Which party leaders care about free speech?

The three major federal parties have now released their full platforms, with varying levels of detail. An issue for many Canadians is protections for freedom of speech. I’ve written about how we are at an inflection point as a society, and how many Western democracies are slipping into censorship. Now is the time for Canada to set itself apart as a nation where robust debate is protected.

But comparing the platforms reveals dramatically different approaches between the three parties. Not only do the platforms make very different commitments – the commitments also provide significant insight into how the party leaders think about this fundamental freedom: do they see free expression foundational to democracy, or a threat to it?

The Canadian Constitution Foundation is a non-partisan charity, and this review of the platforms is not intended to tell you how to vote. I merely want to take the time to go through these lengthy documents for the issue that the CCF works on, and provide this information to Canadians who may not have time to comb through the platforms. I encourage everyone to read the platforms themselves.

The NDP

The NDP position is clear from their platform; speech is dangerous and should be curtailed. There are examples of this thinking throughout the platform. While the platform asserts that an NDP government would “ensure that Charter rights are protected”, the immediate next paragraph states that their government would expand support doe the CBC and local journalism, which are “critical during this time of misinformation, disinformation, and U.S. threats”.

It is quite obvious that funding CBC is not constitutionally required for the preservation of a free press or free speech. The CBC has their own perspective. And I think the massive amounts of taxpayer money the CBC receives actually undermines the ability of other media outlets to compete, even if they do better work. I’m also concerned that there is just something inherent in being a state funded media outlet that will make that outlet less critical of the government – or at least create the perception that it will be less critical.

The NDP platform also asserts that the CBC is essential to address misinformation and disinformation. There is no truth to this. Like every media outlet, the legacy media engages in slanted and inaccurate reporting. For example, in the post debate reporting, CBC anchor Rosemary Barton reacted to a scrum question by a Rebel News journalist Drea Humphrey about unmarked graves at residential schools. The Rebel journalist’s question was directed to NDP leader Jagmeet Singh. Her question was about the targeting of Christian churches following claims of remains of indigenous children were found at the sites of residential in 2021. Specifically, Humphrey said “these claims have been disproved by bands that excavated, and remain unproved by hands that have not.” Mr. Singh’s position for a long to has been to refuse to answer questions from Rebel News, and refused to answer this one. But CBC anchor Rosemary Barton reacted to it in a live broadcast by saying Humphrey’s question is “woven with some truth and some things that weren’t true. Yes, there have been burnings of Christian and Catholic churches, and yes there have been remains of indingenous children found throughout the country.”

The next day, the CBC was forced to issue a correction to this statement, and that no “remains” have been found. On it’s website, the CBC wrote:

On April 16, during a live broadcast following the French-language federal election leaders' debate on CBC News Network, chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton, said "Yes, there have been remains of Indigenous children found in various places across the country …" As CBC News has reported on multiple occasions, what several Indigenous communities across Canada have discovered on the sites of some former residential schools are potential burial sites or unmarked graves.

The CBC and legacy media make mistakes just like every media outlet, and have a perspective that can influence their reporting, as it did in this instance. There is nothing about the existence of the CBC that is required to preserve free press and free speech, and indeed many Canadians might see this as the CBC spreading “misinformation”. The NDP’s definition of the term “misinformation” is undoubtedly broad, but will ultimately be selective. I have no doubt that the characterization of the Rebel question or the CBC response as “misinformation” will depend on the political priors of the person doing the characterizing. But more dangerously, when the government defines these terms, you know they will define them in a way that captures the speech of their opponents. 

Another part of the the NDP platform that could touch on free expression is their ambiguous commitment to “take new steps to protect diversity in Canada, including supporting 2SLGBTQIA+ communities who are increasingly subjected to hate and violence.”

It’s unclear what the NDP platform is promising here. Are they proposing new criminal laws, or are they proposing a study? Are they worried about violence, which is not protected speech, or are they concerned about people who say trans women should not compete in women’s sports or that Israel’s war on Hamas is justified?

The NDP platform also promises $5,000 federal rebates for new electric vehicles, with $10,000 in rebates for Canadian made electric vehicles. Of course, this is not a speech issue, but the next part of the commitment is concerning. The NDP platform commits that no rebates will be available for “companies like Tesla that undermine Canada’s national interest and economic security”.

This appears to be targeting of one specific company based on the political viewpoint of the CEO of that company, Elon Musk. Of course there is no obligation to give rebates to any electric vehicle company, but this statement reveals a disturbing mindset. It is dangerous to get into banning or targeting specific companies them because the (relatively mainstream) political viewpoints of the leaders of those companies. On objective measures, Tesla is a great electric vehicle company, whatever you think of DOGE. As for whether or not Tesla undermines Canada’s national interest or economic security, the claim is very unclear. It’s unclear how Tesla would undermine Canada’s economic interests any more than another American made vehicle manufacturer. If the concern is Musk’s relationship with the Trump administration, which I view as political targeting, the truth is that Musk has actually opposed the sweeping tariffs of the Trump administration. Even if there is nothing directly unconstitutional about targeting Tesla this way, it reveals a disturbing way of thinking and raises concerns that an NDP government may want to apply this approach to other political opponents.

The NDP platform also commits to stopping “greenwashing”, which could have some free speech implications. The platform doesn’t outline exactly what an NDP government would do, but there are already free expression issues with existing “greenwashing” legislation. The Liberals introduced “anti-greenwashing” amendments to the Competition Act that aim to curb misleading environmental claims, but some businesses argue they infringe on the right to free speech. These  businesses have launched a constitutional challenge, arguing that the anti-greenwashing provisions infringe on their freedom of expression guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. They contend that these provisions stifle debate on environmental issues and limit their ability to communicate about their products and service .

The NDP platform also says they will introduce legislation to stop “residential school denialism.” Now I’ve written about this issue, and I have a few videos about it. The proposal is likely unconstitutional. The NDP had previously brought a private members bill to “create an offence of wilfully promoting hatred against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada through statements communicated other than in private conversation.”

What exactly would “denying” mean? The special interlocutor on unmarked graves, Kim Murray, provides an impossibly broad definition of denialism, including 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, and that it wasn’t a genocide. First, criminalizing “minimizing harm” would essentially be to criminalize a value judgment. Second, the claim that the residential school system was an act of genocide remains a highly fraught issue

To be clear, it is foolishness to try to minimize the harm many Indigenous children and families suffered at and because of residential schools. 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.

But perhaps worst of all, the NDP platform also promises “concrete action to protect Canada from misinformation and disinformation – whether it comes from foreign actors, bad-faith influencers, or unregulated ‘media’ platforms. That includes supporting digital literacy, addressing online hate and discrimination, and holding those who spread false and harmful content accountable.”

What does the NDP mean by “regulated media”? They do not seem to mean regulating media in the sense of the CRTC regulation of radio and broadcast media. It is almost certain that the NDP means new disruptive media platform like Juno News (formerly True North), or YouTube channels, large Facebook pages, influencers on TikTok and Instagram. Essentially, the NDP appears to be concerned with media outside “state-sanction” media, which is troubling for many reasons. The government must not be in the position of regulating the existence of media that challenges them. Moreover, the proposal essentially seeks to put the government in the role of acting as the arbiter of truth, and to hold those who spread false content accountable. It is often the government who is the greatest purveyor of false information. We all saw how that worked out during the pandemic. This is a massive censorship proposal.

Liberal Platform

The Liberal platform says a lot less about free expression than both the NDP and the Conservative platforms, but what it does say is concerning.

First, there is a section of their platform called “party of the charter, party of equal rights”. This section starts by saying “the Liberal party is the party of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms”, because the Charter was introduced by a Liberal government. Through the Charter, Canada, “enshrined rights to freedom of expression, freedom of the press, the right to vote in free and fair elections, the equal status of both English and French, equality under the law and freedom from discrimination […]”

First of all, many of these rights pre-dated the Charter. We were not granted them suddenly in 1982 by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Second, it’s objectionable to make the Charter, or any part of our constitution, a partisan issue. Canada’s constitution, including the Charter, belongs to all Canadians and benefits all Canadians. To characterize one political party as the party of the Charter is deeply divisive and unhelpful. If the Liberals are the party of the Charter, are the conservatives the party of confederation? No one wins with this approach.

On the Liberal platform commitments on free expression. There isn’t much.

The platform just says that a Mark Carney government would “stand up for the Charter, protecting the values it was founded on, which are under threat, and ensuring the protection of our most vulnerable people.” I agree many of our fundamental rights are under threat. The Liberal government enacted or proposed many pieces of legislation that violated these rights. They took executive action that violated those rights.

Just citing work that we at the CCF were directly involved in, the government illegally invoked the Emergencies Act and enacted regulations in violation of the Charter right to free expression, as per the Federal Court ruling by Justice Mosley. The federal Liberal government made unconstitutional amendments to the Canada Elections Act, which we at the CCF had struck down. The federal Liberals proposed a massive piece of censorship legislation, Bill C-63, that would put people under house arrest for future speech crimes. Fortunately, that legislation never passed, but there is good reason to be concerned that a Liberal Mark Carney government would bring it back. The federal Liberals also passed the Online News Act and the Digital Streaming Act, which undermine free expression and the free press. Clearly, Charter rights are under attack. They have been under attack for nearly a decade by the Federal Liberal government.

Another terrible proposal in the Liberal platform is to expand the Court Challenges Program. Under this bizarre program, taxpayer money is given to progressive activists to sue the government, or to holster the government's own positions in litigation. This program needs to be killed, not expanded. I've written about the problems with this program in The Line.

The program is fundamentally misguided. The government should not fund lawsuits against its own laws with taxpayer money. This should be obvious. Additionally, funding for specific cases under the program will be inherently and inevitably politically skewed by the partisanship of the government in power. There is also no transparency about the political or partisan tilt of whose cases do or don’t get funding. To figure out who was funded requires a significant amount of digging, which was recently done by two scholars for the MacDonald Laurier Institute. MLI published a report that found that the Court Challenges Program has an overwhelming progressive bias, with 96 per cent of the program's “example cases” funding progressive activism. Examples of taxpayer funded litigation from the program include:

• Requesting additional refugee protection for two individuals after they had been found likely “to have committed crimes against humanity” while part of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe National Army

• Funding interventions in support of federal legislation, including interventions defending the federal carbon tax and federal campaign finance restrictions

• Funding cases that would involve a considerable expansion of government spending, including health funding for irregular migrants, expanded tax credits, and more generous damage claims.

  
  

The report could not identify a single example of the Court Challenges Program funding a case that could be tied to anything approximating a conservative rights claim.

The other commitment in the Liberal platform that could undermine free expression is the promise to “introduce legislation to make it a criminal offence to intentionally and wilfully obstruct access to any place of worship, schools, and community centres. And make it a criminal offence to intentionally and wilfully intimidate or threaten those attending services at these locations.”

This is likely motivated, at least in part, as a response to the disturbing images we have seen recently of pro-Palestinian protesters targeting Jewish neighbourhoods and synagogues to protest Israel’s war on Hamas. This behaviour is deplorable. But it is socially useful to know that there are antisemites in this movement. Prohibiting protests near sites of worship would also prevent protests from within that faith community. For example, if a controversial person is invited to speak at a place of worship, members of that faith community may want to voice their disagreement. A law like the one being proposed here would silence those voices. The proposal is also to limit protests near schools and community centres, which would capture labour strikes at those locations. While there is no right to blockade, the way these "bubble zone" laws are usually written ends up restricting a significant amount of protest activity that doesn't involve blockades.

The broader problem with these types of “bubble zone” laws, which we have seen emerging across Canada, is that it often gets the government involved in determining what topics of protest are permissible and which are not. The right to free expression is content neutral. When the government decides what you can protest and what you cannot, you no longer have a right to protest at all.

Conservative Platform

The Conservative platform has a number of points about freedom of speech and expression. For example, the platform commits to new laws for AI generated deepfakes of intimate images, modernized laws against online harassment, and stronger child protection online. On this promise. the platform adds  “unlike the Liberals, we will protect children and vulnerable people online without infringing on the civil liberties of law-abiding Canadians.”

While this does not provide much detail, it is an obvious reference to the Liberals failed Online Harms Act, Bill C63. The Conservatives criticised that bill for the expansion of the criminal law to impose potential life sentences for “offences motivated by hatred”, the disturbing creation of peace bonds for speech crimes (which could have put people under house arrest for things they had not even said, but might), and for the return of the flawed civil remedy for hate in human rights legislation, which had been repealed after it was abused to target the clergy and media. The Conservatives had long said that they agreed with proposals in C63 to toughen penalties for child sexual abuse, but that the bill captured the speech of law abiding Canadians and in other cases went too far. I have written the same thing for the National Post.

The CPC platform also says it will “protect places of worship and stop antisemitic riots with tougher sentences for religious property mischief and penalties for masked rioters.” This promise is a little bit unclear because it doesn’t look like its promising anything new, other than tougher penalties. In Canada, if a criminal offence is proven to be motivated by hate, bias, or prejudice, the court must consider it as an aggravating factor when determining the sentence. This means the sentence may be increased beyond what would be imposed for the same offence if it wasn't hate-motivated. The Criminal Code explicitly states that judges must consider this principle when sentencing.

There is also a specific offence, now in subsections 430(4.1) of the Criminal Code, of mischief to property that is primarily used for a religious purpose, or certain other kinds of property (such as educational institutions or community centres) that are primarily used by an identifiable group, where the mischief is committed out of bias, prejudice, or hatred against an identifiable group. This offense already has a punishment up to 10 years. Are the Conservatives proposing making it more? This is a serious offence and worthy of punishment, but are they proposing making that punishment more? Are they proposing a mandatory minimum for it? The platform is unclear.

The other proposal here is to impose penalties for “masked rioters”. Again, this is already a criminal offence and has been since 2013, when it was proposed as a private members bill by Conservative MP Blake Richards and passed by Parliament (by the way, a riot is defined as an unlawful assembly that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously.)

I don’t think these laws are constitutionally a problem. Just, they already exist.

There’s also something that makes me somewhat uncomfortable about this part of the platform. It says this is to “stop antisemitic riots”. As far as I know, there have not been antisemitic riots in Canada. We’ve certainly seen antisemitism, and we’ve seen a lot of protests with antisemitism. Some people at these protests, which are generally anti-Israel, or pro-Palestinian protests, have been charged with hate crimes. But I don’t think there have been antisemitic riots (there is a very famous case of an antisemitic riot in Toronto at the Christie Pits park in 1933. We have not seen anything similar). The pro-Palestinian protests we see in Toronto can involve small skirmishes, and hateful words, and I think there are many antisemitic people who go to these events. But they’re not riots.

The next relevant part of the CPC platform is a commitment to support faith and minority communities, who the Conservatives say need to be protected from “rising hate and extremism”. To do this, the platform says they will “create an anti-hate crime task force”. There is nothing inherently problematic about this proposal. Canada’s criminal code includes offenses related to hate speech. This distinguishes us from the United States, where there are no criminal prohibitions on hate speech. These Canadian prohibitions have been upheld by the Supreme Court in some famous cases. A “task force” doesn’t mean a lot – we just would want to ensure whatever proposals this “task force” comes up with don’t unduly restrict speech.

The Conservative platform also says to protect minority groups the will direct CSIS to implement threat reduction measures – good. I actually think if people are spewing pro-terrorist propaganda there is good reason for CSIS to be concerned.

What’s especially interesting is that the Conservatives have a specific part of their platform dedicated to free speech. It starts by quoting Wilfred Laurier, who said “Canada is free and freedom is its nationality,” which is an excellent quote. The platform says freedom of speech has been threatened, history erased, and voices silenced by censorship laws. The platform commits to restoring free speech, protecting personal liberties, and honouring our shared story, culture and history.

The platform says it will support media freedom by introducing a freedom of speech act to repeal liberal censorship laws and restoring Canadian news on meta and other platforms. This is a direct reference to the digital streaming act – which Poilievre has repeatedly committed to repealing. We at the CCF have also been critical of this legislation for the impact it has had on the availability of news information.

The Conservative platform then it goes on to say a Pierre Poilievre government will defund the CBC, and give funding to local journalism and indigenous language media. This is diametrically opposed to what the NDP have committed to. They have committed to increasing CBC funding, and see this as a speech issue. It obviously is not – CBC has a perspective. So do these other media outlets that the Conservatives say they will fund. Personally, I would like to get the government out of subsidizing and funding media generally, and funding none of it is required to maintain a free and independent press. It’s certainly better if we have a diverse and vibrant press, but a tug of war over who gets funded actually undermines all of that. Better to leave the government out of funding media.

The Conservative platform also commits to protecting free speech on campus – by requiring universities to enforce the section 2 Charter guarantee to free expression as a condition to federal funding. This is good. It is well known that universities are places where ironically, freedom of expression and free inquiry are stifled. A university without a commitment to freedom of expression isn’t a very good university. And many universities have fallen short – and become places where people are afraid to express different or unpopular viewpoints, that often turn out later to be correct, because of the oppressive and chilling speech environment on campus. This applies to students and to faculty. The situation has gotten so bad that we  at the CCF are helping a group of professors and a former student at the University of British Columbia sue that university over academic freedom. So yes, I think doing something to protect free speech on campus is a very good idea.

So those are the platforms, and what they say about free speech. Let me know what resonates with you. And of course there are many more issues besides free speech in this campaign. Leave a comment below and let me know what your priority in this election is. And don’t forget to vote on April 28!

You can read the platforms yourself here: NDP: https://www.ndp.ca/campaign-commitments

Liberals: https://liberal.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/292/2025/04/Canada-Strong.pdf

Conservatives: https://www.conservative.ca/change/