreach on the charter, the progressive establishment has often asserted the notion of “collective rights” as the reason for restraining individuals, e.g., “safe spaces” precluding free speech to avoid public offence. There are few greater absurdities than this; “rights” exist to protect individuals and minorities from tyranny of the majority, which — with strength in numbers — needs no further safety in a democracy. By claiming a “collective right” of any kind, the Canadian left turns the very notion of rights on its head. It is legal fiction at best, and a neo-Marxist praxis at worst — a desperate attempt to stir up “class conflict” between the majority and minority where none ought to exist.
In the future, it’s highly likely that Section 1 will be used again to uphold encroachments upon citizens’ rights — from vaccine passports to online censorship (e.g., Bill C-10) and others. Canadians must, hence, stand on guard for thee and expunge this threat — regardless of the high bar for constitutional change. If Section 1 is the end of charter rights, we must end it, first.
Arjun Singh is a recent graduate of political science from the University of Toronto.
Where each party stands on life, family, and freedom
CitizenGO legally cannot tell you which party to vote for, and we cannot tell you which candidate to vote for.
We will, however, say that it’s very important that you let your voice be heard on Monday, and do what you can to vote for the candidate that best represents your values.
It’s been the aim of CitizenGO from the very beginning to fight for the common good and for the dignity of every human person. We strive to protect life from conception to natural death, the recognition of family and the most basic and natural unit of society, and freedom.
For this reason, we think it’s important to break down the platforms of each federal party, so that you know how each party winning could affect our country when it comes to issues of life, family, and freedom:
Plans to revoke charity status to pro-life organizations, including crisis pregnancy centres who provide care and counseling to women who have chosen life
Plans to penalize provincial governments who refuse to fund abortion outside of hospitals (such as in the case of New Brunswicks’s Clinic 554)
Plans to give legal protection to any business or organization in Canada that demands that all their employees be vaccinated
Plans to ban all forms of conversion therapy, banning the work of groups such as Courage International, who non-coercively help people ro live chaste lives in accordance with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality
Also…
Almost every Liberal Party MP voted for Bill C-7, which radically expanded Canada’s euthanasia law, allowing euthanasia for reasons of mental illness alone, and for the incompetent who cannot provide consent but have signed an advanced directive (Source)
Every Liberal Party MP (in attendance) voted against Bill C-233, which would have banned the barbaric practice of sex-selective abortion (Source)
The Trudeau government introduced Bill C-10 and Bill C-36, both of which aimed to censor Canadians on the internet (Source)
Plans to repeal Bill C-7, a bill which expanded Canada’s euthanasia law, allowing euthanasia for reasons of mental illness alone, and for the incompetent who cannot provide consent but have signed an advanced directive
Plans to ban conversion therapy, but clarifies that non-coerceive conversations will not be criminalized
Though the platform claims to support the conscience rights of medical professionals, Erin O’Toole has since clarified that he believes in effective referrals. This means that if a patient wants to be killed through euthanasia, but a medical professional objects to killing them, the medical professional must still violate their conscience by referring their patient to a doctor who is fine euthanizing the patient (Source)
Also…
O’Toole says that a Conservative government would not interfere with New Brunswick’s decision to not fund abortions that are not in hospitals (Source)
Though the majority of Conservative MPs voted for Bill C-233, which would have banned the barbaric practice of sex-selective abortion, Erin O’Toole voted against it. He has repeatedly referred to himself as pro-choice. (Source) (Source)
Every Conservative MP (in attendance) voted against Bill C-10, a bill which threatened to censor Canadians by applying broadcasting regulations to social media users (Source)
Plans to interfere with provincial governments who refuse to fund abortion outside of hospitals (such as in the case of New Brunswicks’s Clinic 554)
Plans to increase access to abortion in rural areas and in the North
Plans to ban all forms of conversion therapy, banning the work of groups such as Courage International, who non-coercively help people ro live chaste lives in accordance with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality
Will use the government to crack down on what the NDP believes to be the spread of disinformation and “fake news”
Also…
Every NDP MP (in attendance) voted for Bill C-10, a bill which threatened to censor Canadians by applying broadcasting regulations to social media users (Source)
The NDP supported Bill C-7, which expanded Canada’s eiuthanasia laws, but opposed it and voted against it when the Senate added multiple amendments to it (Source) (Source)
Every NDP MP (in attendance) voted against Bill C-233, which would have banned the barbaric practice of sex-selective abortion (Source)
Plans to repeal C-16 and M-103, and oppose C-10, and C-36, which are all bills that either censor Canadians or compel/condemn the speech of Canadians who express politically-incorrect views
Plans to ensure that Canadians are not discriminated against because of their moral convictions
Plans to withhold federal funding from any post-secondary institution shown to be violating the freedom of expression of its students or faculty
Opposes vaccine mandates and vaccine passports
Bloc Quebecois:
Every Bloc Quebecois MP (in attendance) voted for Bill C-10, a bill which threatened to censor Canadians by applying broadcasting regulations to social media users (Source)
Every Bloc Quebecois MP (in attendance) voted against Bill C-233, which would have banned the barbaric practice of sex-selective abortion (Source)
Every Bloc Quebecois MP voted for Bill C-7, which radically expanded Canada’s euthanasia law, allowing euthanasia for reasons of mental illness alone, and for the incompetent who cannot provide consent but have signed an advanced directive (Source)
Plans to ban all forms of conversion therapy, banning the work of groups such as Courage International, who non-coercively help people ro live chaste lives in accordance with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on homosexuality
Plans to legalize prostitution
Plans to expand programs in “reproductive health, rights, and in sexual and reproductive health education”
Paul Fromm on the Great Reset & Trudeau’s Plans to Stifle the Internet — Talk Given at Vancouver, July 17, 2021
The Post COVID Totalitarian Agenda — Mark Carney’s “Great Reset Dream” for Our Grim Future & Trudeau’s Anti-Free Speech Plans for the Future
* The Great Reset, the conspiratorial architects, Mark Carney and Karl Schwab
* A future of poverty, limited travel, few cars, little heat & less meat
*Trudeau’s imposed silence — Bill C-10(gagging the Internet) & Bill C-36 (preventing serious criticism of privileged minorities online) https://www.bitchute.com/video/ZUEeqRICKSO2/
The Liberal government’s internet regulation Bill C-10 has been put on hold after the Senate rose for the summer before voting on the controversial bill.
On Tuesday, the Senate decided to rise for the summer break, immediately halting all outstanding legislation which had not been passed.
If an election is called before Bill C-10 is reintroduced, the bill will die and a future government would have to introduce it again.
Bill C-10 passed its third reading in the House of Commons Tuesday morning by a vote of 196 to 112: only the Conservatives and independents Jody Wilson-Raybould and Derek Sloan opposed it.
If passed, Bill C-10 would have significant implications on internet freedom, as the bill gives the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) unprecedented power to regulate online publishers, including social media users.
Despite the Liberals’ efforts to push C-10 into law, the upper house refused to speed up the process. Both progressive and Conservative senators offered various criticisms of C-10, many saying they would not vote in favour. https://www.youtube.com/embed/h0RY7403WoU?feature=oembed
On Tuesday, Senator Pamela Wallin pledged to stall C-10 until the summer recess could be called, saying the upper house is not obligated to pass government legislation without proper debate.
“The government has had six years to pass legislation it wants. It is not our job in the Senate to rubber stamp and give up our constitutional responsibilities just because they want fodder for an election- especially if it means killing free speech,” she said.
Conservative Senator Leo Housakos told CBC that the Senate had no interest in rushing through a bill which, in his opinion, gives unlimited power to a government body to control the content Canadians can see online.
“The core problem with this bill is that it takes the regulatory tools designated for a small, fixed number of licensed TV and radio stations in the 1990s and attempts to apply it to the vast universe of the internet in the 2020s,” he said.
“In doing so, it gives the CRTC an unprecedented delegation of power with no clear framework or definitions as to how it will be used. This lack of clear limits on what can be regulated is a fundamental problem with this bill.” https://www.youtube.com/embed/ej5pn1a4Q5s?feature=oembed
Roman Babar MPP “Says Lift All Public Health Restrictions!”|
The imposition of continuing public health measures on all Ontario Regions has no rhyme or reason. If Ontario remained in the coloured framework, then almost every Ontario region would be in Green or Yellow.
Despite that, Ontario maintains the longest and harshest lockdown in the world. Although our neighbours to the south are almost fully open with tens of thousands packing large stadiums, Ontarians are still precluded from dining indoors or getting a haircut. Despite meeting its own arbitrary targets for Phase 2, Doug Ford is unwilling to move up the re-opening.
Even more upsetting is that Ontario’s Reopening Framework does not include a full re-opening. Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan include the lifting of all public health restrictions in their final opening phases. But Ontario has no plans to lift all public health restrictions.
This, I submit to you, is the next frontier in our fight and advocacy against the lockdowns. We must have confidence to insist not only on a full reopening but also on the lifting of all public health restrictions.
Keep talking to your friends and neighbours, engage on social media and pressure your MPP to Open Ontario. I am concerned by the erosion of Constitutional Rights in Canada and Ontario.
Over the course of a few weeks we have witnessed the Federal Government proceed with a vaccine passport, thereby creating two tiers of Canadians; proceed with Bill-C10 at Committee, by which the Federal Government will regulate online content; the extension of Ontario’s Emergency Orders to December; and, the use of the Notwithstanding Clause for the first time in Ontario’s history, on legislation that could potentially benefit the Provincial Government.
As difficult as times appear to be, we must continue to organize and mount an effective opposition and peaceful resistance against government and public health overreach. Fellow Canadians are counting on us to advocate for their freedoms and defend against the erosion of Canada’s democracy.
We are still awaiting a decision from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in our Application against the Attorney General in defence of our Assembly and Religious Rights outdoors. We will provide an update as soon as a decision is released. We are in process of conceiving additional litigation, as the Rule of Law sits at the core of our democracy. Wishing you and your loved ones a peaceful and restful weekend.
I have never thought very highly of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms which was added to our constitution in 1982. Note the wording there. The Charter is not itself our constitution but merely a part of it and a late addition at that. Those who make the mistake of calling the Charter itself our constitution have bought in to the American superstition that a constitution is a piece of paper that keeps a government from going bad through its magical powers. A constitution is a country’s system of law and government, the institutions that comprise it, and the traditions that inform their motions. The largest part of it is unwritten and this is true even in the American republic. Documents like our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the one the Americans call their Constitution are merely parts of the Canadian and American constitutions respectively. They are the laws that define and set limits to the power of government institutions. They have no power to keep government within those limits apart from the loyalty of those who hold public office in obeying them, the willingness of the courts to uphold them, and the faithful vigilance of the public.
My low estimation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not because I don’t like the rights and freedoms that are listed in that document. With a few exceptions, such as the “equality rights” written in Animal Farm style doublespeak in Section 15, these are rights and freedoms that I consider to be among the most valuable elements of our Common Law tradition. It is rather because the Charter has made these rights and freedoms less secure rather than more. In part this is due to flaws in the Charter itself such as the “notwithstanding clause” in Section 33 and the broad loophole in Section 1 which effectually nullify the Charter as far as the whole point of constitutionally protected rights and freedoms, that is to say that they are supposed to limit what the government can do so as to protect us from the abusive exercise of its powers, goes. The Charter’s loopholes and exceptions protect the government instead of us and for this reason former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was right to say that it is not worth the paper it is written on. It is also, however, because the Charter has encouraged a way of thinking about our rights and freedoms in a way that is the fundamental opposite of that which has historically belonged to our Common Law and traditional institutions of constitutional monarchy and parliament. It encourages us to think of our rights and freedoms as privileges bestowed upon us by government to be limited or taken away by government freely as it sees fit, rather than our own property.
The consequences of this way of thinking having become pervasive have been most evident over the course of the last year. Section 2 of the Charter identifies four freedoms as being fundamental. The first of these is freedom of conscience and religion. The third is the freedom of peaceful assembly. The fourth is the freedom of association. The whole point, remember, of having the Charter designate these freedoms as essential is to place limits on government power, to tell the government that it must keep its hands off of these things. Yet ever since the World Health Organization declared the spread of the Wuhan bat flu to be a pandemic last March, our provincial governments have treated these freedoms as if they were completely non-existent, much less fundamental and protected by constitutional law and the Dominion government has constantly been urging the provincial governments to clamp down on us in violation of these freedoms in even more severe ways.
In 1986 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in the case of R v Oakes. David Oakes had been arrested with drugs in his possession and under what was then Section 8 of the Narcotics Control Act was presumed to be guilty of trafficking. He challenged the constitutionality of Section 8 on the grounds that it violated the presumption of innocence, a civil right spelled out in Section 11 (d) of the Charter and which had been long established as part of the Common Law tradition. That the provision of the NCA being challenged did indeed violate the civil right in question was easily demonstrated, but the Court then had to decide whether the violation was justifiable under the “reasonable limits” loophole in Section 1 of the Charter. The Court’s ruling established what has ever since been the litmus test for this question. The Court ruled that for a law which violates a Charter right or freedom to be justifiable under the “reasonable limits” clause, it first had to have a “pressing and substantial” goal. Second, it had to meet the three qualifications of a) being “rationally connected” to the goal of the law, b) only impairing the rights and freedoms in question minimally, and c) not overwhelming the benefit hoped to be achieved with its negative effects.
It is quite obvious that the public health measures fail to meet the second of the three qualifications of the second part of the Supreme Court’s Oakes’ test. When the public health officer tells you that you cannot have any visitors to your home, even if you meet outside, as is currently the case in Manitoba, he is clearly not trying to only “minimally impair” your freedom of association. What he is doing is disregarding freedom of association entirely. The provincial legislature is not allowed to do this constitutionally, nor can it delegate to the public health officer the authority to do so. The legislature cannot delegate what it does not legitimately possess itself. When the public health officer orders churches, synagogues, and mosques not to meet for the largest part of a year, cancels the most important festivals of these religions, and only permits re-opening at a severely reduced capacity that requires churches to betray the tenets of their own faith and turn worshippers away, he is similarly disregarding freedom of conscience and religion rather than making sure that his orders only “minimally impair” this freedom. There is also plenty of evidence that the public health orders fail to meet the third qualification of the Oakes’ test as well. The costs of lockdowns, measured in the destruction of lives due to the breakdown of mental health and the rise in substance abuse and suicides, the erosion of community and social capital, and the devastation of businesses and livelihoods, has been tremendous and far exceeds any questionable benefits of these insane, unjust, evil and oppressive restrictions. Indeed, I believe the case could be made that the public health measures fail every single element of the Oakes’ test.
The provincial governments have gotten away with all this stercus tauri because they have until fairly recently met with only minimal resistance on the part of the Canadian public. This can be attributed to a number of causes. One of these, of course, is the hysterical and irrational fear generated by the mainstream corporate media that have been deceitfully and despicably portraying a virus that produces no to mild symptoms in most people who contract it, from which the vast majority of people who actually do get sick recover, and which in many if not most jurisdictions has an average age of fatality that is higher than the average expected lifespan of the general public, as if it were the second coming of the bubonic plague. Another cause is the new attitude which has been encouraged among Canadians, especially by the Liberals, since 1982, of regarding our rights and freedoms as privileges bestowed upon us by the government in the Charter rather than what they are, our lawful property as free subjects of the Crown which it is the government’s duty to respect.
The assault on our freedoms of religion, peaceful assembly, and association have come from the provincial governments. At the same time the second of the four freedoms designated as fundamental in the Charter has come under attack from the Liberals who are in power in the Dominion government. This is the freedom of “thought, belief, opinion and expression”. Whereas our freedoms of religion, peaceful assembly, and association have never been this besieged before in Canadian history, our freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression has taken hits every time the Liberal Party led by a Trudeau has come to power in Ottawa. It has been less than ten years since we finally got rid of one of the vilest elements of Pierre Trudeau’s legacy, the notorious Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. While the entire Canadian Human Rights Act of 1977 is, in fact, an affront to freedom of thought because, despite its title, it has nothing to do with protecting our rights either as Canadians or human beings from government abuses, but is instead all about prohibiting the crimethink of discrimination on the part of individual Canadians, Section 13 was the Act’s worst provision by far. By defining any electronic communication of information “likely to” expose someone protected against discrimination “to hatred or contempt” as an act of discrimination it in effect forbade all negative criticism of groups protected against discrimination or individuals belonging to such groups, regardless of the truthfulness or justice of the criticism in question.
Section 13 was finally abolished during the premiership of Stephen Harper thanks to a private member’s bill repealing the foul section that received enough support from Conservative MPs and Liberal MPs of the pre-Trudeau variety – these had not yet been purged from the party – to pass Parliament. Neither Stephen Harper nor his Minister of Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, who is currently overseeing the throwing of pastors in gaol and the barricading of churches in Alberta, had much to do with this for although they had spoken out against Human Rights Tribunals and their unjust infringement upon freedom of thought and speech on their road to power, in office they betrayed most of what they had once stood for, apparently having sold their souls to get there. The demise of Section 13 has long been lamented by Pierre Trudeau’s son, Captain Airhead, and when he became Prime Minister in 2015 he dropped a number of hints that he would be seeking to revive it. The appeal of Section 13 to Captain Airhead was based on more than just the fact that it had been originally introduced when his father was in power. More than any previous Liberal leader, Captain Airhead has been of the mindset that once a progressive goal has been attained, all debate about it ought to cease. This was evident even before he became Prime Minister when he purged the party of its pro-life members. More than any previous Liberal leader, he has enthusiastically endorsed fringe progressive causes that could not possibly achieve widespread popular support on their own merits without measures that intimidate and suppress dissenters. More than any previous Liberal leader he has been prone to tell Canadians who disagree with him that they are not welcome in their own country. He has used the expression “there is no place for X in Canada” far more liberally than any previous leader and with a much wider range of Xs. (1) In all of this he has demonstrated the sort of sick, censorious, mindset to which something like Section 13 appeals. In December of 2019, after he won re-election in the sense that he managed to squeak out a plurality despite falling majorly in the polls from where he had been four years previously, he instructed his Cabinet that fighting online “hate speech” would be one of their priorities in the new session of Parliament. Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault was specifically charged with finding a way to force social media platforms to remove what the Liberals consider to be “hate speech” within twenty-four hours of being told by the government to do so. This would be Section 13 magnified to the nth degree.
In response to this directive, Guilbeault came up with a bill that pursued the same goal as Section 13 through a different avenue. Last November he introduced Bill C-10, or “An Act to Amend the Broadcasting Act” into Parliament. This bill if passed would place internet media under the same regulatory authority of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) as older electronic media such as radio and television broadcasters. By going this route, Guilbeault could maintain that his goal was not to censor what individual Canadians post on the internet, but to ensure that the companies that make shows and movies available through online streaming follow the same Canadian content guidelines as other broadcasters, a goal consistent with his portfolio as Heritage Minister. That having been said, the Bill as originally drafted would have given the CRTC regulatory authority over individual Canadians’ user-generated content on social media. When objections to this were raised the Bill was amended to include an exception for individual user-generated content, but this exception was removed in committee late last month around the same time that the government moved to shut down debate on a motion that the Conservatives had introduced calling for a review of whether or not the bill violated the Charter. None of this inspires much confidence in the Heritage Minister’s claim that the aim of this bill is cultural protectionism and not censorship of thought. On Monday, faced with backlash over all of this, Guilbeault promised that they would make it “crystal clear” that the user-generated content will not be subjected to the same sort of regulatory control as television programming. Needless to say, he ought not to be taken at his word on this. Indeed, Michael Geist, the law professor at the University of Ottawa who has been one of the foremost critics of Bill C-10, has already said that the amendment the Heritage Committee proposed on Thursday evening fails to follow through on Guilbeault’s promises.
It is worth observing here that with Bill C-10, Captain Airhead and Steven Guilbeault have returned to the very first thing the original Trudeau Liberals did to control the minds of Canadians and limit their freedom of thought. At the very beginning of the first Trudeau premiership the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker pointed out how the Liberals were threatening freedom of thought through the powers of the CRTC. In a speech entitled “The Twilight of Liberty”, the second included in the collection Those Things We Treasure (Macmillan, 1972), Diefenbaker said:
The Trudeau Government seems to be dedicated to controlling the thinking of Canadians. Through the power being exerted by Pierre Juneau, as Chairman of the Canadian Radio and Television Commission, (2) private radio and T.V. station proprietors in Canada are frightened to speak, fearful of being subject to the cancellation of their licences. One such station was CKPM in Ottawa, which dared to have an open line program critical of the Government. Pierre Juneau did come before a Committee of the House and he uttered lachrymose words in reply to the criticism leveled at him that he wishes to determine what Canadians shall hear, and to deny them the right to listen to what they will. His attitude was different when he spoke to the Association of Private Broadcasting Companies and in effect stated: “When I ope my lips, let no dog bark.” Under him the broadcasting network owned by the people of Canada is allowed to broadcast what he permits.
Diefenbaker’s warning of decades ago has gone largely unheeded, perhaps because the CRTC’s official raison d’être is cultural protectionism which appeals to a much broader range of Canadians than its more covert purpose of limiting freedom of thought. Certainly right-of-centre Canadians of the more traditional variety, such as Diefenbaker himself or this writer, would have no objections to the idea that Canadian culture ought to remain Canadian. It needs to be pointed out, however, that the CRTC has been a total failure in this regards. Fifty-three years later, the Canada of 2021 is far more Americanized culturally than the Canada of 1968 was. Indeed, much of what Canadians regard as distinctly “Canadian” culture today, is merely Hollywood culture with a maple leaf stamped on it. Read the novels of Mazo de la Roche and Robertson Davies if you want a taste of the more authentic pre-CRTC Canadian culture. Since the CRTC failed in its official appointed task, probably because its real purpose was thought control all along, there is hardly grounds here for extending its reach over the new online media. Indeed, the scarcely disguised agenda of censorship and thought control behind the move to so extend its reach, is sufficient reason why this bill, amended or otherwise, must never be allowed to pass. It is also more than sufficient reason for voting the Trudeau Liberals who dreamed it up in the first place out of Parliament and never allowing them to resume power again. For as Rex Murphy pointed out earlier this week, “What is more galling and more threatening that the bill itself, however, is the set of mind behind it”, and that won’t go away even if the bill itself does.
(1) Disturbingly, the leaders of the other parties – including the present leader of the Conservatives – have taken to aping his example in this.
(2) The full name of this agency was changed into the awkward and absurd redundancy that it is now in 1976, but the acronym remains the same. Posted by Gerry T. Neal
Rex Murphy: Liberals’ dangerous arrogance didn’t begin and won’t end with internet-regulation bill
Only a PM and a bunch that carry the delusion they are all-wise and ever-right could have conceived Bill C-10 Author of the article: Rex Murphy Publishing date: May 03, 2021 • 2 days ago • 4 minute read • 714 Comments
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau listens to a question during a news conference in Ottawa on April 30, 2021. The attempt by the Liberal government to regulate the internet through Bill C-10 needs to be stopped, writes Rex Murphy. Photo by Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
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The all-knowing Liberals put up a tactical white flag when the national storm of who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are swept over them concerning their attempt to regulate the internet.
Debate on a Conservative motion related to Bill C-10 was shut down, though the Liberals said Monday the bill will now be amended so social media posts are not regulated. What is more galling and more threatening than the bill itself however, is the set of mind behind it.
The bill may die or be weakened. The thinking that spawned it will remain.
The thinking that spawned it will remain
C-10, an attempt to put a pillow over the free expression of all Canadians, didn’t pop up gopher-like out of the policy burrow of a second-tier Cabinet minister. Quite the contrary. This nefarious nugget was obviously the product of the top-rank philosophes of the Prime Minister’s Office, that sensorium of the whole Liberal party, from which emerges guidance and wisdom to elevate the lives and labours of ordinary Canadians, all set out with the confidence of a closed-minded pope.
And who are the great thinkers who birth such a creature? Why they are a band of intellects unmatched since the days of ancient Greece when Plato founded his academy, and young Socrates and his buddy Aristotle were offering home tutorials at the bargain rate of a drachma a syllogism. Their business card was terse: You learn; we earn. The wokemeisters in the PMO and the Wokemeister-in-Chief, Justin Trudeau, haven’t reached the business card stage, but post-power, you may be sure they will. There are Oprah shows to come, and star invitations to Davos and the IPCC yet to be forwarded in gilded envelopes with computer-generated handwriting.
Attend to this. This retrograde and democracy-denying bill emerged from the heights, out of the thin altitude where the prime minister dwells, and wherein the various wizards and shamans, the praetorian guard of top advisers, hatch their schemes, knit their plots, and advance the Leader’s dearest notions.
Only a PM and a bunch that carry the delusion they are all-wise and ever-right, that they alone and only they, should have rule and command over the thoughts and opinions of a whole nation, could have conceived Bill C-10. Could have put their lawyers to work composing it, then waltzed into Parliament to put it on the Order paper in the first place.
What 21st-century government, aware of speech and thought control in the great and cruel totalitarian governments of the past century, and their cruel brethren of the 21st — Communist China, sinister North Korea, Iran — every tyranny or dictatorship on the globe — would wish to ape and mirror the central characteristic of all such regimes?
All of them ruled and rule today by censorship, monitoring citizens’ thoughts and writing, even private conversation. Speech controls breed a nation of spies.
Bill C-10 may be a kitten-mischief compared with the hideous savageries of full-blown tyrannies. But great oaks out of little acorns grow. Beware the seedlings of thought and speech control. Which is another way of saying do not let governments even toy with the fundamentals of democratic understanding and the absolutes of democratic practice.
Beware the seedlings of thought and speech control
Here’s another observation: a government that yearns to censor, to pry and oversee the speech and thought of its citizens, doesn’t trust its citizens. And believes therefore it has a right to herd them into holding opinions that their wiser, smarter and obviously more progressive government tells them they must have. It’s a marvellous instance of political conceit.
Their “reasoning” preceding the drawing up Bill C-10, may easily be imagined. It would go something like this:
“Well, they (meaning the citizenry) elected us (meaning the Liberal party). And we, therefore being superior beings, now have the right to bring them up to our standards of respectable thought and acceptable opinion. We will wipe clean the moral blackboard. And lay out for the voters what the voters are allowed to say, and what they must say. Call it Cuba in a cold climate.
“We will also then apologize for their forebears, for those morally-numb pioneers who built the house of iniquity we know as Canada. We will deplore every past prime minister who was sadly neither as tolerant nor as knowing as we, Deo gratias, are. Going ahead as progressives, let us insist on the right to declare the ideas Canadians should have, and put a block on those they cannot be allowed to have. And let us be grateful that this is the one administration, the first since 1867, with the wit and moral savvy to recognize what was deficient in all who went before us. All of course save one.”
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The mindset is more dangerous than the bill
There, in speculative and imagined dialogue, is the voice of the mindset behind C-10. And the mindset is more dangerous than the bill: an assertion that this government knows what’s best and has the right to impose its ideas of what is right on everyone else. This is the new religion of woke.
They may have suspended the charge up the hill to put C-10 into law. But they have not unroped themselves from the attitudes and intentions behind it. The mindset behind C-10 is more consequential than the bill which issued from it. That this band of woke virtuecrats understand themselves as better, more clever and ever how entitled to impose all the imperatives of their virtue commandments on you.
I’ll end with the words of one who was previously vice-chairman of the CRTC, Peter Menzies. C-10 “doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy.” Well said, Mr. Menzies.
