CFE Blog

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!”

Last month, after nearly a decade, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Canada’s largest, updated its policy on student dress.

If you care about corporations monetizing data generated by people’s desire to communicate, you may have read worrying stories featuring some of the Google octopus of companies, including Sidewalk Labs, whose ‘smart city’ proposals for Toronto’s waterfront have drawn much critical attention in this blog and elsewhere.

Almost 12 years ago complaints were made under the Canada Human Rights Act [CHRA] and the BC Human Rights Code [BCHRC] against Maclean’s Magazine following its publication of an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone. The substance of the complaints was that in publishing this material (on-line and in and print) Maclean’shad exposed Muslims to hatred and contempt contrary to s. 13 of the CHRA and s. 7 of the BC Code.   

In February 2019, public school students of the United States marked a major victory. Fifty years ago, the decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Districtexonerated one middle school and two high school students who had been forbidden to wear black arm bands to school to protest the war in Vietnam.

Your Ward News (YWN) is a publication of unremitting offensiveness – in truth it is little more than a senseless and grotesque cartoon. Yet that is largely beside the point under the Charter. Though it took time and a concerted campaign by those offended by YWN’s existence, the law’s force was eventually brought to bear on its publishers.