A View of Free Speech in 1997

Doug Christie wrote the following foreward in 1997 to the second edition of his booklet Free Speech Is the Issue! which reproduced his arguments before the Supreme Court of Canada in the Keegstra case:

It is now 1997, December, about eight years after my speech in the Keegstra case to the Supreme Court of Canada. I said on page 8 of this booklet:

"It will legitimize many other laws. ... I do not need to worry about that, but it is an improper attempt to legitimaze these laws." There I was attempting to describe the unanimity with which the Attorneys-General of the various provinces all agreed in arguing for the "hate" laws.

It is now clear after the passage of the last eight years that the people really don't care. The laws have become more severe. The prosecutions of innocent people have become more numerous.

Malcolm Ross has been fired from his job for merely expressing his own religious views off the job, by a one-man human rights tribunal appointed by the New Brunswick government. Paul Fromm has been fired for speaking at a free speech conference in Vancouver and at a funeral memorial in Urbana, Illinois, both on his own time.

The future seems very unstable and unclear.

The future for freedom of speech is more restricted as the Liberty Net case in Ottawa was lost before the Supreme Court. The internet case of Ernst Zundel is before a Canadian Human Rights tribunal. Both the latter two cases involve the action of Canadians in other countries, like the United State, where Ernst Zundel's website is located and where the Liberty Net's phone message was transferred.

Doug Collins' case has gone before the one person B.C. Human Rights Tribunal consisting of Nitya Iyer (a lawyer for the Yukon Status of Women in a previous case) and, after $203,000 in legal fees, he was found not guilty but the B.C. Human Rights law (section 7.1) which allows a tribunal to control publications in newspapers, still stands.

[In 1999, Doug Collins was found guilty of a discriminatory practice under the same law for four columns, including the one originally found not to offend. He was fined $2,000. Mr. Collins is now seeking judicial review of the constitutionality of this law.]

The chill remains. The power of the state grows.

The individual diminishes and most people in Canada have given up on freedom as long as it doesn't affect them.

The bites out of the freedom apple have taken even the core.

This time is a dark hour for freedom.

We have allowed ourselves to be imprisoned and robbed of our freedom by a government which is run by questionable men.

For my part, I believe that we must remain calm, rational and tolerant. We must write rational and persuasive letters to newspapers. We must give money, time, energy and prayers to those who are threatened and persecuted for their beliefs. The people need to be awakened and reformed into articulate speakers for freedom.

Of course, the Supreme Court of Canada had rejected the arguments you are about to read. They rejected them four to three. The majority even said that truth is not a defence worth recognizing, if hatred is promoted. The same three who sided with me in the first appeal sided against me in the second when Mr. Keegstra was convicted a second time.

The cases since have been even worse for free speech.

The future of those who stand on these issues can improve only if people read or are better informed, active and more articulate. We must circulate this booklet and make people aware of what is really happening.

The suppression of thought, belief and opinion which is so ominous in our time can only be reversed by self-sacrificing efforts of each of us to restore our freedoms by peaceful means. We must do this because where freedom is lost irrevocably, it cannot be recovered by peaceful means.

The governments of most provinces, the federal government, the various pressure groups all agree. They want more power to suppress speech they don't like.

They push and push and push, until freedom is squeezed into a tiny place where it is surrounded and hemmed in, where people can only talk to each other in a whisper and even then, they suspect their neighbours might turn on them and destroy them by informing.

They will be pushed until they are afraid to talk in their sleep or until they push back. Then and only then will freedom return as only then will it have many worthy champions. Dear reader, the challenge is yours.

Douglas H. Christie
Victoria, B.C.
December 30, 1997