Freedom Of Speech In Canada

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear” (George Orwell). Whether the opinion is of extreme offense or not, censorship is not the answer nor is the limitation of the freedom of speech. Emerging the truth, can only be possible through the opposition of ideas, thus with no boundries, the full protection of freedom of speech is a necessary quality of any society.

One of the most misinterpreted aspects of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the freedom of expression. Group organizations have misused this much too often. In the past, many extremist groups have misused this right to protect themselves. A great example is the Westboro Baptist Church. This church is one of the many groups across North America that uses the Charter to protect themselves. The Charter protects them even though their actions and messages are harmful and not beneficial to society. If the Charter was to recognize these groups as dangerous, they wouldn’t have the chance to misuse these freedoms. Also, the fact that if a Canadian citizen were to use the excuse of the freedom of expression to defend their actions, they wouldn’t

Canada). As shown by McGuinty’s secret meeting, this process lacks all the things mentioned above; therefore, I believe that McGuinty chose the wrong process to make this decision. The right process would have involved those that would be affected by this decision. Instead they were purposely kept in the dark, which eliminated the possibility of free speech.

Freedom of speech is a fundamental human right. Whether or not on a college campus, people (especially college students) should have the right to speak freely. Everyone does have the right to speak freely, because it is one of the twenty-seven amendments. Colleges all around the United States are now home to many restrictions on free speech. For example, the idea and use of “free speech zones” has made its way to colleges everywhere. A “free speech zone” is a sidewalk sized place where students are allowed to speak their minds freely on college campuses. I know what you’re thinking. This sounds ridiculous. Why are there specific places for people to speak their minds? Aren’t colleges suppose to be a place where students speak their minds and learn new things? Universities should not be able to put any restrictions on free speech.

Freedom of expression, set under section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, is one of Canada’s most valued rights in the bill of rights of the Constitution. It has paved the way for the society in which thirty-five million people reside today. With this level of influence and admiration, it is truly a fundamental right. However, many ground-breaking cases have illustrated the need to limit freedom of expression. A prime example is the landmark case that took place in 1990 surrounding high school teacher, James Keegstra. This Supreme Court case touched mainly upon two sections of the Charter, and one section of the Criminal Code of Canada. These two sections in the Charter included section 1 (reasonable limits), and

ARTICLE 2: Another concern that’s being addressed is one of many that we face in Canada whether at work, school, family, or in the political sphere, Racial Discrimination. “Hate Lives in Canada Too” article by Sarah beech, discusses hate-speech and hate-based attacks in Canada being

The right to freedom of speech as one of the fundamental human rights is enshrined in The Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is consisted of the freedom to speak, think and express oneself without censorship. Freedom of speech constitutes the essential foundations of a democratic society and the basic conditions for its progress and for the development. One of most important functions of the right to freedom of speech is that decision-making at all levels is preceded by discussion and consideration of a representative range of views. It enables the public to participate in making decisions based on the free flow of information and ideas. A decision made after adequate consultation is likely to be a better one which less imperfectly reflects

The article, “How Ottawa’s New Terrorism Act Could Chill Free Speech” by Kent Roach and Craig Forcese is briefly about how the new terrorism law restricts people from free speech. The authors of this article believe that this law, also known as Bill C-51 is panoptic and that it accuses even those who have no intention to promote acts of violence. In addition, they consider that this recently passed act condemns constitutionally legal speeches by providing a hypothetical example of a foreign affairs newspaper columnist who expresses her views on the Ukrainian crisis. The journalist ideates that the Canadian government should support Ukrainian rebellions who are intending

Transparency in the Canadian Government is being used inefficiently and unfairly. Over many years since Canada has been a country their have been many different censorship laws. Censorship has been included, in film, broadcasting, print, art, and the internet. As years pass the Canadian Government has been lenient towards censorship towards film, broadcasting and the arts. However, with the expansion of technology the Government still censors and denies multiple files and information from the General Public. The Harper Conservative government and CSIS have denied access to multiple government files and even censored out files allowed viewing by the general Public and now Canada has had the most files censored currently in the history of the

Per Mill’s framework the government should not intervene in this case. Mill’s belief is that government intervention should only occur when there is physical harm. In this case, there is no physical harm, but there is offence as Muslims are targeted by the article. Mill believes that if something is offensive, society cannot do anything about it but avoid it or try to persuade the author to believe otherwise. The students attempted to persuade Maclean’s that the opinion stated in Steyn’s argument was incorrect and hateful, and to post an opposing view but had no luck. I believe the students should have then just informed people in Canada that Maclean’s is offensive, and

This establishes a free society based on the principle that every individual has a right to decide for themselves. Censorships is similar to a bad disease, if not treated it will spread for the worse. If we allow the government to censor different types of entertainment just because they feel it's harmful to our culture, we are losing our rights. Censorship is the governments way of controlling our vision. With having freedom of speech there has to be a balance between rights and interest. Being able to offend or insult others is equally important as part of that freedom. Lets recap on all the information that has been covered in the paper. We talked about the understanding of freedom of speech, and it not being so free. Before speaking there are certain stipulations that have to be followed, in order to be covered by the first amendment. We touched on the different types of speeches being symbolic and pure speech. We talked about the importance of the Alien Seduction Act, and what it meant to the first amendment. We also discussed what happens to people who break the Alien Seduction Act. We talked about positive freedom of speech. An example of this was the magnanimous group NWA, who spoke up on behalf of a community discussing real life current events. Police brutality being one of the more

This issue among Canada grew out of proportion as thousands of “suspicious people” were confined in internment camps, which forced them to commit unethical labor. These “suspicious people” even included citizens that associated themselves with immigrants from enemy countries. Even after this incident, Canada continued to fear sabotage of security and promoted posters pertaining to keeping your mouth shut during the war era. These posters caused Canadians to fear speaking in public, as the posters demonstrated that careless talk will eventually kill or harm someone.

Although Canadians are guaranteed freedom of expression under s. 2 (b) of the Charter, these rights are not guaranteed according to s. 1 of the Charter. S.1 of the Charter states that a violation of its rights set out, is acceptable only if it demonstrably justified. If a law is reasonably justified, then the violation of the Charter right is acceptable. There are two steps to determine if the law is justifiable: 1. The objective of the law must be pressing and substantial and 2. The law has to be proportional.

Mill uses the Harm Principle to identify his argument for freedom of speech. The Harm Principle explains that the government are only justified in interfering with individuals who express their views if only their views cause harm to others. If a person’s actions only affect himself, then society, which includes the government should not be able to stop a person from doing what he wants. Three ideas helped shape the harm principle. The first idea, Mill states that the harm principle is composed of the liberty of expressing and publishing opinions as being important as the liberty of thought, which

The argument Mill makes is characterized by a few premises. The first is that society is known to enforce opinions and beliefs upon the individual in hopes of maintaining a utilitarian good based upon a common set of truths that the society believes in. Due to this, individual liberty is often suppressed for the good of everyone else. When someone has dissenting views, they will be suppressed by the majority. Yet Mill’s believes that dissent is good because it helps to progress society by disconfirming our believes through listening and reasoning with those who are different. By addressing different views, people are able to develop their own ideas and as a society we are able to reach a better understanding of a utilitarian truth. For Mill, humans are not