CFE Blog

The United Nations draft Convention against Cybercrime will be voted on at the UN General Assembly on December 17 and will be open for signatures next year. It is essential that Canada vote against it and, if passed, refuse to sign it.

In January 2024, we wrote a blog post (and one of us, Blayne Haggart, wrote a companion piece) for the Centre for Free Expression raising concerns about the weaponization of antisemitism to stifle academic and political speech in the context of Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. We wrote it in the context of the then-upcoming and now proposed Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act.

As part of the Edmonton Public Library’s Forward Thinking Speaker Series, I was invited to talk with Margaret Atwood on freedom of expression, her writing, and moderating audience questions. Given the timing, our armchair discussion quickly turned to politics.

The University of Toronto has released a draft statement on law and policy around antisemitism, and it should arguably serve as a model for approaching hateful and discriminatory speech on university campuses.

The Guardian’s decision earlier this week to stop posting on X finally prompted me to take the same step, one I have been contemplating for some time. Whereas the decision of the Guardian, which has 27-million followers, is consequential, my decision (with my 1,018 followers) is not. Still, for me, it is important to dissociate myself from what Musk has made of X.

One of the questions I always enjoyed asking school kids is, “To whom does the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms apply?” While there are many possible answers, one that I like to hear is that the Charter is about the relationship between governments and the people who live in Canada. In other words, it applies to all of us.