What Bills C-8 and C-9 mean for your freedom of expression
A panel discussion held by the Free Speech Union of Canada (FSU) on November 4, 2025, with FSU directors Prof. Bruce Pardy, Lisa Bildy, and Hannah Park Roche.
On the table: Bill C-9 and its potential to create a “thought police” scenario, where citizens mired in a legal minefield run the risk of severe consequences for what used to be considered civil liberties and the fabric of Canadian democracy. At stake is our freedom to think, say, and believe as we choose—yes, even the right to hate.
Also on the table: Bill C-8, which would grant the government sweeping powers to cut off telecommunications services to individuals deemed a “threat” without the need for any criminal offense. We only need consider the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa to fathom the possibilities of how this legislation could be weaponized.
The primary focus concerns Bill C-9 and its capacity to unleash a chilling wave of censorship that criminalizes emotions rather than actions. Prof. Pardy warns this could pave the way for a two-tier justice system, where individuals are prosecuted not for their deeds but for their thoughts, echoing the oppressive tactics of authoritarian regimes. He provides the following example of the strange(r) land we may soon live in:
“Let’s say you have somebody committing an assault. They commit it for hate. They commit it for greed. They commit it because they don’t care. Which of those two? Which of those three things is worse? If you assault somebody randomly on the street because you’re a psychopath and don’t care, is that better or worse than if you attack somebody because you hate them? For my money, that’s irrelevant. The crime is in the violence.”
That logic is absent in the context of Bills C-8 and C-9, which lack the legal certainty critical to the rule of law; this erosion of certainty is already long evident in Canada and would be further jeopardized by these proposed legislations. Canada need only look to the U.K. for what’s in store: arrests daily for merely offensive comments and a place on the register for “non-crime hate incidents” ...
Follow the discussion as the panel examines the ramifications of these bills on debate, unpopular opinion, faith, symbols, identifiable groups, protest actions, and (so much) more.
