Today the Free Speech Union of Canada officially launched its website fsucanada.ca, and it is my distinct honour (forcing Substack to use Canadian spelling here) to be its inaugural Chairman of the Board.
As any of you who read me regularly know, free speech is an issue of great importance for me, and I am essentially a free speech absolutist. It also became clear to me in the past year or so how tenuous this right currently is in Canada. For example, the current Government tabled an Online Hate Bill that I have written about, that is chilling in its intent. If this bill were to become law, if someone suspects you are likely to engage in any form of speech they might interpret as hate speech online, and if they complain, the Government would have the right, essentially, to shut down your social media access.
When I have told others about this, they always bring up Minority Report, the Tom Cruise science fiction film in which criminals are apprehended before they commit crimes because technology that foretells the future labels them as future offenders. But the Online Hate Bill is in many ways worse. First, what people may be shut down for, in a reasonable democracy, should not be considered a crime. Second, to give a mere unsubstantiated and perhaps even anonymous accusation this kind of legal weight is ridiculous.
This proposed legislation is just one of the more egregious examples of efforts to restrict speech, including politically incorrect speech, that some may find offensive. So, when Toby Young contacted a group of us last year to explore whether we might consider forming a Free Speech Union in Canada to partner with the Free Speech Unions in UK, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, I was quite eager to become involved.
The non-partisan, non-profit membership organisation dedicated to the defence of free speech in Canada. It will engage in numerous activities. It will lobby to defeat anti-free speech legislation like the Online Hate Bill, and will actively promote public events and discussions designed to defend free speech. It will provide resources that members and others can use to understand their free speech rights and the potential impact of free speech violations, and it will work to help defend free speech rights of members, including in some cases helping individuals with possible legal battles, including providing legal representation.
Funds for FSU Canada will come from donations and membership dues. I long for the day when the organisation will become unnecessary and irrelevant. But until then, this new beginning, with a great board, working with Executive Director Lisa Bildy, marks an important first step to fight the dangerous erosion of one of the most important rights that citizens in a democracy should have.
Lawrence M. Krauss is a theoretical physicist, the President of the Origins Project Foundation, and the author, most recently of The Edge of Knowledge: Unsolved Mysteries of the Cosmos. He serves as the Chairman of Free Speech Union of Canada. He blogs at Critical Mass on Substack.
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