In the aftermath of the massacre of six Muslims in Quebec City, Mississauga-Erin Mills Liberal MP Iqra Khalid tabled Motion 103 calling on the government to condemn Islamophobia. Now keep in mind, this is just a motion, not a bill. It’s just an MP using the democratic process to express an opinion. Nevertheless, it has become a leitmotif where debate about free speech is concerned in Canada. It’s worth questioning its tenets as well as the Prime Minister’s subsequent comments. If anything, it highlights why it’s rarely a good idea to formulate laws after a tragedy when emotions run higher than reason leaving itself vulnerable to unintended consequences and that protecting free speech demands eternal vigilance.
Following her motion, Khalid unfortunately received her fair share of hate mail that would seem to confirm her position. However, if anything, it only highlights the need to protect free speech, not curb it. The messages still don’t rise for the need of such a proposal, in my view.
Specifically the motion stipulates:
-Recognize the need to quell the increasing public climate of hate and fear.
-Request the heritage committee study how the government could develop a government-wide approach to reducing or eliminating systemic racism and religious discrimination, including Islamophobia.
-Collect data to contextualize hate crime reports and to conduct needs assessments for impacted communities and present findings within 240 calendar days.
It would be helpful if she’d clarify a couple of things. For example, how does she define ‘climate of hate and fear’? Who will be charged with doing all this ‘contextualizing’? What’s ‘Islamophobia’ exactly? Who will guard the contextualizers?
If the premise leading this motion into a potential Bill is clunky, what the heck does one think will happen once it’s law?
As if this problematic (if not silly) proposal isn’t enough to send shivers down our spines, Justin Trudeau offered these illuminating words exposing his awesome dedication to free speech. CBC reports:
“In a seven-minute response, Trudeau said fundamental rights and freedoms are enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but that individual rights must be balanced with others in our society. Determining the parameters is an ongoing discussion in a dynamic, successful society like ours, he said.
Trudeau said the motion aims to address the fact there is a community that is “particularly vulnerable these days to intolerance and discrimination.”
“You’re not allowed to call ‘Fire!’ in a crowded movie theatre and call that free speech,” Trudeau said.
“That endangers our community. And as we saw 10 days ago in Quebec City, there are other things that can endanger our communities. And we need to stand strongly and firmly against that.”
A little precautionary principle here, a little “save free speech from itself” there, and a dab of “protecting the vulnerable” here, and presto! Civil Nirvana!
I’m no longer surprised – numb perhaps but not shocked – that this pretty much summarizes the general Canadian outlook on free speech. Canadians weren’t basted in notions of the First Amendment as their American cousins were in school or even afterward. If free speech is regarded as ‘quaint,’ imagine the perception of the Second Amendment.
It just doesn’t compute. Hence, flippant musings on free speech passed off as progressive enlightened perspectives; there’s a general misguided belief we can “balance” free speech without any opportunity costs. ‘Hey, man! I didn’t mean my speech! I meant HIS speech!”
It’s even more so with Trudeau, given his father wasn’t exactly a card carrying classical liberal. This sort of sophomoric approach to free speech, when exposed on a bigger stage than Canada, can really look, erm, second-rate at best.
What Canadians don’t fundamentally understand is that free speech is a virtue and not a vice.
You remove it or try to tinker with it and you’re left with the loss of individual sovereignty. Nothing more. Shutting down speech to any degree presupposes we have the answers; it suppresses self-doubt and increases misplaced self-esteem.
It leads to assertions of it all being ‘settled’ – to borrow a flatulent term from the system, ahem, climate change crowd – so to speak. There is not a better example of a movement that has foregone tolerance and patience in the interest and spirit of debate. Does it make sense to you to hand over all your inquisitive impulses and skeptical empiricism to…Bill Nye? Are we not free to debate anything however vacuous so long as it doesn’t infringe on the civil liberty of another? It takes patience and tolerance because it’s humbling if someone challenges a prevailing world view
It is completely alien to me how anyone would consent to allowing the government the kind of power to ‘watch over’ free speech. It’s also lazy. Rather than confront a person’s opinion by the power of argument, we ask the government merely shut down the parts we can’t be bothered to argue. After all, if the starting point is ‘we know the truth,’ there’s no need to confront and debate. Lazy.
What is overlooked is that being exposed to bad arguments or ideas actually enhances and strengthens our critical thinking prowess and intellectualism.
Shutting down opinion under the threat of imprisonment, in short, isn’t liberal.
It’s illiberal.
It’s reactionary.
Moving on to the specifics of his comments: there’s little evidence Muslims are facing a significant backlash – despite the tragic outlier incident witnessed in Quebec City, the hate mail received by Khalid and a recent uptick in attacks usually coming after an Islamic terrorist attack- to justify such draconian actions. Call me when things reach a ‘pogrom’ level. In fact, Jews indeed continue to be the most targeted group.
Second, the idea that free speech can be balanced by curtailing it is an act of deception, if not outright hubris. To think we can ‘balance’ something as immeasurable as speech is just that: arrogance. Either free speech exists or it doesn’t. It should give pause that the Prime Minster basically said, ‘the feelings of a victim group comes before individual civil liberties no matter what the Charter says.’
So why have a Charter if you plan to wipe your ass with it, I wonder?
Does Canada have principles or not? Will it stand for freedom of expression at all cost or not? If it chooses the route (and quite frankly, it already has by the back door through the Human Rights Commission and Quebec’s language laws), then it abandons all pretences of being a nation that values freedom of speech and expression. Welcome to Canada where we cherish free speech but…
It would be foolish, furthermore, to think this is not an example of a slippery slope. There are plenty of examples (just go to Campus Reform) to see the hideousness of what can happen if free speech isn’t vigorously defended. The natural default position of man, after all, is tyranny. Next thing you know, comedians in Germany and Canada are taken to court. Such progress we’ve made!
It’s not like we haven’t seen how grotesque it is to take someone to court over an opinion as the cases involving Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn reveal.
The process, as we know, is enough punishment and I can’t but think about the poor sucker who doesn’t have the kind of pull Steyn or Levant may have will see their life upended because of it.
Count me in as one of those ‘extremists’ who doesn’t feel it’s legally, intellectually or even morally justified to destroy a person’s life for proclaiming, say, ‘Keep ’em fucken Mooslims outta m’backyird! That is, the government should not be in the business of criminalizing people for their opinions through onerous and obscene censorship laws.
It’s bad enough that Levant – here have a look for yourself at what 1984 in 2017 looks like – has to beg before an unelected ‘contextualizer‘ at the HRC, right? Now imagine where this can go with Motion 103 becoming law.
And given the zeitgeist we’re experiencing in North America (if not the West as a whole), the last thing we should be doing is enabling or giving people incentives to snitch and/or lob lawsuits against one another for words.
Next up, thought control.
Finally, Trudeau is misinformed about not being able to yell Fire! in a theatre. In a nutshell, it’s not illegal to do so in the United States. The history of this famous analogy drawn by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is not what people think it is. In fact, the case whence it was born had nothing to do with fires; but it did have something to do with freedom of speech and expression.
Though not binding, the courts got it wrong and it was eventually overturned 40 years ago but not before this trivial tripe has become a calcified Top 10 ‘go-to’ favorite tattooed into the progressive mindset. Ultimately manifesting itself along the lines of ‘You can’t yell fire in a theatre ergo you can’t make fun of Mohammed! Duh.’
But. Bashing whites and Christians and causing property damage and violence for stuff they disagree with in general is fair game in their distorted civil order.
Put more eloquently in The Atlantic:
“Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of censorship have not stopped trotting it out as the final word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. As Rottman wrote, for this reason, it’s “worse than useless in defining the boundaries of constitutional speech. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any unpopular speech.” Worse, its advocates are tacitly endorsing one of the broadest censorship decisions ever brought down by the Court. It is quite simply, as Ken White calls it, “the most famous and pervasive lazy cheat in American dialogue about free speech.”
Sounds like you’d get just as far singing the song Fire in a theatre.
In any event, would it have been too much to ask if Trudeau be at least up to speed on American law and legal history? It displays a rather unbecoming shallow grasp of American history if you ask me. I mean, if you can’t SJW like its the current year with up to date vapid slogans, why bother? Have some pride in your intellectual acumen, man!
Kill Motion 103. Nothing good can come of it.
A war on speech is doomed – condemned – to end up like the war on poverty and drugs where the families and communities are fractured to the point of dysfunction. A war on speech will eliminate good ideas and elevate bad ones leaving it exclusively in power. A war on speech is a free ticket to ‘Pass Go’ and straight into a Dark Age where the meek and weak intellectuals prevail.
All this to bring me back to Ms. Khalid’s motion. The moment more hate speech is introduced, the more you drive it underground. Is it not better to monitor it above board? Free speech, I argue, is the best ally any person or group will ever have.
My sister met Justin Trudeau a few years back. In a conversation over dinner she said, ‘He really is a nice person. You can tell he means well’.
That’s the problem.
In Justin Trudeau what we have is a walking ‘the road to hell is paved…’
I forget the rest.
Hello.
Fantastic read, Rufus.
Exactly. A great piece.
Yes, excellent.
Wow, a site with actual, unequivocal, libertarian content!
damnit, you mean I have to start reading them?
I know, I know. But it’s totally worth it.
Just to minimize the negative impacts of sudden withdrawal:
To be sure, our society is full of people whose views are deplorable and rightly should be condemned, but how can we condemn those views and correct them if we don’t allow them to be exposed?
Seconded.
Great job, amico!
Once you take a single step away from simple, inalienable rights, everything goes to shit. Let’s face it, people really, truly don’t want freedom. They want someone to carefully control their environment to minimize any discomfort they might feel. They are pathetic.
Oh, and fuck good intentions.
Very good read. And welcome Rufus: was hoping I’d see you in this neck of the woods.
Other whats?
I’d like to know. Email the PM: fluffy@emptyplatitudes.ca
Presumably other rights, but, as Ayn Rand pointed out, rights cannot conflict.
But it feelz good.
Nice, Rufus. good read.
The other thing is that Iqra Khalid was pushing similar garbage even before the mosque shooting, this just gives her a convenient pile of bodies to soapbox on.
So why have a Charter if you plan to wipe your ass with it, I wonder?
The Charter itself starts with a sentence that completely delegitimizes it as a constitutional document. It’s one of the worst constitutions in the West and I’m frankly pissed off we’re stuck with it.
Your comment inspired me to look at the Canadian Charter. You are right about the first line. Wow.
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
It basically delegitimizes everything that follows. Why bother?
As an Expos fan, your avatar triggers me.
If you are an Expos fan, you have bigger problems than my avatar. Just sayin’
Also, damn good post. I really enjoyed it.
I have heard Canadians complain that the exodus of loyalists from the US after the Revolution changed their history and the nature of their country. Hmmmm. This current batch of immigrants surely won’t do that.
Well yeah, it made Canada English.
Except of course for Quebec.
It even made Quebec more English.
There’s a reason why Montreal wants to secede from Quebec and rejoin Canada if Quebec separation ever occurs.
Interesting. What do you think the chances are of separation actually happening? Just a Quebecois pipe dream? Sort of like “Calexit”, or more serious?
Separatism’s basically been dead politically since the 90s referendum, the PQ (Parti Quebecois, pro-separation party) has managed to get the Premiership for a bit (most recently by promising cheaper education to protesting students) but they’re unwilling to rock the boat currently and power usually reverts back to the Liberals.
There’s still a ton of insecure French nationalism and hatred of the Anglais in Quebec, but the biggest thing preventing separatism is how goddamn messy it would be. Montreal seems to be unwilling to join up, which is their major commercial and economic center gone, and the Mohawk have absolutely zero interest in dealing with an independent Quebec instead of the federal government. Quebec also wants to keep the Canadian currency and be defended by the military, and provincial equalization payments are a whole other story (Quebec is a net taker). Basically they want ‘sovereignty’ but none of the actual baggage that comes with it.
Don’t forget the Cree up North. A Montreal-Native alliance can be really ugly. Plus, the St. Lawrence seaway is owned by the Federal government so that could be a sticking point. But don’t worry. Daniel Turp set up a think tank to explore independence.
I am not familiar with Canadian culture. The tension between the limeys and frogs there is alien to me. Here (Louisiana) it used to be that way a couple of generations back but as the peoples got to know each other they kinda fell in love. The frogs here love the Yankee (thats what they called us) economy and opportunities and the rednecks love the Cajun culture – food, family values, work ethic, love of a good time. Once the term ‘Coonass’ was a pejorative. Now it is a badge of honor. We get along great.
Probably helps that you all speak the same language.
Cajuns are transplants from the Maritimes/French locals who stuck around after the purchase. Quebec, on the other hand, was conquered and had their cultural group become a minority after a hundred years. Historically French Canadianism was more about protecting their cultural rights in a larger Canadian society, and a lot of that had to do with the control the Catholic church had over them, and their unwillingness to rock the boat. Then the church basically collapsed in the 60s, and nationalism and Marxism replaced it, shifting the goal to separation.
Basically, imagine Lost Causers with a completely different culture, religion and language that also went more left-wing and were backed by sympathetic state governments and you have a pretty good idea of French nationalism.
That makes sense. There never was a cause here and the Cajuns were never conquered.
Damn!
Oh, and they also had a communist terrorist group that did bombings and kidnappings.
I was recently reading that “true” Cajuns were actually migrants from Canada. John Fremont hired a number of them for his westward expeditions in the 1840s, “Cajun” being a creole-ized form of “Canadian,” and that they settled in Louisiana because there was a French-speaking community already there. Don’t know how true that is, but I found it interesting.
Cajun is actually a creole-ized version of ‘Acadian’, a group of French settlers in the Acadia region of the Maritimes. After the Seven Years War the English got control of Acadia, suspected them of working with the French, and demanded loyalty oaths. The Acadians refused, so they were deported to French Louisiana.
That last paragraph – excellent.
Here, they make sure to keep a wedge between the two communities. Every once in a while the ‘language police’ will go after – and please don’t laugh because it’s quite sad – stores for having too much English. We have politicians who get on the news to rail against Home Depot, Starbucks and the like. It’s a matter of respect, you see. Not only that, I’m told it’s ‘smart business’ to write ‘Le Home Depot’ as if Quebecers are lost enough to think they’re heading into a fricken Dairy Queen. The whole thing is just nuts and has hurt Quebec immeasurably despite what nationalists claim.
Jesse would like L’Homme Depot.
Bonjour.
Good piece.
Does Canada have principles or not? Will it stand for freedom of expression at all cost or not? If it chooses the route (and quite frankly, it already has by the back door through the Human Rights Commission and Quebec’s language laws), then it abandons all pretences of being a nation that values freedom of speech and expression. Welcome to Canada where we cherish free speech but…
Doesn’t Canada have the “notwithstanding” clause in its Charter of Rights and Freedoms which allow the government to abridge any rights it wants?
Yes, it unfortunately does. An abomination really as JT points out.
Any country that has government investigative boards where citizens can be called in and questioned about their writings, speeches, reading material or even personal beliefs is not a country that has freedom of speech, of expression or of conscience in any way. Don’t they also police written material imported into the country?
I remember many years ago reading an interview with some Playboy bigwig. Not Hef. I can’t remember the bigwig’s name. The bigwig mentioned how the Internet helped Playboy out. Before the Internet, Canadian Customs would sometimes hold up Playboy’s proofs or would sometimes confiscate them, causing delays in publication in Canada. After the Internet, Playboy would send digital copies of the proofs to their Canadian publisher, bypassing Customs.
So I’m still in my old routine and go to HyR with my first cup of coffee. It’s all daigil (or whatever) and friends so after a few minutes I give it over and come here.
And I find this. Not only are the comments better.so are the articles!
We all said we just went there for the comments and this is why. The comentariat has always been where the intellectual center of gravity was and this site proves it.
Now to keep it up.
There’s pills for that.
If you keep it up for more than 4 hours…you’re an animal
*narrows gaze*
With a lovely coiffure?
Glad you guys liked it. You’re not assholes after all!
Grace period out of respect for your initial submissions.
Knives will be out next time.
“You’re not assholes after all!”
You take that back right now.
Oh, we’re assholes, we just liked your article.
This time.
I’m pleased as punch that you have decided to take up this kind of writing. Please keep it up! +More Canada.
So, even in Canada, the old crowded movie theater canard lives on?
Sad!
Zoolander is not reflective of the average intelligence of Canadian citizens.
Kind of assumed that, otherwise Canada would look like Idiocracy.
Are Canadians getting tired of this? I’ve always imagined them to be hard working, quiet conservatives.
…who were fed a doozy dose of Tommy Douglas socialism.
Once upon a time Canada was quite the rugged individualist nation pre-WWII. And then came the importing of American socialism….
Pre-Great War. The intervention in the economy and increased taxation to fund the war, followed by the labour movements in the intra-war years is what pulled Canada to the left.
That’s sad man.
Thanks for asking the question that I was about to. You would think – ha!- that a country started by explorers / trappers / hunters would be highly resistant to government.
But speaking to my Canadian sister-in-law quickly disabused me of that notion. (and being next door to the country)
The mitten of Michigan is always reaching towards Canada’s underside.
Great article, Rufus. So much potential for abuse in all these idiotic speech codes.
Ill apoligize in advance for my ignorance of our neighbor to the north, but how does Canada assimilate immigrants, specifically refugees from Muslim countries? Is it much like what Europe does where they are mostly confined to ghettos and have a jobless, but subsidized existence? Or do they actually have an incentive to join Canadian society and the labor force?
Canadian immigration is largely more restrictive than the United States. Our express skilled workers policy, for example, uses a points system based off of things like knowing the official languages and educational background. We also don’t have an equivalent to the ‘green card lotteries’ that the U.S. has. Pan Zangloba would have more information on all this because he went through it.
Most immigrants are employed largely due to the incentives of the immigration system. Outside the top ten cities it’s pretty hard to develop ‘ghettos’ in Canadian society because the population’s just too low. Even the ‘ethnic enclaves’ in Canadian society are overwhelmingly East Asian.
Refugees are different from immigrants, and the current unemployment rate for the ones from Syria is around 80%. Privately sponsored ones are doing better however, because they often have jobs waiting for them when they get here.
Good to know; I had heard that Canadian immigration was difficult, mostly pointed out after Trump won and all those people who threatened to leave realized it wouldn’t be so easy. But I didn’t know how refugees fit into that.
Nothing like Europe; more like the USA – stupid multicultural policy notwithstanding.
When I said ‘more’ like the USA I meant in terms of assimilation.
Well said.
Has anyone noticed how much of modern political life consists of the government doing frightening things, and then condemning people who are frightened? Import millions of people from different, often violent cultures, and then condemn the voters for being “frightened” and “xenophobic.” Government imports lots of Muslims whose doctrine tells them to hate you, but if you object, you’re “Islamophobic.” The government forces you to cater a gay wedding, because to refuse would be “homophobic.” The government decides that anyone can simply call themselves a woman and enter a women-only bathroom or locker room, and if anyone is discomforted by this, they are “transphobic.”
You want more Trump? This is how you get more Trump.