Canada’s darkest hour In the present day and considering the status of free speech in Canada, it would not be a stretch to say this country is facing its own “darkest hour”. What else to think when its longstanding history and tradition of Magna Carta-inspired rights and freedoms stand to be lost with the enactment of Bill C-63 (Online Harms Act). The legislation in questions has been remarked on by C3RF patron, David Solway, as being “nothing less than a censorship closely reminiscent of the justice apparatus in authoritarian states likes China and North Korea”. He is not alone in this assessment as other notables both domestic and international, such as Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand and Margaret Atwood, have likewise chimed in to describe the new law in terms of the “lettres de cachet” once issuable by the king of France to enforce “arbitrary actions and judgments that could not be appealed”. It’s like Canada has retreated back into the 17th century and the days of the “Star Chamber”.
Margaret Atwood – Bill C-63 will give Canada its own “lettres de cachet”-style legal system It’s easy to see how the Online Harms Act could give rise to Star Chamber or kangaroo courts in Canada. After all, the legislation calls for: the creation of a “Digital Safety Commission” that can, on the basis of anonymous charges, punish alleged wrongdoers of past and even potential future acts with fines, house arrest, electronic tagging or communication bans; Commission-appointed investigators to conduct warrantless searches and for the Commission to conduct its business without the need to be bound by any legal or technical rules of evidence; and the use of vague definitions of hate speech that will flood the Canadian human rights system with “eye-of-the-beholder” complaints of offensive, discriminatory speech. Such blatant disregard for the most basic tenets of Western judicial philosophy, including “innocent until proven guilty”, are more than a little remarkable. It might be for this reason that the act throws a bit of a sweetener into the mix with popular measures that serve to protect against the “sexual abuse of children, intimate images shared without consent, and material that can be used to bully a child or encourage them to commit self-harm”. These clearly harmful activities, however, are already illegal under Canada’s criminal code and seem to be included in Bill C-63 only to give cover to its freedom-crushing measures.
Justice Minister Virani, Bill C-63 will not be split into two parts! Sweetener aside, the legislation represents a baldfaced attack on the Charter rights of everyday Canadian citizens. The ability of the Digital Safety Commission, for example, to turn anonymous charges, of potential future offenses no less, into serious fines and punishments is a direct assault on the Charter’s Section 7 right to life, liberty and security of the person in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice. Then there is its ability to demand warrantless searches in direct contravention of Section 8 of the Charter and its protections to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure. When all of these injustices are tied together with a bow in the form of the Commission’s authority to dispense with the evidence requirements of Section 1 of the Charter, we can see that anyone entrapped within the net cast by Bill C-63 will find themselves in a very dark place. Indeed, the country as a whole may feel it has descended into its darkest hour as the rights and freedoms that used to underpin its reputation as a Western liberal democracy will have evaporated.
Looks like Bill C-63 will supersede the Charter as the supreme law of the land?
Descent into darkness David Solway has made note of the darkened depths to which Canada has descended. Indeed, if Bill C-63 passes the House and is ratified by the Senate “Canada would no longer be a country any sensible and freedom-loving individual would consider worth living in.” The rule of law would most certainly be pitched out the window as the citizen would become “utterly dependent on the favour of the government” as he or she was forced through a gauntlet of informers given the power to issue “damaging but unverified accusations”. And so, citizens will be forced to tread on eggshells as they try not to say, do or even think of anything that, in accordance with Bill C-63, is “likely to foment hatred”. A subjective standard if ever there was one and one that is inextricably influenced by the eye-of-the-beholder.
Canadian essayist and C3RF patron, David Solway, queries whether Canada “is worth living in” Given the pressure that can be brought to bear on everyday citizens by the subjective eye-of-the-beholder strictures associated with Bill C-63, it’s easy to see how other Charter rights like freedom of religion, assembly, association and mobility, along with a fair and responsible press, will need to be sacrificed to keep offence at bay. The new Canada that prioritizes the sensibilities of the thin-skinned over the civil liberties of the all is quite a stretch from the nation that had been built up on the tradition of individual sovereignty and the concept of “free men” as conceptualized in the Magna Carta of 1215. Concepts marvellously captured by John Stuart Mill in his “On Liberty” of 1859 which is well suited as an addition to the reading list of any authority involved with enacting Bill C-63. After all, its analysis of the “nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual” is one the Bill could have benefited from.
John Stuart Mill “On Liberty” needs to be on the reading lists of Canadian legislators? The framers of the Canadian Charter, like The Honourable Brian Peckford, might have intended for individual sovereignty to be accommodated in the “fundamental” rights section of the document but the intention seems to have faded away over time. This vanishing act has been aided and abetted by a judiciary besotted by the ever-flexible concept of the “living tree”. This doctrine has proven popular with Canadian courts and paved the way for “progressive interpretation” to address the “realities of modern life”. These new realities, eagerly taken up by the political class, have oftentimes distinguished themselves by their rejection of traditional mores and the development of diverse identity groups which are open to division on the basis of being oppressed or being an oppressor. Conflict and acrimony reign supreme and the situation is ripe for exploitation by psychopaths with the help of useful idiots. And so the descent into darkness began.
Charter framers Brian Peckford et all intended for the development of competing camps?
Darkest hour “call to action” The descent in darkness, amazingly begun on the heels of the patriation of the Charter in 1982, has accelerated over the 2015 investiture of Canada’s current Liberal government. The quickening pace could be seen to pick up almost immediately with the passage of Motion M-103 (Islamophobia). This motion, true to form and in line with the strategy of identifying and dividing people into camps, shamelessly stated that Canada and Canadians were “systemically racist” and prone to discriminating against whole religions – particularly Islam. Many, many accusations would follow as the good folk of once “strong and free” Canada would be labelled as genocidal, climate denying anti-vaxxers who were in urgent need of being reigned in through draconian measures that restricted their ability to express such hateful mutterings.
If diversity is our strength, then why are we so divided and so oppressed? As Canadians navigate through their darkest hour one thing has become abundantly clear, only they have the power to force their betters to reverse course. As the events of the Wuhan virus pandemic have shown, there is no cavalry coming over the hill to restore our free and democratic society. Indeed, if anything, it is quite apparent that those given this power over Canadians have abused it to place ever more restrictions on speech as demonstrated by Bill C-63. As Billboard Chris so eloquently stated, “politicians don’t change the culture, we do!” You can join in the battle to change our wayward, anti-free speech culture by confronting your federally elected representative by phone, email or, best yet, a personal visit at their constituency office. Your own Member of Parliament’s contact information may be found here and here are some thoughts for your MP to ponder: using ill-defined “hate speech” to bring citizens to task for what they say is a subjective mug’s game that stands to be abused by “eye of the beholder” sensibilities; allowing anonymous charges to result in prohibitive fines, house arrest, electronic tagging and communication bans is an abuse of your right to security of the person; allowing charges to advance on the basis of what a person might say, or think, is truly Orwellian; and allowing for warrantless searches and seizures is simply a slap in the face to Canada’s supreme law in the form of the Charter that is embedded in our Constitution. Your decision to intervene is critical to turning Canada away from a truly dystopian future for your children and grandchildren. It’s worthwhile remembering that although Churchill recognized a nation in its darkest hour, he also, in the same speech, recognized the opportunity to turn it into its “finest hour”.
The pandemic is revealing more uncomfortable truths
by the day, like our willingness to abandon our freedoms and traditions
at the first whiff of grapeshot.
Governments mistrustful of citizens have been too quick to respond to
risks to public health with coercion, rather than simply appealing for a
civic-minded people to do the right thing.
In Australia
there has been a level of official control seldom seen since the
convict era. There has been barely any opposition. A people once
prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of lives in defence of liberty
is surrendering its freedom on the pretext of saving lives.
It is teaching us that when we dispense with the checks and balances
that make democratic governments better than they otherwise might be,
there is an exponential increase in the number and scale of
state-induced blunders.
When Britain, the US and much of Europe were struggling with mass
outbreaks in April, Australia and New Zealand had the virus under
control thanks largely to the prompt closure of borders.
It might have stayed that way but for a breach of quarantine security
in Melbourne, where inadequate supervision of returning Australians in
hotel quarantine allowed infected people to escape.
The loss of life has so far been slight: around 40 deaths per million
in Victoria and fewer than 15 in the rest of Australia, compared with
around 700 in Britain and around 500 in the US.
Yet the elevated risk was enough for Victoria’s premier, Dan Andrews, to declare a State of Disaster for only the second time in Victoria’s history. Andrews, incidentally, was responsible for declaring both of them. R
Victoria became an autocracy overnight, granting unfettered power to a
premier unaccountable to parliament and freed from the rule of law. The
police have turned from citizens in uniform to the enforcers of
ministerial declarations, most of them quite absurd.
Melbourne has become the first city in Australia to fall under a
curfew. Andrews’ predecessors felt no need for one during the First
World War, Second World War, the Spanish Flu pandemic or the 1923 police
strike when violent mobs rampaged through the city and overturned a
tram.
Yet the outbreak virus from China which currently kills a small
proportion of those it affects in the general population, and a
negligible percentage of people below retirement age, was considered
grave enough to suspend democracy and the rule of law.
The bridge over the River Murray on the Hume Highway linking the
Victorian city of Wodonga and Albury in New South Wales has become
Australia’s Checkpoint Charlie, the free world on one side and tyranny
on the other.
Those tempted to swim across should know that police and army
reservists are patrolling the Murray’s northern banks assisted by
helicopters and drones. Up to six months in jail awaits those without
papers.
Melbourne residents who leave their homes between 8pm and 5am face a
$5,000 fine, imposed by police not the courts. Fines will also be issued
to anyone who, a) is caught without a mask; b) exercises for more than
an hour; c) wanders further than 5km from home; d) is judged by police
to be shopping excessively in the small number of shops allowed to stay
open; e) gets married; f) overnights in the house of someone other than
their designated intimate partner; g) goes fishing; or h) plays golf.
Like the villain in a dystopian novel, Victoria’s democratically
elected premier is interfering with citizen’s private lives in a manner
most will have imagined impossible in a nation settled by the heirs of
Magna Carta.
In his masterful book on the Anglosphere, Dan Hannan praised
Australia as a country where the libertarian philosophy of John Stuart
Mill was made flesh. Hannan might care to revisit that bit, as Victoria
breaks record after record in the contest of illiberalism, employing all
the available instruments of modern surveillance to keep its citizens
in check.
If the premier and his officials know how many cases of infection can
be tolerated they are keeping it from the citizens. No one knows how
long the lockdown measures will end or what comes next.
The consequences for the Victorian economy, which accounts for a
quarter of Australia’s GDP, are growing exponentially. The price of
shutting down business today is the loss of future opportunity. The
effects of this recession will be felt for a generation at least. The
most deadly effects of the virus may be reserved for the elderly and
sickly, but the biggest losers will be those in the prime of their life.
Much of what we are losing cannot be counted in dollars and cents. Freedoms, once surrendered, can be impossible to recover.
We dishonour the victims of early tyrannies to make comparisons, tempting as it might be.
The assumption of emergency powers to fight a real or exaggerated
threat is the oldest trick in the manual of despotism. Countries ruled
by tyranny are frequently those from which millions long to flee, just
as they do in Victoria right now, if only for a holiday.
The erosion of democracies typically begins with the indefinite
suspension of parliament, as the Victorian state parliament has been.
Autocrats are drawn to centrally planned economies, with the
inevitable mismatch of supply and demand. Residents of Victoria, the
food bowl of Australia, face shortages of meat and other essentials and
the prospect of rationing for the first time since the Second World War.
Autocracies are notorious for the proliferation of permits and the
checking of papers. In Victoria a permit is required to travel, to work
or cross the border. Military are being used as auxiliary police, police
powers have been drastically increased and punitive fines introduced.
Citizens are encouraged to act as informants against their employer and also neighbours.
There has not been one guarantee that all or any of these crackdown laws will be repealed.
Those who grew up with pride in their country and its part in
overcoming the great 20th-century tyrannies are understandably shocked
at how much we appear willing to surrender for benefits that are as yet
unspecified.
We shouldn’t be surprised at the tacit compliance of the media,
which, by and large, has not seen fit to challenge the measures.
Journalists, like some politicians, have a professional interest in
exaggerating the threat. ‘All quiet on the Covid-19 front’ is not a
story worthy of page one.
With time, the Andrews administration’s draconian and illiberal
stage-four lockdown will come to be seen as a monstrous administrative
mistake that has compounded the effects of the blunders that allowed the
virus to run wild.
Let’s hope at least that the lockdown slows the general rate of
infection, since the government seems incapable of protecting
nursing-home residents any other way.
Even if it does, we are bound to ask if the result was worth the
months that will have been added to the recession, the swelling of the
ranks of the long-term unemployed and the shrinkage of the small
business sector, the engine of the economy. And the freedoms citizens
have been forced to relinquish, with no guarantee they will get them
back.
Nick Cater is executive director of the Menzies Research Centre and a columnist with the Australian.
