Madam Speaker, it is a privilege, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South.
I said in my maiden speech in this chamber that I came to Ottawa with the goal of making Canada a freer place. Indeed, one of the motivations I had for getting into politics was seeing our fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of expression, under threat. This has been done largely by the policies and decisions taken by the Liberal government over the last few years.
It was in that spirit that I rose to the task of combatting this very dangerous bill, Bill C-9, from the get-go. When the Liberals put this bill forward, I read in the text of the bill language that would not be used to protect marginalized communities but would actually inflict harm on the very people the Liberals claim it would protect.
Let me say, first and foremost, that hate is real. It is a scourge in society. I have seen the brazen anti-Semitism unleashed on Canadian streets since October 7. London is a part of my riding. We saw, five years ago, the brutal slaying of the Afzaal family, a Muslim family targeted by a man who had hate and evil in his heart purely because of their faith. We have also seen 123 Christian churches burned or vandalized in the last five years. When Justin Trudeau, the former Liberal prime minister, was asked about these actions, he said they were “understandable”.
Hate is real, and sometimes it can come from a political leader, but Bill C-9 is not an antidote to hate, which is a problem that was allowed to fester on the Liberal government's watch. Much of what Bill C-9 would do, such as criminalize obstruction to a house of worship or prohibit the display of hate symbols, would tread over ground that is already covered by existing laws. These laws have been unenforced for the last several years because of a failure of political leadership in the Liberals.
We can then look at what Bill C-9 would do to actually change things. It would create a new definition of hate. Every witness who testified before the justice committee said that it would lower the threshold and make it easier to charge people for the words they say than it is now. The bill would remove critical safeguards for overzealous prosecution.
Of course, we have the removal of the religious defence, the removal of long-standing religious safeguards for political speech, and that decision became especially significant when we looked at a transcript of the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture's comments. In his view, there is clear hatred living within the holy texts that millions of people across this country read, cite and pray over from a place of love. The minister said there is clear hatred and prosecutors should be able to, in his words, press charges against those who cite them.
That is why all of the declarations and claims from Liberals that they will protect our charter freedoms, the freedom of expression and religious freedom ring hollow. They have been abundantly clear in their language that they do not protect those things. They do not value the role that faith plays in society.
I want to give a perfect example of why the Liberals cannot be taken at their word that they will protect charter freedoms. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice said before committee, “Freedom of religion is already fully protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” She said that to assuage concerns that Bill C-9 would lead to the further erosion of these freedoms.
Does it sound familiar? It should because Justin Trudeau said something very similar when he was defending the invocation of the Emergencies Act. He said, “I want to reassure Canadians that when the Emergencies Act is invoked, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms continues to protect their individual rights.” The Federal Court later determined that was a lie. The Federal Court of Appeal later affirmed that was a lie. A government that claims it is protecting charter rights is not sufficient enough to actually protect those rights. This is coming from a government that has a long history of censorship bills.
Now, on Bill C-9, when Conservative members of the justice committee wanted to bring forward the testimony of people who are among the millions of Canadians of faith who would be directly affected by this change, the Liberals moved the motion before us today to shut down debate. The Liberals are censoring debate on their censorship bill.
The Liberals are denying us the opportunity to read letters from imams, pastors, rabbis, civil liberties advocates and individual Canadians. They have been flooding members of Parliament's inboxes, voice mailboxes and phone lines with their concerns about Bill C-9. The denunciation of Bill C-9 has not come from some far right conspiracy, as some of the members in this chamber have alluded to today. It has come from the left and the right, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the rabbinical council of Toronto, the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the United Church of Canada, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Egale Canada. Groups representing almost every faith tradition in this country, as well as civil liberties organizations and social justice organizations, all believe that Bill C-9 would harm the very groups the Liberals claim it would protect.
Why is this so fundamental? I will go back to my comments in my maiden speech that freedom of expression has always been, and will always be, my hill to die on.
There is a line from James Madison that comes to mind, which is “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge...is the only Guardian of true liberty.” Put simply, if all other freedoms were stripped away except the freedoms of expression and speech, we would be able to use those fundamental liberties to fight back for all the others.
Removing the freedom of expression takes away a vital tool Canadians have against an overzealous and authoritarian government. It is fitting that the Liberals are laying their intentions out so barely that they are prepared to censor the very debates and discussions we need to have in this chamber to justify legislation that would censor the thoughts and expressions of Canadians.
The best remedy, even for offensive speech, is more speech, not enforced silence. The best antidote to someone abusing scriptures is the freedom for all Canadians to freely discuss and debate those scriptures, share their true intention, read their holy texts and demonstrate that these texts came from a place of love. This lies at the heart of the guarantee of the freedom of expression.
Censorship is the confession of a society that it no longer trusts truth to win and that it no longer trusts people to be the arbiters of what should be discussed, debated and freely disseminated in society. When the state dictates what words can be uttered and what scripture verses can be read, it polices the ideas that can be shared and even what can be believed, at a fundamental level, by Canadians.
In the absence of the freedom of expression, there are only official lies. A society that fears words has already begun to fear thoughts themselves. That is why the groundswell of opposition to Bill C-9 has been so robust. The freedom of expression was not enshrined in the charter to protect the easy or the popular; it is there precisely to protect the difficult and the unpopular. Those are the ideas, the sentiments or, as some Liberal members need to be told, the scripture verses that need protection the most.
When we stand up for the freedom of expression, it is not a guarantee that every voice will or should be welcomed. Instead, it is to say that no voice should be silenced because of the dictates of a state that wants to draw an arbitrary line on what constitutes hate to silence those it hates. That is, to be perfectly frank, what is at stake today. The Liberals not only want to silence in our society certain viewpoints, ideas and people, but also to silence those voices from being heard in the legislative process.
I will close on this: Freedom of expression is the covenant of a free people that no idea is so dangerous it must be buried and no citizen so small that their voice may be denied the light. The Liberals may wish to be the arbiters of what we say, and even what we think, but they do not have or deserve that licence.
