Santa isn’t the only one keeping a Naughty or Nice list. The national legal charity that I work for, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, has compiled its own list of government measures, laws, proposals, and even individuals that were either “naughty” or “nice” for civil liberties in the last twelve months. While sometimes the government, the courts and civil society got things right, unfortunately there is more than enough coal to go around.
Topping the “naughty” list this year are bubble zone laws, which have been expanding at a rapid speed across Canada. “Bubble zones” prohibit protests within defined geographic areas. Anyone who protests within the protected “bubble” can face penalties. There are now bubble zones around schools, libraries, community centres, hospitals, and places of worship. Calgary restricts protests based on the topics, and Liberal MP Marco Mendocino even proposed bubble zones to prevent protests in front of his office! Enough with the bubble zones.
Also gaining a spot on the naughty list is a proposal by special interlocutor Kimberly Murray to criminalize what she calls “residential school denialism.” Murray provides an impossibly broad definition of denialism: she says it includes minimizing the harm of residential schools, saying the death rates were typical for the period, saying that we don’t know the truth and that there is a conspiracy to exaggerate deaths, or that it wasn’t a genocide. Much remains unknown about unmarked burial sites, and creating a broad criminal sanction around this topic will not allow for a full investigation to take place.
A strange new rule in the Yukon city of Whitehorse also gets a spot on this year’s naughty list. We are sadly becoming accustomed to governments trying to censor our speech, but what if they try to censor our thoughts? That’s what is happening in Whitehorse. The northern city recently adopted a “civility policy” that bans signs and “microaggressions.”
Whitehorse has defined this absurd new term a “microaggression” as “comments or actions that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude towards a member of a marginalized group.” The policy also bans signs from city council meetings, and allows the presiding officer at a city council meeting to require a participant to remove or cover up any attire including buttons, non-religious headwear, pins, or other item” that the presiding officer decides is “disrespectful.” Banning obvious political speech and even unconscious thoughts is an unacceptable limit on the freedom of expression of citizens who want to participate in and observe city council meetings.
And it should come as no surprise that closing out this year’s naughty list is the censorship in the proposed Online Harms Act, parts 1 to 3 of Bill C-63. This law would create a new $200 million bureaucracy that can order massive fines against online platforms that don’t take down what they define as “harmful” content, including broadly defined hate speech. It would make Criminal Code amendments that could land people in jail for life for “hate motivated” offences, and it would allow individuals to bring civil claims through the human rights commission for online speech they think is hateful. Parts 1-3 of Bill C-63 will result in government censorship, and need to be scrapped (as well as added to the Naughty List).
But it may surprise readers to learn that Part 4 of the Online Harms Bill gets a spot on the nice list. Part 4 deals with mandatory reporting of child pornography online by Internet service providers. If the Liberals were actually serious about addressing the issue of child sexual abuse, they would have proposed part 4 alone and passed it months ago, instead of tying it to highly controversial, potentially unconstitutional, and censorious proposals in Parts 1-3 of the bill. Protecting children from abuse is important, and Part 4 should pass unanimously as a separate bill.
Also on the Nice List is the decision by the Federal Court in the Emergencies Act case. The court found that Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act against the 2022 Freedom Convoy was illegal and the freezing of bank accounts was unconstitutional.
This case, brought by the CCF, was the most important civil liberties case in a generation. But this incredible decision is now under threat. Within minutes of the 200-page decision’s release, the Trudeau government announced they were appealing. We are fighting to maintain the precedent set by Justice Mosley in the appeal, which will be heard in February of 2025.
Also on the nice list is a new plan by the Alberta government to fight censorship by professional regulators. Professional regulatory bodies are punishing their members for speaking out about political, social, cultural or even religious issues.
The most notorious case is Dr. Jordan Peterson being punished by the College of Psychologists for his social media posts. Regulators need to stick to their knitting and only deal with issues directly related to their mandate, not the opinions of their members on social issues. Alberta has announced plans to rein in this censorship by professional regulators is very nice, and should be emulated by other provinces.
As a national civil liberties charity in Canada, the CCF is deeply concerned by expanding state intrusions into our rights we saw in 2024. But we are looking forward to a new year where we can fight back against these intrusions. This will not occur because of governments’ own decisions to cede power. Rather, it is because of the tireless advocacy of all our supporters and the work that we and other organizations do to fight against government overreach.
A copy of the full Naughty and Nice list is available for free at theccf.ca/naughty-or-nice.
