A young man I know well is taking a Civics class in High School. For his ‘Civics’ project on how to improve our society, he had chosen to seek to raise awareness of the importance of Freedom of Speech. He chose to do this in two ways:
1. Following the example of FIRE, he considered setting up a ‘Free Speech Wall’ at his school. He asked for and received a meeting with his Principal where he proposed the idea. Due to School Board constraints (High School kids are still minors), this was deemed not possible.
However, his Principal was very supportive of his overall goal and they did agree that a ‘Freedom of Speech Page’ in the school’s newsletter would be a good idea: all students would be encouraged to write why Freedom of Speech is important to them. Since this high school has students from very diverse backgrounds, it might help to be inclusive for students who have come to Canada recently from more oppressive countries to be encouraged to share their stories of what life without freedom of speech was like and why we, in Canada, must protect this most core of our civil liberties.
He is still negotiating with the teacher in charge of the school newsletter, but he has volunteered to do the work on it and is hopeful that this will become a reality.
2. Drafting and collecting signatures on a petition to ask our legislators to strengthen the legal protections on Freedom of Speech. He had sent me the petition and the accompanying letter: I have taken the names out of it and turned it into a template that each and every one of us can use, collect signatures on the petition and present our own MPs with the demand to strengthen or Free Speech protections!
The accompanying letter:
Petition to strengthen freedom of speech in our laws
To: ___________________________
Member of Parliament of Canada
Dear _________________________:
In the most recent Throne Speech, our Government stressed its committment to the protection of our core rights and fundamental freedoms. The most fundamental of these is the Freedom of Speech, without which no other right or freedom can be defended. There have been many attacks on freedom of speech as of recent, and despite it being the most crucial human right, many people see it as an optional bonus, despite how important it is.
Our Canadian laws are not in line with other democratic countries, like Australia and the United States of America, and make it very easy for unscrupulous people to abuse our laws to chill legitimate political debate. This type abuse was happening under ‘Section 13’ of the Human Rights Code, and you, our lawmakers, have listened to us, the citizens, and repealed that section. Thank you for that!However, our other laws are now being similarly abused and I would like you, and all our lawmakers, to take steps to pass legislation to strengthen our freedom of speech!
Sincerely yours,
The petition:
This is a petition to my Member of Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, to ask that our law-makers pass federal laws strenghtening protection of the freedom unpon all our civil liberties depend, the Freedom of Speech, from attacks by those wishing to silence political discourse, so that Canadians within all of Canada would have better protections under the law for our most fundamental freedom.
SIGNATURE NAME (Please Print) City, Postal Code
1. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
2. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
3. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
4. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
5. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
6. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
7. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
8. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
9. ______________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
10. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
11. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
12. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
13. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
14. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
15. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
This is a petition to my Member of Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, to ask that our law-makers pass federal laws strenghtening protection of the most fundamental of all of our civil liberties, the Freedom of Speech, from attacks from all directions, so that Canadians within all of Canada would have equal protections under the law for our mos fundamental freedom.
SIGNATURE NAME (Please Print) City, Postal Code
16. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
17. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
18. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
19. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
20. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
21. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
22. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
23. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
24. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
25. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
26. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
27. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
28. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
29. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
30. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
This is a petition to my Member of Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, to ask that our law-makers pass federal laws strenghtening protection of the most fundamental of all of our civil liberties, the Freedom of Speech, from attacks from all directions, so that Canadians within all of Canada would have equal protections under the law for our mos fundamental freedom.
SIGNATURE NAME (Please Print) City, Postal Code
31. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
32. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
33. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
34. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
35. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
36. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
37. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
38. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
39. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
40. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
41. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
42. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
43. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
44. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
45. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
This is a petition to my Member of Parliament, Pierre Poilievre, to ask that our law-makers pass federal laws strenghtening protection of the most fundamental of all of our civil liberties, the Freedom of Speech, from attacks from all directions, so that Canadians within all of Canada would have equal protections under the law for our mos fundamental freedom.
SIGNATURE NAME (Please Print) City, Postal Code
46. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
47. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
48. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
49. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
50. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
51. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
52. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
53. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
54. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
55. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
56. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
57. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
58. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
59. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
60. _____________________________ __________________________________ _________________________________
If you would like to receive these files as an attachment to an email, where the formatting is properly done up, please, drop me a line in the comments and I will be happy to send it to you.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
October 24, 2013 at 08:46
I Live in one of those ridings thats going to be changed from one conservative riding to another andy ways can you send one to relsworth@hotmail.com.
October 24, 2013 at 08:54
Xanthippa:
This is truly a laudable undertaking! Bravo!
The letter is very well written, but there are two things in it that ought to be thought through more carefully…
First, freedom of speech is not the most fundamental right.
The right to life is the most fundamental right. By this I mean the right to exist independently as a feeling and thinking being.
Freedom of speech is certainly bound up with this, as part of the six irreducible core rights: life, liberty, property, privacy, self-defence, and self-expression. You either have all of them, or you may as well have none of them.
And second, freedom of speech is not the right without which no other right can be defended.
The right to self-defence, with its corollary, the right to bear arms, plays that role.
Without the right to bear arms, the right to free speech becomes vacuous. If people lack the ability to back up their free speech with physical force, when necessary, then their free speech will be ignored.
Weapons will get you through times of no free speech much better than free speech will get you through times of no weapons.
But I’ll bet this young man you know isn’t allowed to say that at school.
So perhaps he should say rather that freedom of speech is of such vital importance to the stability of civil society because its absence makes meaningful political discourse impossible and leaves us with no recourse other than physical force in defence of our inalienable individual rights.
October 24, 2013 at 16:25
It sounds like this young man understands the importance of being free to speak one’s mind and I hope he receives plenty of encouragement and support. Since this is a project for a Civics class, a suggestion that I might make to him, would be to have two petitions, the second one addressed to his MLA – or MPP, I suppose you would say in Ontario. The wording need not be very different, just adjusted so as to be appropriate for the provincial government. Freedom of speech needs stronger protections at both levels of government. The bulk of the problem is probably at the provincial level actually. The federal government has already abolished the speech restrictions in the Canadian Human Rights Act, the provinces now need to follow suit. Defamation law, which due to the presumption of guilt is a major stifler of freedom of speech, is provincial law. The most important battle at the federal level right now would probably be a constitutional one that would require the cooperation of the provincial assemblies – the closing of the loopholes in the Charter’s protection of freedom of speech and other basic liberties.
October 24, 2013 at 20:58
As a matter of fact, he has a draft of a MPP one as well – specifically calling for the reform of the libel laws (a provincial responsibility) to put the burden of proof on the plaintiff, not the defense and thus strengthen the freedom of speech protections.
October 26, 2013 at 02:25
It sounds like he knows what he is doing then. I wish him success in this project and hope that he will inspire many others to do the same.