Where is the line with free expression in Canada?

Hey, I'm Sarah Marshall, and there's one story from the past that I've been circling around for years now. This eight-part series traces the hidden history of the Satanic Panic in North America. We'll connect the dots from Victoria, BC to the back roads of Kentucky. Satan was having a moment, the sensationalist heartthrob of our time. The Devil You Know, available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Saro Jacuello. This is Just Asking the Podcast. This show is not important. What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this. Free speech. It's a subject that is one of the most polarizing in today's society, and one of the places the intense debates around free speech is playing out are on college campuses. It's a discussion that comes and goes for most of human history. I mean, go back to Socrates, who was put to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. Freedom of expression, protections in Canada are very strong, but they're not absolute. People do worry about what's going to come out of their mouths. We are living in a time of very low social trust. There's a lot of stuff people say that I don't like. I have the right to say I don't like it, and they have the right to say it. I will fight for their right to say stuff I don't like. The suspension and reinstatement of a late night talk show host in the United States has triggered a debate here in Canada about freedom of speech. It all began with comedian Jimmy Kimmel, who delivered a monologue about the death of right wing activist Charlie Kirk, and his comments landed very badly with the Trump-appointed commissioner overseeing American TV broadcasts, and like that, Jimmy Kimmel was off the air. There was a huge amount of protest, including some very powerful people stepping forward, Hollywood stars signed a public letter. There were people cancelling their streaming subscriptions. Social media just ablaze with debate. But this is not just an American story. Here in Canada, proposed book bans, new anti-hate laws, limits on campus protest, Canada is clearly searching for that elusive thin line between my right to express myself and your right to be safe. So where is that line? What can you say, or write, or paint? When is it protected, and when is it harmed? What about social media? What about that flag in your window? What about what you're wearing? We're going to take you through the questions all about freedom of expression. I have two guests with me. Hassan Alam is the president of the BC Civil Liberties Association and a labor and human rights lawyer. Ira Wells is the president of Penn Canada, which defends writer's freedom of expression. He's also the author of On Book Banning, or How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy. Hassan and Ira, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having me. Hassan, maybe I could start with you. In the US, the words "freedom of speech" are used. Here in Canada, we say "freedom of expression." Maybe you could help us understand the difference between these two and why the countries approach this in different ways. Right. Well, like you said, freedom of expression in Canada, we talk about freedom of expression, which is a bit more broad in terms of the protections it gives you. This includes speech, art, protest, symbols, and cultural acts. So Canada is quite explicit about nonverbal expression being protected. Whereas in the States, the First Amendment explicitly mentions speech, but the courts have there interpreted it quite broadly to include symbolic acts, protests, and some forms of artistic expression. And in Canada, sorry, in the United States, the courts do give individuals broader rights around freedom of speech. And really, the limits in America are when you're explicitly targeting an individual or expressing outright hatred. Whereas in Canada, we're a bit more cautious under 2B of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of expression isn't as unlimited as it is in the States. And the limits here in Canada are, again, hate speech, defamation, threats, or promoting things that we do not agree with, such as child pornography as well. And those limits are defined under Section 1 of the Charter. If you're just joining us, we are talking about freedom of expression in Canada. If you have a question, you can call us at 1-888-416-8333, again, with your questions about freedom of expression, 1-888-416-8333. Ira, I'll come to you. The term "free speech" has gotten thrown around a lot in political discourse right now. It has become very, very sensitive to talk about what we may talk about, what we may not talk about, which terms we can use. Why do you think that this has become such a polarizing or political topic in Canada and abroad right now? Yeah, well, that's a great question, Soroja. And maybe I could just begin by pointing out how counterintuitive and just how fragile our free expression is, our belief in free expression. I think we understand that the freedom to express ourselves as the lifeblood of our democracy, it's what makes democracy possible. But think about how strange and how exceptional that idea is. In the grand sweep of human history, the idea that a government would want to protect the speech of people who are criticizing them, the idea that our governments derive their legitimacy from the fact that we can criticize them, that's a very counterintuitive idea. And it's also a fragile idea, one that's certainly the exception historically and it's under attack today at home and abroad, as you just mentioned, the sphere, if you will, of freedom of expression is shrinking around the world. Governments are claiming more and more power to police our expression. We're seeing that in Alberta, where the government has claimed an extraordinary new power for itself to decide what books ought to be on library shelves in school libraries. Governments are abroad, at home and abroad, we see governments clamping down on the press. We see governments pressuring universities, jailing writers, banning books. So, I just want to begin with an appreciation of how important free expression is, but also just how fragile it is, especially at this moment. We have someone who actually called in with a question about the decision made in Alberta. For anybody who doesn't know about that, there has been legislation that was tabled to ban a series of books, and then that was pulled back, it's been paused, it's being retooled. And I imagine that many people have different opinions on this. This is Kylie Nixon from Edmonton with a question. There have been some books that have been sexually explicit in some of the schools in Alberta. We seem to characterize parents as right wing, maybe Christian or some religious fundamentalist group type of parents, if they express concern about that. But there are parents out there who are concerned about it. And they want to have a voice, and they did have a voice, and that causes this characterization of those parents as right wing religious fundamentalists. And I don't think that's always the case. I mean, I agree with the banning of graphic books for kids in elementary and probably junior high. I don't characterize myself as right wing at all. I would say I always vote NDP. I just don't think that it's fair to place parents in that category if they want to express their concerns. So how can we listen to parents without demonizing them, basically? Parents are generally very protective of their kids. They curate kids' lives. We all do that as parents. We don't bring our kids to places that we think are inappropriate for kids. We don't bring them to our rated movies. That seems very reasonable to me. Like what are we talking about when we start arguing that kids should be exposed to like graphic sexual content? Like, why would we argue for that? So Ira, very right out of the gates, we're sort of putting you on in the hot seat there, one of the most contentious conversations around freedom of speech happening in the country right now. But as you're listening to Kylie, you can hear how nuanced that is. I'm wondering what your response would be as you're listening to her concern and also her wondering about where those lines are. Yeah, no, these are great questions and I appreciate the comments. Certainly as the caller points out, every parent cares about the kind of media that their child is exposed to. As a parent, I totally sympathize with that. We want to ensure that material is developmentally appropriate, that it's at the right age level for our children, but I think it's also important to recognize that there's been some slippery rhetoric on the part of the government of Alberta with regard to the way that they will describe certain works of literature as pornography. I would take issue with the claim that the books that the government is targeting, specifically the four graphic novels that they began with, I don't think that those are works of pornography. We can have a conversation about whether those works, what age group they're most appropriate for. But certainly I think we also need to bear in mind the fact that many of these LGBTQ narratives are very affirming to students who may not see themselves reflected on the pages of many library books, and we want to ensure that libraries are reflecting and affirming identities of students in those classes. Just to be on guard around a couple of things, one is the way in which the Alberta government will take snippets of books, they'll take little, they'll show you a single frame from a graphic novel, for example, or they'll show you a single page and misrepresent a work as pornography when it is, in fact, if you were to read the entire book in its totality, something quite different. So if you can imagine, for example, someone who decided that they wanted to misrepresent the movie Titanic by only showing you the nude scenes, you might come away with a very different idea of what that film was about. So I would just say that we need to be careful around the ways in which there's been some slippery rhetoric coming from the government. They will often describe these books as in the context of very young children, when in fact we're talking about high school age students, people who are 17, 18 years old. So it's just important to have some nuance to absolutely include parents' voices in the selection criteria stage, but not to allow a specific special interest group to come and remove books that other parents may feel that their children have every right to read. So this is often framed in terms of parents' rights. It ends up becoming a dead tack on the rights of parents and children who value the right to read. Thanks for that, Ira. Hasan, if I could come to you, Edmonton Public Library released a list where they explained that books that would fall under this ban could include Alice Walker's color purple, Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, and it was just an example of how once you have a law like this, it can be interpreted in many ways, and hundreds of books that may not have been intentionally targeted can end up on the list of what's banned. So that brings us back to what the law actually says. Where is free expression and where are freedom of expression laws? Where do they come into play when we look at the situation in Alberta? How much room also does the provincial government there have when we have a charter of rights and freedoms around what we are allowed to express? Well, certainly provincial governments have the jurisdiction to introduce legislation which introduces such bans, but in Canada under a checks and balance system, the check there is our charter, specifically Section 2B, and that's where the federal government can step in to say, no, no, no, Alberta, this is an overreach on your part with respect to people's freedom of expression rights. And I'll just go back to our previous caller, yes, parents have the right to raise concerns about what their children read, but under the charter and under our legal analysis, we have to balance that against the right of all students to access books that teach them about in this case, the experience of minorities and their parents' rights to also have their children access that. So it's a balancing act, right? It's not clear, but it's a balancing act about the rights of, in some cases, the majority versus those of marginalized and minority communities to be protected, and often that's the situation, and that's what we're seeing in Alberta where certainly many students could benefit from learning about the experiences of the LGBTQ+ community so that we have a more inclusive sort of environment within these schools as well, and certainly there will be concerns raised by parents who may not share in on that viewpoint. But again, legally speaking, it's not clear, but we do have to balance the right of one group versus the other with the specific aim of limiting harm. And I think that's key here, is does pushing back against this ban limit the harm? Thanks very much for that. I'm going to invite Nix Guharsky into this conversation. Nix is joining from Montreal. They are the president of the Canadian Society for Intercollegiate Debate, and also a student at the University of Waterloo. Nix, hi, welcome to the show. Hi. Hi there. So you are participating in a very vibrant expression of opinions and ideas, and you help other people do that, and they don't always even stand up for ideas that they're believing in themselves, but to try and argue other sides and get some sense of what's happening. Can you tell me a little bit about what it is you do, how you get people engaged in exchange of ideas, even if that political debate feels really, really sticky and high stakes? Yeah, for sure. So as the member of QCID and our president, we have, I think it's over 40 member schools that are different clubs in universities across Canada. And we host a lot of different, both weekly and weekend tournaments. So we invite students from all of our universities to come collaborate both within people just from Canada, as well as people from North America and every year, people from all around the world. And we get together and we debate on many different topics, really just getting the discussions on them going and getting topics on either side and having those conversations about some topics that can be very tough to talk about otherwise. Well, some of those have included some of the political situations in the world where people stand on the Middle East, on Ukraine, Russia. So I'm wondering, as we have these two experts on freedom of expression gathered with us today, you have a question yourself. I do, yeah. I think something we've seen a lot in recent years is that there's been a lot of students who have been advocating a lot for the issues that they've been getting passionate about. And this is something that is coming on over the years. And I was wondering where they see the next few years going, whether they see students beginning to speak up even more for themselves and more protests happening across campuses, or whether they think there's going to be more of a regression within. It's going to go back to that ebb and flow of it. I'm going to take your question forward in a moment, but I'm wondering how you feel next. Do you feel safe if you express your political opinion on campus? I would say that I'm getting there. I think especially at the University of Waterloo, I'm helping to create a club called the Waterloo Forum to get debates and stuff going on campus. But I would say, as students are beginning to do so more, I'm seeing them advocating for them themselves a lot more, which is really nice to see, and I've been able to help participate in some of that. I'm going to take your question now to our two guests. Ira and Hasan, I'm going to ask you, Nix is asking about what the future looks like for debate on campus and a vibrant exchange of ideas, as well as the expression of political opinion. Hasan, I'll come to you first. Yes, it's a great question. And I think it's timely because, yes, as she mentioned, we've seen a remarkable increase in student activism, particularly around issues like Palestinian human rights, climate change, and just social justice in general. Students are using means such as protest, campus encampments, digital campaigns to make their voices heard. But on the flip side, we're seeing university administrations clamping down on student encampments. We're seeing governments such as that of Canada banning groups on campuses such as Samadoun as well. And so I think what this points to is this tension right now, where I think students are really leading the way in terms of speaking out against injustices that they're seeing globally. And the tension happens where they're not seeing either their university campuses, governments or other institutions standing up in the way that they would like to. And so really, this is them exercising their charter protective freedoms to not only advocate publicly and raise awareness about these issues, but also push university administrations and government to take more action. Now, in terms of the trend that I predict in the next few years, I only see this increasing, right? Unless I think students see governments and institutions responding in the way that they want to do. And personally speaking, as a president of the BC Sibler Bees Association, I find this incredibly hopeful that the fact that our youth, our students are standing up when our governments are staying silent. I'm going to come to you next, Ira. Your work with Penn has you in contact with writers who are trying to defend their freedom of expression. When you look to university campuses, and particularly so many future writers there, how are you feeling as you look at that future of the ability to express opinion and to exchange ideas? Thanks, Eroja. Well, I think it depends on where you look. Obviously right now, universities are hot spots, the front lines in terms of free expression battles in the United States, where we see the threats of funding being removed. We see various levers of government being brought to bear to circumscribe academic freedom, to limit the rights of students to protest. And I would hesitate to offer a prophecy in terms of how that ends. It feels deeply fraught. I would say that there is a broad recognition, a broad awareness of the value of student protest, the value of student activism in Canada around divestment, around the Middle East and so on. And I think there's a sense that universities are special places where students need to be able to debate courageously, think aloud, stand up for their ideas. And I do believe that universities, especially in Canada, are committed to creating spaces where civil discourse is possible and encouraged. So I remain hopeful. Two very hopeful visions of the future there, Nix. Thank you so much for calling in with your question. Yeah, thank you for having me. If you're just joining us, this is just asking on CBC Radio 1. We are taking your questions about freedom of expression in Canada. The number to call with your question is 1-888-416-8333. You may have questions about how you can express yourself, where the limits are. What do you do if you think that you've been harmed by somebody else's speech? Where is the line between their right to express themselves and your right to be safe? I have two people with me today. Hasan Adam is the president of the BC Civil Liberties Association, also a lawyer in labor and human rights law. Alongside him we have Ira Wells, who's the president of Penn Canada. He's also the author of On Book Banning. If you have a question about freedom of expression, you can call us at 1-888-416-8333. Pete Quilly is joining us now from Vancouver. Hi there. Hi. Two questions. First one, a lot of people are drowned by American content and think that the American laws are the same as ours. So I'm wondering if you could clearly delineate the difference between freedom of speech and hate speech, leaving aside like defamation and stuff like that. But those two things with some specific examples. And the second question is, there's been a pattern, especially since the pandemic started and it's still on just because they refuse to count, it doesn't mean it's gone, of people from the far right sending terrorist death threats to politicians, civic, provincial, federal, as well as government officials and individuals, and the Trudeau liberal government doing almost nothing to get the police to investigate, charge, and have the prosecutors prosecute. It's just been enabling, warning some of these people in the far right have been bragging online that they've been labeled by the cops and the prosecutors. And I don't want Canada to become West Russia, which we see happening down south with Mr. Trump, who's basically radicalized a large group of the population. So it's one thing to say that hate speech is legal, but if there are no consequences, and I'm talking about like actual jail time, you're going to have this keep going on and keep escalating. There's lots of examples down south and even here of this happening, like why aren't they doing it? Like because to have a democracy, we need to have people running for office, and if you're getting death threats, you know, that's a bit of a deterrent. Pete, I hear your frustration and your concern there. We're very lucky to have somebody who specializes in civil liberties and who is a lawyer with us. Hassan, I'm going to guess that you have lots you can lean in there. First, the delineation between what free speech and what hate speech is and where that line is in Canada, rather as we call it freedom of expression, and then that larger piece of accountability and where that stands, particularly around threats to safety or the way that people express themselves politically accompanied with threats of violence. Certainly. It's a good question, and it's an often asked question, and it isn't very abundantly clear to the general public. But freedom of speech in Canada lets people express opinions, ideas, beliefs, artistic expressions, write music, write songs, write books without government interference. So an example would be writing an op-ed, criticizing government policy or posting your views on social media with respect to certain government actions or maybe even other institutions. And this can include controversial or unpopular opinions as long as they don't threaten or incite harm against others. So hate speech is different. Hate speech is when you go into the realm of promoting hatred or violence against identifiable groups based on race, religion, sexual orientation, and other characteristics that are protected under human rights codes across the country. A clear example of this would be, for example, publishing material that calls for violence against, for example, the Jewish community or the LGBTQ+ community or the Muslim community. So you're inciting violence, right? You're calling for action against an identifiable group. In this situation, hate speech is not protected under the Charter. So your expression, although it is an expression, it is not protected under the Charter and is in fact prohibited under the criminal code. Section 319, for example, makes it illegal to publicly incite hatred against an identifiable group and you can be then prosecuted underneath the criminal code and face charges for that. Now with that breakdown given and going to your caller's second question about, you know, the rise we're seeing in threats of violence against those in political office and in Canada, unfortunately, it's been increasingly targeted against female politicians. And of course, this is abhorrent and we should stop this and call it out for what it is. And the protections given there are underneath our hate crime or provisions under criminal code as well. So if you're obviously, if you're threatening violence, you can be prosecuted under the criminal code for that. If you're threatening someone based on their gender identity, you can be prosecuted underneath the criminal code. The balance which is often difficult is that these people are in public office and often the individuals targeting them are conflating these threats with political critiques of their policies. And although you're allowed, again, to critique their political viewpoints, maybe the policy that they're pushing forward, the bill that they're putting forward, an action that they're taking in legislature, you cannot threaten them with violence and with threats in that manner. Thanks very much for that. And Pete, thank you for that question. Hassan, maybe you could stay here for a moment. The federal government recently tabled Bill C9. This is combating the, this is the combating hate act. Maybe you could explain for us, would this proposed legislation change hate speech laws that we have now? And how? Right. So Bill C9 and its official title is combating hate. It's a proposed amendment to the criminal code, and its primary objective is, according to the government, to enhance the legal framework for addressing hate crimes and hate propaganda. And the context that it's coming out of is that in the past few years, we've seen a surge in hate crimes in Canada, specifically against the Muslim community and against the Jewish community. So what this bill proposes to do is eliminate the requirements for the attorney general's consent before laying certain charges, for example, hate propaganda offenses. So thereby allowing the police to act more swiftly in the government's own words in initiating criminal charges. It also introduces a new offense for displaying hate symbols. So now, whereas speech was the primary target of hate crime legislation now, symbols can also be targeted if they are seen to promote hatred against an identifiable group. There's also a provision that they seek to introduce which establishes a specific offense related to intimidating or obstructing individuals from accessing places primarily used for religious worship by identified groups for specific purposes. Now when I say this out loud, obviously it all sounds great and it sounds like it's needed, but there are concerns that groups have raised about Bill C-9. Specifically that this bill could be used to, for example, criminalize peaceful protest. Although it's talking about targeting hate speech, we know from recent times that what qualifies as hate speech for one group isn't hate speech for another, and so you could have entire protests targeted for that. The main concern though is the expansion of police powers here. The removal of the attorney general's oversight before proceeding with charges gives the police broader discretion in initiating hate propaganda charges potentially leading to overreach and misuse and a lack of oversight. The other main concern here is that there's a really big definition of hatred. What is hatred? What is defined as hatred as we've seen in Canada and south of the border, it depends on the government of the day. The government often has the jurisdiction, the power to define what is defined as hatred and it can be often colored by political influence both domestically and abroad. It's so interesting to think about this in the Canadian context. I lived for 10 years in Germany where the Nazi salute and the swastika, the symbol of the Nazi party in the Second World War, these are banned, completely banned, and so the idea of symbols and even gestures being banned, being outlawed, is something that I feel quite used to. The reaction across Canada hasn't been quite like that one. Of course, that's a different political context and we're talking about symbols that are associated with a genocide, but in the Canadian context we have so much diversity and nuance and history to deal with when it comes to what symbols mean to each of us. It occurs to me that this might be an interesting place to come to you as somebody who really thinks about the exchange of ideas, about the way that ideas can be controlled and allowed to come forward or pulled back. What do you think is the impact of anti-hate laws? Are they an effective solution for ending hateful or harmful expression? Yeah, well, it's such a fraught and an interesting area. My research or my own reading on this suggests that these kinds of laws often don't work, the idea that you'll make society safer by outlawing symbols. There's not a lot of evidence that suggests that that's effective. Research in the area has shown that there is no correlation between the presence of extensive hate speech laws and lower levels of hateful expression. You mentioned Germany a second ago. In recent decades, Germany has very strictly enforced hate speech laws as well as on symbols, and yet the highly intolerant AFD party has grown dramatically in recent years in Germany. Another jurisdiction to pay some attention to here is Great Britain, which has been cracking down on what they call "grosely offensive online speech." According to the Times of London, officers from 37 police forces made over 12,000 arrests in 2023 alone, which means that 33 arrests are made every day for things that people in Britain say on the internet. You send an offensive tweet, and the police will literally show up at your door and initiate prosecution. We need to ask ourselves, is this making Britain a less hateful place? Well, recent polling shows that Reform UK, the anti-immigrant party, the far-right party led by Nigel Farage, is on track to form the next government in the UK, so let's learn from this. There's little evidence to support the idea that you can make society more tolerant by prosecuting intolerant speech, and in fact, there's reasons to suspect the opposite. Why don't we turn then, and that's such a frustrating reality that you're presenting us with, which definitely leaves us with what we have, people that we need to protect from messages that might be harmful. What are the alternatives there? I think the truth is that laws that have expanded or protected expressive freedom have contributed to social and legal victories for sexual and racial minorities, while laws that have restricted and criminalized speech have tended to reinforce oppression, have tended to reinforce subjugation. Why is that? One is that censorship is a tool of the powerful. Historically, censorship is a tool that those in power have used to defend their own interests, and often people will claim that restrictions on speech are necessary to protect vulnerable people. We see this in Alberta with respect to children. We need to protect children from harm, or in other contexts, we need to protect vulnerable people from hate speech and so on, but it's not the marginalized people, it's not the oppressed people who are actually making the decisions about what to censor. It's government officials, it's judges, it's executives at tech companies who are making the decisions about what you can post, what you can say, and so historically, it's been a tool of the powerful, and again, historically, it's been used against the powerless. One quick example, if I could, so again, in the UK, they passed something called the Race Relations Act in 1965. This was an intent, the intention here was to ban discrimination in public places. Sounds good, right? We do want to eliminate discrimination, but it turned out that within five years, most of the people convicted under that act were people of color, including black nationalists who were accused of stirring up animosity toward white people. We see something similar with campus speech codes, which often end up targeting the very people that they were intended to protect. So I think we need to just bear in mind the power dynamics here, and that censorship is a tool of the powerful that is used against the powerless. Norval Morso is one of the most famous indigenous artists ever. Looking at his paintings, it's easy to see why. Colors are intense. Color is medicine. But look a little closer and you'll see something else, fakes. We believe it's the world's biggest art fraud. There are thousands of fake Norval Morso paintings. Some of these forgeries, assaults, abuse, and even an unsolved murder. I want my paint black. I know you killed that boy. Forged. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Serocha Cuello. Just asking is live across the country on CBC Radio 1 on Saturday afternoons, 4 p.m. Eastern, 1 p.m. Pacific. You can download the CBC News app for free. Use the local tab to stream us live. And if you want to call us with your questions during our live show, the number to call is 1-888-416-8333, that's 1-888-416-8333. You can find and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Steven Kumar is joining us now from Toronto. Hi there. Hi there. How are you? Thanks so much for calling in, Steven. I'm well. What is your question today? Yeah, so it's really regarding freedom of speech and employment, especially for someone or anyone, really, who has freedom or has the integrity to have freedom of speech but not impact their employment negatively, especially in a time of social media and instant replies. And then a lot of anonymity among folks that are able to reply to folks that have their freedom of speech but are tied to easily traceable back to their employment. So how is freedom of speech, in a legal sense, able to catch up when employers are trying to cover themselves and sometimes employees or those who have their freedom of speech get the short end of the stick? Steven, what an interesting question. In an era of accountability, where is my right to express myself if my workplace has its own policies or follows me or I could lose my job? Hassan, that feels like a question that lands squarely with you. Yes, it does, and I love the question, because it's something that comes up quite often in my practice. And it's very timely, as well, and again, in the past two years, we've seen many people reprimanded by their employers, including up to the point of being fired for speaking out on issues such as Palestine. And some of them have been very silently terminated from their employment. Some of them have been very publicly, it's been the talking point for many news stories. But the sad fact is, and the sad state of affairs in Canada is, is that employees actually have very little rights, especially when it comes to private sector employees with respect to having freedom of expression protected. The charter does not apply with respect to private employers. And the sort of analysis then that is applied by the courts, when someone, for example, makes a social media post for which their employer then proceeds to fire them, because they don't agree with it, is how much of an impact did that post have on the operations, the state of affairs of that employer? So if you say something, for example, on Twitter, which is racist, which is maybe homophobic, then yes, the courts will say, well, you work with people from racialized backgrounds. You work with people who may come from the LGBT+ community. That threatens their safety in the workplace. So that would be upheld. But it's a balancing act, and it gets a bit more fuzzy when you start expressing political viewpoints on, again, issues such as Palestine or Ukraine. And the fact of the matter is, is that that sort of disruption in the workplace will depend on your employer. Some private employers will have very conservative viewpoints on some of these issues and may take more stringent measures around that. Other employers may agree with your viewpoints and may not bat an eye at what you said and may in fact agree with you. So that is the sort of tension that we're facing right now. And private employees have very, very little protections. Add on top of that the legal costs that come with actually initiating a lawsuit against your employer when they fire you. It's costly. And most people will probably rather walk away or take that settlement offered by their employer in lieu of reinstatement and go elsewhere. Public sector employees, specifically those employed by the government, have much more protection, right? They, in fact, have charter protections. So a teacher expressing a viewpoint on Twitter will have greater protections. But again, the analysis will still come back to how much of an impact do those comments have on the classroom. Thanks very much for that, Hassan. And also, Steven, thank you for that really interesting question. Ira, I'm going to follow that with a question to you that looks a little bit closer at the comments that people were making around the murder of Charlie Kirk. So right-wing activist, very polarizing figure, and a lot of the debate that was taking place on social media, well, some of that was quite violent. People were fired for those comments. So what are the challenges to protecting freedom of expression when so much of our lives, so much of what we think, what we do, and how we're reacting to the world does end up tracked and monitored online? Oh, it's such a good question. Look, I mean, my view is that we just need to be really clear with ourselves that social media is not a kind of neutral public square where we can all express ourselves equally, right? We need to bear in mind the fact that despite what Elon Musk might tell us about truth triumphing over evil on social media, or the fact that it's this sort of town commons where everyone can have their say that there are these unseen algorithms that are determining what ends up in your feed, what is prioritized, what is silently deprioritized on social media. So I just think it's really important not to confuse social media as this kind of neutral space where people can just express themselves and where good ideas will float to the top, right? And that is a deeply mistaken and corrosive idea. As with regard to the Charlie Kirk episode, I mean, I think it's just really important to be able to stake out a position where we can critique some of the things that Charlie Kirk said while also being clear that political assassination is always wrong. I mean, I just think we need to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Political assassination is wrong, full stop. Many of the things that Charlie Kirk said were odious, like these two things can be true at once. Thanks very much. Yeah. If I can just jump in there too. Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah, like I couldn't agree more with what Ira just said with respect to us being cautious of the fact that, you know, the social media sphere is not this neutral space or the commons of ideas. And the Kirk thing for us, I think, here in Canada, especially with respect to Jimmy Kimmel, the band that was put on him, I think it's a tale of caution for us here. There we saw the FCC directly interfere with a TV show. And here we have obviously the CRTC and hopefully they don't influence with amazing shows like this one. But it's a signal to the fact that politics can, in fact, play a role in limiting the artistic freedom of expression that we have as citizens. And we're seeing more and more of that creep into not just government institutions, but actually into the public where people are calling for such bands. Whereas historically, right, it was citizens who were actually standing up and saying, "No, I want my freedom of expression rights protected," right? And that is the thing that we must be cautious of. And, you know, we'd like to think that there's a border separating us, but that border, when it comes to the realm of social media, when it comes to the realm of political discourse, isn't as firm. Yeah. And, sorry, could I just make one more quick comment about the Combating Hate Act to sort of dovetail with that? So in the Combating Hate Act, which is the hateful symbols act that we were talking about a minute ago, there's a stipulation in there that says that if the display of the symbol was for, quote, "legitimate purpose," or is not contrary to the public interest, then it will not be prosecuted. But the problem is that we don't agree on what the public interest is, right? In fact, being contrary to the public interest was essentially the argument for taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air. So it feels like you could just drive a truck through that kind of rationale. And I think we need to be very cautious when the government is normalizing limitations on speech, limitations on expression, that we don't know how that will play out in the future. We don't know how a future government might take that and put their own spin on what the public interest is, right? So I think we need to be highly cautious of this idea. We are slowly inching towards the end of the time here. I find this conversation so fascinating. Ira, it's interesting what you just said, because it brings us a bit full circle. I mean, ultimately, we're back at that place of my freedom of expression is best protected if I protect yours, even if I'm offended. And that is, as you've said before, so counterintuitive. And our instinct to control and to try and shut down is so immediate, so reactive. All of this is requiring a lot of thought, a lot of reflectiveness. And certainly a lot of patience in a world of complicated and ever polarized ideas. Maybe I could just ask both of you a final closing question, which is if we get past some of the more nuanced details of the laws here and the definitions here, and really just have a moment to think about what's at stake if we aren't free to express ourselves in a democracy. What does that look like to you? Maybe Ira, I could begin with you and then Hasan. Sure. Well, I just think it's an oxymoron to think of a democracy in which you aren't free to express yourself. Free expression is the condition in which democracy becomes possible. But I think to your point, Saroja, it's important to remember that free speech or free expression, as we want to call it, that that is only meaningful as a principle if you're willing to defend the speech that you disagree with. Donald Trump is a big fan of the free speech that he agrees with. Vladimir Putin is a big fan of the speech that he agrees with. This only becomes valuable or meaningful as a principle if you're willing to stick up for the speech that you don't agree with. I think the answer to the kind of excesses that we're seeing in the US, the bookbans, the gag orders, the threats to journalism and media outlets, the targeting of non-citizens for deportation on the basis of their speech that we've seen, it's really alarming. The Trump administration has banned or flagged, for a view, more than 350 words from government websites and documents. This crackdown on speech is real. It's worrying. The answer to right-wing censorship is not left-wing censorship. It's a rejection of censorship. That's the only way out of this drift into authoritarianism. Thanks for that, Ira. Hasan, anything you'd like to close with? Yeah. I mean, I echo many of the comments made by Ira, and I'll just say our freedom of expression rights, your freedom of expression rights as an individual are only as strong as that of your neighbors. If your neighbors' rights are being under attack, even though you don't agree with them, it's going to be your rights tomorrow. And I think this moment is really showing us that for the majority or for many of us here in Canada, maybe we don't agree with some of the things that individuals are saying in the public discourse and then are being unfairly prosecuted for. But this is really a collective effort that needs to be taken by all Canadians, not just those students on campus, not just those people protesting in the city. It needs to be all of us because our rights are in this moment directly under threat, and it cannot be left to a minority of individuals to stand up for those rights. It has to be a collective effort because if it's one person's rights today, it will be yours tomorrow. What a privilege it has been to have a conversation like this on the air with both of you today. Thank you. Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much. I've been speaking with Hasan Alam, who is the president of the BC Civil Liberties Association. He's also an employment and human rights lawyer. Alongside him, we had Ira Wells, who is the president of Penn Canada. He's a professor of literature at Victoria College at the University of Toronto and also the author of On Book Banning. That's it for this edition of Just Asking. Our show was produced by Theo van Buessacom, Rachel DeGaspers, and Mark Hennig. Dave Modi is our technical producer. Our digital producer is Sinisha Yolich. Our screeners are Victoria Brzezinski-Shijanis, Hannah Abrahamse, and Chuck Molgat. We had production assistants this week from Mackenzie Rebello, and a very special thanks to our colleagues, Megan Fiddler and Kim Keture, for their guidance this week. Our senior producer this week is Abbey Plenner, and I'm Seroja Cuello. Hey if you like our podcast, please tell a friend about it. Or you could write us a review that would help us out so much. Thank you for tuning in today and see you next week. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca/podcasts.