CFE Blog

Only a few months removed from last fall’s mass cancellation of X accounts following the US election results (see James Turk’s piece on that here), it looks like we may be in for a similar exodus from META’s Facebook, Threads, and Instagram.

Canadian libraries don’t exist to coerce anyone’s beliefs or commitments. However, varying opinions about what should or should not be available in Canada’s publicly funded libraries surfaced as a constant topic in the Canadian media in 2024. I’ll point to a small sample of this coverage to make the point, as well as identify a few expressive freedom features on the 2025 landscape we can see through this library-focused lens.

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.