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Toronto: July 11,2019 - The Centre for Free Expression is pleased to announce the newest addition to its Occasional Paper Series, “Populism and Free Speech” by Jon Thompson. The paper explores the contradictory history of populism -- at times a force for social justice and at other times  to undermine democratic rights of marginalized groups. Thompson  argues that progressive populist action is required to successfully deal with the existential challenges of nuclear war, climate change and chemical pollution.   

News Reports and Commentary Selected by Franklin Carter of the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom of Expression Committee   In June 2019, the House Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in Ottawa published a report about hateful expression on the Internet.

You will likely have seen quite a few opinion pieces lately about what’s being called variously the “Canadian” media bailout, the “government” media bailout and the “Liberal” media bailout.  So, yes, there’s a media bailout afoot. 

George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English language” is my suggested summer reading for Toronto city councillors and anyone interested in the ‘smart city’ plan that Sidewalk Labs/Google has proposed for Toronto’s waterfront. This is where you can peruse the multi-volume work, but if plowing through googlespeak for 1500 pages doesn’t appeal, you can instead read the informative ‘

Recent events at the University of British Columbia show again the powerful allure of censorship as the way to deal with deeply concerning social issues. In this case, the issue is sexual identity and gender identity. Jenn Smith, who identifies as a bisexual transgender male but is against “transgender ideology”, was scheduled to give a talk at UBC on June 23rd. Smith had rented space at UBC as part of a speaking tour across the province on “The Erosion of Freedom: How Transgender Politics in School and Society Are Undermining Our Freedom and Harming Women and Children!”

News Reports and Commentary Selected by Franklin Carter of the Book and Periodical Council’s Freedom of Expression Committee   In the world of young-adult publishing, some fiction authors face barrages of abuse and threats — including death threats — on social media for their portrayals of minority characters and different cultures. Publishers are cancelling novels before publication and withdrawing published novels from marketplaces.