Thank you for inviting me today.

I'm the litigation director at the CCF, which is a legal charity that fights for fundamental freedoms in Canada.

I am fascinated by the question proposed by the committee today, which is the means government should have at its disposal to ensure the exercise of freedom of expression. Frankly, the government does not need more means. The government needs to do less. We already have the right to freedom of expression guaranteed in paragraph 2(b) of the charter. Before the charter, we had the right to freedom of expression protected in the Constitution Act, 1867, which is similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom, whose unwritten constitution protects the right of public discussion.

We are not granted these rights to freedom of expression by our government. We possess them by virtue of being human beings. Throughout human history, it's government that has been the greatest threat to our right to free speech, whether it was the execution of Socrates for his public philosophy, the brutal Star Chamber of King Henry VII, which punished those who printed without a licence, or the attempted censorship of New York newsman Peter Zenger for his criticism of the American colonial government. Governments have tried to censor speech they don't like for as long as we have had governments.

It's hard for me to even know where to start on this question. Do I talk about the threat to freedom of the press, the problem of imprisoning people for words alone, the problem of using human rights tribunals to regulate art and comedy, or, as Dr. Ge brought up, professional regulators undermining the right of freedom of speech for so many Canadians in those professions? These are all real, live issues today, and the source of the problem is government.

Consider the Alberta press case, which involved a law that compelled newspapers to publish government rebuttals to criticism. That case was from 1937, so fears about so-called fake news or misinformation are not new. Even though the Supreme Court struck down that Alberta law, the silencing of the press continues today. For example, we at the CCF challenged an amendment to the Canadian Elections Act that ended up being struck down in 2019. That provision prohibited false statements about political candidates during an election period. It even captured innocent statements and mistakes, with fines of up to $50,000 and five years in prison. We were successful in having it struck down.

While not censorship in the classic sense, millions of Canadians lost access to news because of this government's Online News Act, done in the name of saving the news industry. The act has backfired spectacularly, with Meta refusing to comply, then blocking news on its platforms. There's the Online Streaming Act brought in by this government, which put the CRTC in charge of regulating the content of companies like YouTube, Netflix and Spotify, including user-generated content. The free press is essential. It's an essential check on the authoritarian impulses of government. The actions of this government continue to undermine it.

In criminal law power, censorship by criminalizing words is nothing new, even though we're well aware of the problems with it. Consider Québécois Jehovah's Witness Aimé Boucher, who, in the 1940s, was convicted of seditious libel for accusing the Quebec government of being too close to the Catholic Church. That viewpoint was condemned at the time, but it's perhaps mainstream today. Consider how expressing the idea that gay people should have equal rights was an unacceptable view 60 years ago. Thanks to the free speech of people who publicly advocated for change, we now have equal rights in Canada for the LGBTQ community. Free speech is important for those who are in minorities, whether it's a minority viewpoint or a minority with some immutable characteristic.

Free speech is how we define the contours of our other rights. It is not a value for the right or the left. It is a non-partisan right for all Canadians, yet this government continues to undermine it. One of the purposes of free expression is to allow for debate on even the most controversial topics, because vigorous debate is how we best settle our disagreements, including disagreements about who should lead government. Free debate on contentious issues can't happen if the people currently in government are allowed to outlaw opposing points of view. The right to express your words and ideas goes to the core of who we are as individuals.

The government doesn't need more means. It needs to stop trying to silence speech.

Thank you.