The Cārvāka Podcast

Online Harms Act Bill C - 63

In this podcast, Kushal speaks with Canadian journalist Jonathan Kay about Bill C-63, proposed by the Justin Trudeau government in Canada. It is called the "Online Harms Act." In Jonathan's words, it is an astounding affront to civil liberties.

Follow Jonathan: Twitter: @jonkay Bill Copy: https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/C-63/first-reading

#JustinTrudeau #FreeSpeech #BillC63

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Duration:: 59m
Broadcast on:: 03 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

I'm going to talk about a bill that has been proposed in Canada by the current government of the Liberal Party, along with support from the NDP from outside, and this is called the "Online", I want to get the name, the name is so weird, it's called the "Online Harbs Act" or Bill C63. I came to know about this bill when John had tweeted about it, and for those who don't know, Jonathan Kay is a famous Canadian journalist, one of my favourite journalists in Canada, and someone who I consider an ally and a friend in Canada, John, thanks for coming, welcome. You're having me on, I appreciate it. Yeah, John, every time I try to think about it, things can't get worse in Canada, you have to come up with something in your report and say, "Ah, things can get worse from here", so let's assume John that nobody who listens to this actually understands the word of what the Online Harms Act of Bill C63 is, and you take your time and explain it from scratch for people. Sure, well the Online Harms Act kind of has a lot of things in it, and there are actually some things in it that maybe a lot of people would find sensible, so it's, I'm sure a lot of countries do this, where they take a lot of different kinds of legislation and they lump it into one bill, to make it more difficult for their political opponents to vote against it or not support it, because then they could say, "Aha, you're an opponent of our sunshine and apple pie provision in this law." And then the opposition has to say, "No, no, we love the sunshine and apple pie provision, what we hate is this other thing", and that's kind of what the Liberals have done, so there are provisions in this bill that would increase the severity of penalties against people who like pornography and child porn and all sorts of online material that we all agree is risky at least, people maybe differ on the extent to which a lot of stuff should be censored, but reasonable people can disagree about that kind of stuff, and then on top of that they added some completely outrageous stuff, for instance, letting human rights tribunals and government officials essentially muzzle people even before they have spoken and saying, "We believe that you are about to say hate speech, so they can be dragged in front of a tribunal and things like ankle bracelets and tracking devices, for some reason the law says that judges can say, "Well, you can't use drugs or alcohol during this period", essentially it's an injunction preventing people from opening their mouths if somebody comes forward and says, "I fear that this person is going to say something hateful", and then there's also an increase in the criminal penalties for hate speech, so Canada already has a law against hate speech, but it's very rarely applied, and the standard is quite high, I think it's section 319 of the criminal code, and that's been on the books for decades, I think maybe it's been enforced maybe half a dozen times, and usually it's against people who say stuff that's really horrendous, you know, promoting the extermination of minorities and stuff like that, or like real Nazi propaganda, however this online harms act would extend that insofar as you can now get life in prison for hate speech, and it looks like hate speech might be more broadly defined than in the past, so yeah, you can now under this bill should it become law, opening your mouth and saying something horrendous could lend you in jail for the rest of your life, which as a lot of people have noted is pretty crazy because typically like murderers and rapists in Canada don't go to jail for the rest of their life, in some notorious cases they've been given a slap on the wrist, so there's been a lot of negative attention around this bill. So you know what I found very interesting about this John was the very definition of harm as they're trying to define harm, I found it very, very disturbing, a bit suffered, so I'm assuming this is the right one, right Bill C63, this is the first reading, and under the interpretation and application, this is so weird what they say, content that foreman's hatred means content that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination within the meaning of Canadian Human Rights Act, and that given the context in which it is communicated is likely to form a detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of such prohibited ground. Now let me connect this with something that has recently been passed by the TDSB around Palestine, and a lot of Jewish groups in Canada, I was following the news, were protesting against this, where basically they have now created a subcategory which is called anti-Palestine hatred, created a new category, now you keep creating these subgroups and then you have these human rights tribunals, whether it's the Ontario Human Rights Commission, whether they're at school districts like TDSB or pre-school board, and they keep creating these imaginary group sets, and then you have such laws, do you know why I get scared John, because I actually have all these laws in India, right? So you mentioned the TDSB that's Toronto District School Board, right, which is I believe Canada's largest school board, yeah, and you know as this example shows, you're making policy on the basis of what's fashionable, so if it's politically fashionable to support a certain geopolitical cause, then you say aha, well we're going to carve out this special provision that says you can't say bad things about Palestinians. One thing I always try and emphasize when I have this conversation is that when you create policies and laws like this, you're creating a tool that your political opponents can use, so for instance in Canada as in other places, you've got people who are Palestinian supporters, they support Palestinian rights, and they shout things like from the river to the sea, which the meaning of that is contested but a lot of people, including a lot of Jewish people, would say well what you're advocating is a Jewish-free region where all the Jews have either been killed or expelled from the area that is now Israel. A lot of people interpret that as a kind of form of genocidal hate speech and I try and tell people, including my progressive friends, like if a law like this passes, Justin Trudeau is not going to be in power forever, and maybe a year or two years from now there's going to be a conservative government and there's going to be a conservative attorney general because under this online's harms act, the attorney general has a lot of power to determine what kind of prosecutions or cases go forward, and do you want a government that is prosecuting Palestinian rights activists for what Zionists interpret as genocidal hate speech, you know, so some 19-year-old undergraduate student gets up on a soapbox and says from the river to the sea, and do you want the government to have that power to take that person and throw them in jail for the rest of their life, which is literally what this law would theoretically mandate because the maximum penalty for genocidal hate speech and that phrase that I just said could be interpreted in some quarters as genocidal hate speech, that person could be thrown in jail for the rest of their life, so sometimes the people who put in place these policies and laws, there's a kind of fantasy that their side will be in power forever, and they like the idea that they can just shut up their opponents and threaten them with jail, but I try and remind them, like, try and extend your event horizon beyond the next 20 minutes, think about how this law will be applied in a year or two years or five years, so never give the government powers that you would not want your worst enemy to have, right? It's something I try and warn people about. I couldn't agree more with you, because I am in a way famous or infamous, I don't know for being an absolutist when it comes to free speech in India, and I keep telling people that if we don't fight for freedom of expression and free speech in India, which is, there is a shortage of freedom of expression in speech in India, are we better than Pakistan or Bangladesh? Well, is that our competition? Pakistan or Bangladesh is India's competition now that we are going to compete with that, and what I see in Canada, I don't know if you remember this last time when we met, I had told you I see all the patterns of Indian laws or Indian looking laws when it comes to speech creeping into Canada, and all these laws have been on the statute books in India for a while. For example, there is something which is in Indian legal parlance, which is called 153A, section 153A basically says, and I want to read this for you, the act of promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place or birth, residence, language, caste, community or any group, acts prejudicial to maintenance of how many between groups or caste or communities if the acts disturb public tranquility, acts causing fear or alarm or a feeling of insecurity among members of any religious, racial, language or regional group or caste or community by the use of criminal force or violence against them. We read the online harms act just now. I read you an Indian version. Do you see the similarities, the eerie similarities between both of them? Well, I think the Indian one, if possible, is worse. So, the words that jumped out at me were harmony, tranquility and insecurity. How do you define them? Well, also, is there a single person in either India or Canada who would say to somebody who's doing a survey says, would you say that you exist in a state of harmony and tranquility without any insecurity whatsoever about your political opponents, ethnic opponents, you know, people who don't share your religion? Like, what percentage of people would even answer yes to that question? Especially in the age of the internet, a lack of harmony and a lack of tranquility and an existence of collective insecurity among different groups is kind of par for the course. Like when you open up Twitter or Facebook or whatnot, like, you know, the algorithms are calculated to show you things that make you feel insecure and disturb your tranquility or harmony. Look, maybe there's 17, you know, gurus living without the internet who exist in a state of harmony and tranquility. But for the majority of people, like, that's not the case. So any government could say, aha, look, you know, the populace is existing in a state that lacks harmony and lacks tranquility. Fortunately, we have Law 153A, which will allow us to go. Of course, these things are always applied selectively. And so, you know, no one listening to this is going to get a gold star on their report card for figuring out which groups disturb the harmony and tranquility in, you know, Modi's India or in Justin Trudeau's Canada or in Donald Trump's America, you know, in November. Like, again, never give your worst, never give the government powers that you wouldn't want them to have if the government flips. So yeah, this stuff is very disturbing. Yeah, I mean, disturbing the purposes of the act, the bills, C63, I'm just laughing at some of the things, promote the online safety of persons in Canada. It can't get more vague. It's also nice, all these things that these people who draft these laws, they say, Oh, we care for you, you, you, but there's a grain of truth to it. Like, there's a grain of truth. So I mean, part of that language is curated to appeal to, I would say, conserve, like to parents, like what parents of say a 10 year old or 12 year old isn't concerned about their kid having an unsafe experience with a stranger on the internet. You know, identity theft, fishing, scams, revenge porn, like there's, there's all kinds of terrible things, especially as kids get older into their late teens. And, you know, like, I don't have to recite the long list of stories that have involved people getting in trouble on through online harms, like it's online harms do exist. However, you tap into legitimate fears of these kinds of phenomena in order to extend the government's power to cover what a lot of people would say is political speech. Like there's a big difference between extortion and revenge porn and child porn on one hand, which you know, things that we, I think we all agree that like these are problems to take seriously. And then given the government, you know, based on fears about legitimate fears about that, creating an incredibly vague law that allows the government to throw people in jail for the rest of their life for chanting things like from the river to the sea. Like I, I have a huge problem with that. And I absolutely don't trust Justin Trudeau or Pierre Puyevre, who's, you know, for those listening outside of Canada. He's the conservative party leader who may well take over as prime minister soon. I don't trust either of those two to make determinations about what kind of political speech would produce online harms for 40 million campaigns. This at its core, somewhere down the line, I understand the intent of why these lawmakers do this. It's all signaling to the audience, right? We care for you. We are your parents. While your parents exist, we are your parents. Now it's very different from the way the American discourse was done in America. H speech is legal, right? Supreme Court has been very clear in America when it comes to hate speech. They are categorical. H speech is part of free speech. So you cannot make that illegal. But outside of America, everywhere else in the world in differing degrees, speech is controlled. And the concept creep has been forever. I mean, 153a was just a sample. There is an actual blasphemy law in India called 295a. It's actually a blasphemy law. You can't say things about religion. Religion is protected. And the way things are going in Canada and under the garb of online harms, let's say, right? I'll give you a very tangible scenario. John, both you and I are disbelievers from whatever I know of you. And we may not like religious things of different religions. And we go online and we criticize religion. I am causing harm to the person online whose religious and on the other hand, if such laws exist, religious books exist online. Religious books have verses that categorically state person X, person Y, person Z has to be killed. Right. Religious books literally say these things. They are always protected because religion gets a special status in society. But then and religions also causing online harm. Let's say if I go to a Bible.com or a Quran.com or a X.com or a Y.com, they say these things openly, right? Yes. I mean, I so I have some sympathy for governments in a place like India or Pakistan or whatnot that have these laws because I think we just saw a news item recently where and you periodically see this in Pakistan, often it's like in small towns or regional capitals where some some person is accused of burning the Quran or desecrating the Quran in some way. And there's a riot and people get killed. And so the government's there, not necessarily theocrats. Like sometimes it's, you know, maybe Hindu dominated governments who are passing his laws and say, Hey, look, let's let's make it illegal to perform blast from us acts. Not necessarily because these government officials want to protect the Quran, but because they don't want to have to deal with public riots every every couple of months. So, you know, it's interesting. I love history. And so if you look at the history of early 16th century England, there were all these English, you know, lawlords reformers, proto Protestants, evangelicals, Lutherans, you know, at the time they had a lot of different labels, but essentially there were people who were challenging Catholic doctrines. And they were bringing in all these books and tracks from the continent, especially like from Antwerp and stuff that were challenging the Catholic church. And this is before Henry the 8th had taken England out of the Catholic church. And the government started prosecuting these people viciously. In some cases, burn literally burning them at the stake. And if you look at the logic of the government, it's not that the government was run by crazy Catholic theater crafts, but the government wanted a system where like there was public order and they saw religious pluralism and religious critiques as a threat to public order because they wanted priests on Sunday to deliver one message. They wanted it to be a message of compliance with what the government said was the one true faith. They wanted order. They were scared by the idea of religious pluralism. And to be fair, the situation in 16th century England was maybe a little bit like the situation in 21st century Pakistani villages in some cases where it's absolutely true that some random guy would start preaching a version of the Abrahamic faith that people found weird or upset and there'd be a riot and people would start bashing each other. And so as a result, government officials just say, okay, no one's allowed to talk about this stuff except us or like the official state recognized religious bodies. You see this in communist countries where they'll like China did this for a while where there was a church, but it was a state recognized church. So the Chinese were like, okay, you can believe in Christianity, but it has to be like the official Chinese sanctioned version of Christianity. And the Russians do this with Orthodox Christianity. So it's not necessarily like a theocratic impulse. It's basically an autocratic authoritarian impulse that says, all right, we get it, you believe in God, but like, if you're going to believe in God, it's kind of like sort of the same approach we have to process food. There's going to be government inspectors and it's going to have an official stamp that says, you know, a government agency has approved this and you're not allowed to do it outside the official system. And I get there's a kind of tendency toward that in Western societies, which are officially pluralistic. But because of social media, everyone is encouraged to kind of believe the same set of things. And if you don't believe that set of things, it's the equivalent of being the heretic who like burns a holy book in the public marketplace. My problem with acts like these and thoughts like these, when they try to regulate human emotions beyond a certain point is it doesn't stop. So what is the history of 295 in India, right, for that's the blast. That's the blast. That's the blast. So in the early 1920s, there was a Muslim who wrote a book against Sita. In response, the Hindu side wrote a book about Muhammad. The Muslims murdered the Hindu who wrote the Hindu, the Hindus didn't do anything that led to riots with because the Hindus then responded to the Muslim attack. Then the British were like, we don't want to deal with this. Let's bring in this law. 295 is a British law. Sure. Sure. Then the law comes in. Nobody in the Indian state wants to remove it. They're like, let's just keep it. Why? A, one of the reasons given as this, but B, the real reason is now we have a tool to control these people. Sure. They control people every time John in India, somebody makes any statement, even this much of a statement. I'll give you a story. Again, for the benefit of the Canadian listeners is, I used this law once to make a mockery out of it. So somebody made a random comment on a Jain Guru, I went to the, yeah, I went to the police station. I said, my feelings are hurt. They're like, are you a believer? I was like, no, I'm an atheist. And they're like, hang on. How can your feelings be hurt? I was like, give me the legal reason of why I can't file a complaint under feelings are hurt under this law. Guess what? They had to file a complaint. And I was mocking the law all the time. Yeah. Canadian human rights system is similar. There was a, a widely disliked and properly revoked section of the Canadian Human Rights Act. I think it was section 13, which was essentially a censorship provision. But as with many areas of human rights law, you wouldn't have to show personal injury to bring an action. So with section 13, what you just said, that scenario would be taken seriously by a human rights tribunal. And there were several instances of people actually being paid damages on. So in the equivalent scenario in Canada, you would bring that action under section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which is now defunct. If they awarded in your favor, they said, you know, you're right, this, this person is breaking human rights law, you would then get a bounty, you would then get maybe $10,000 or $20,000. Essentially, you're kind of like a human rights bounty hunter, where you're getting cash for taking the time to fill out like a three page human rights tribunal complaint. Justin Trudeau is essentially trying to bring back that section of the Human Rights Act. And by the way, the reason they got rid of this section is because like half of the complaints were being brought forward by one guy. His name was Richard Warman. And, you know, he was a lawyer and he, I think he worked for the Canadian military, but he wasn't doing anything illegal, just the opposite. He was being rewarded for doing what this law was explicitly incentivizing by more or less paying people to complain about what they regarded as human rights problems that in some cases had no effect on their personal lives. So what you did as a prank was financially incentivized under the Human Rights Act provision in Canada that the previous Prime Minister Stephen Harper got rid of and which Justin Trudeau, in his political desperation to become irrelevant and beloved figure in Canada, again, is trying to bring back. Yeah, it's very interesting. This bill talks about communication of hate speech 13 one because you mentioned 13 and it says it is a discriminatory practice to communicate or cause to be communicated hate speech by means of the internet or any other means of telecommunication in a context in which the hate speech is likely to format devastation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination. What in the what the hell it means? It means what anybody wants it to mean. So we have seen instances where people, you know, if I say, hey, there are scientifically human beings sexual dimorphism, we have two biological sexes as male and as female. There are a not insignificant number of Canadian academics and activists who regard what I just said as a form of hate speech because I have erased the identities of people who claim to be to have no biological sex or to be gender fluid in some way that utterly destroys the concept of sexual dimorphism. There are people, again, you know, from the river to the sea. There are people who see that as hate speech. There are people who see Zionism as hate speech. There are people who see Hindu nationalism as hate speech. So this can be read very selectively. And by the way, one thing we haven't talked about, the online harms act goes well beyond this because one of the provisions of the online harm act bill C63, if memory serves, is that it would also threaten people with the possibility of life imprisonment if in committing any other breach of an act of parliament doesn't have to be a criminal act. It could be like, I don't know, you used a provincial or national park in an improper way or, you know, theoretically you filed your tax return in the wrong way or something like that. If that breach of any other act of parliament was seen as motivated by hate, so you filed your income tax wrong in a hateful way or you like created a bonfire improperly in a provincial park in a hateful way, you could go to jail for the rest of your life in theory. So I mean, this is kind of a scary thing because the criminal law at least has all kinds of constitutional safeguards associated with it. You have to prove things beyond a reasonable doubt. And you have the, you know, the attorney general has to sign off on certain of these provisions and judges in Canada are generally pretty competent. It's not like in some countries where you're just someone's brother in law. And so most Canadian judges, first of all, this law is not going to survive constitutional scrutiny anyway. So there's that the human rights stuff and the other back door provisions actually worry me more because human rights tribunals are not governed by the same high constitutional standards of beyond a reasonable doubt that criminal law is governed by. So it's very easy to her right even if these human rights complaints don't go anywhere under Canadian human rights law, the complainant typically doesn't have to get a lawyer. So the complainant just files some form online and says, Oh yeah, you know, this guy's a hate monger and you know, he insulted the great spaghetti monster and yeah, so I give you my money. And then often the person who's the alleged wrongdoer, I don't want to say defendant because these aren't criminal processes, they often have to get a lawyer. So even if they are ultimately judged to be innocent or they didn't, they're judged to have not committed a human rights offense, they still might be out of pocket for $50,000 because they had hired a lawyer to defend themselves against these these spurious charges. That's that's the exact aim of these charges, right? Because I don't know how to say this, but the people who design such laws, then send them to tribunals, which are also controlled by people who very much think like the people who design these laws. And then they're this creates an asymmetry in the application of the law, which happens in India all the time, John. Why do I keep giving Indian examples for this is because Canada should be very careful. Be careful what you wish for because I know exactly where it ends. Luckily, at least one law could not get passed in the previous government, not the Modi regime, the one before that, they actually designed a law which was called the communal violence bill where the law had literally stated in the law in case of any riot, it is always the Hindu that is going to be treated guilty by default. They actually mentioned that in a law. Okay, that's super weird. That that that was it was called the communal violence bill. Luckily, it did not become a law, but then Congress government tried to pass that law. But this is under the under the theory that because Hindus are the majority they're always guilty. Yeah, I mean, I mean, okay, that that does sound really strange, but there have been episodes of mass violence against Muslim, I think was it in Gujarat, there was infamous episode where where hundreds of the history of India, but that's not how a justice system was it was it was it inspired by the Gujarat, those deadly Gujarat? No, no, no, no, this this was way after that. This was like in 2008 or nine way after that. It's just something or the other keeps popping up in Indian jurisprudence. And why do I keep giving these examples is because I see a direction that's happening the way the wind is blowing in Canada, the way the wind is blowing in Canada is exactly where India is where India is today, Canada will be 15 years down the night, because that's exactly what happens with authoritarian mindsets. Yeah, although the only the reason I would dispute that is because I think the call it the sine wave, the political sine wave in Canada goes up and down faster. It has a call it a shorter wavelength, a higher frequency in sort of engineering terms. So Justin Trudeau got carried away and has been proposing some very stupid and self serving laws. In part, as a result of that, he's going to get thrown out of office and my fear is that the next prime minister will simply take his illiberal policies and say, well, we're just going to use those liberal policies for our own. However, I'm optimistic enough to say that the next prime minister may be more principled and say, you know what, these are terrible ideas, whether it's a liberal or conservative in power. So we're going to return Canada to a more classically liberal understanding about what you're allowed to say and do. I'm an optimist, so I think that may happen. I get the sense that in India, I'm not statistically, I don't know what the average tenure of a government there is, but it feels like obviously Congress was in power forever. Yeah, 50 plus years. Yeah, we play a history of India. And Modi has been in power for a long time. So it maybe for historical reasons that I certainly couldn't explain. It seems like some of these historical actors just have a longer time to impose, if they want to, an illiberal vision on a democratic society. Is that the case? In India, nobody even understands freedom of speech conceptually and I'm being tired of shouting and screaming. It's like, we are a bunch of 20 odd people on the internet that keeps shouting about free speech in India. And I keep telling people why we need blasphemy as a concept, but it's interesting. So like, if you listen to conservatives, the usual explanation for this is, oh, it's, you know, they just, they don't have enough history with Western values or, but as you've said, it was the British who brought in the anti blasphemy for the Hinduism does not even have a concept of blasphemy in apostasy. It's alien for random. And I'm going to, by the way, I'm just going to use this opportunity as a naked promotion for Colette, my publication, because you wrote a wonderful piece for us a couple of months ago that makes this case that says that in the Hindu cultural tradition, there are all of these avenues for intellectual thought that maybe in other faiths would be regarded as blasphemy or even atheistic, but that at least in the cultural tradition associated with Indian Hinduism, allow for maybe a much freer pluralistic approach to divinity and to, to many of the, the central religious ideas at which allow people to disagree. So if any, I don't have the, don't remember the title of your article, but anybody who wants to Google your name and my publication, Colette, I found your article a real eye opener, which is why I published it. Yeah, thanks a lot, John. But my fear is this, because I care for Canada, as I do care for India, I've always been did this Canada is second, but you're like 50 50 in terms of the amount of time you spend, you're pretty much 50 50, pretty much 50 50. And I care deeply, I just landed in India yesterday night, I was there in Canada all these days, right? I just landed yesterday night. And, and because I know the trajectory, which is why every time I'm there in Canada, I get invited for talks by different organizations. Now, I was just called by tough seeker, Jewish organization, you know, they call me on I love Canada day and they wanted me to speak. And I told them I was like, listen, all these things that are happening on the streets of Toronto. I know the end result, because I have seen it all. I have seen it all in my country. I know what happened in 1947 when religion was the reason for the division of my country. I know why it happened. I just want to correct something because you referred to July one as I love Canada today. It's not called I love Canada day. It's no, the program was called I love Canada. Oh, okay, because it's called it's called Canada day. It's like our. Yeah, I know. They called it I love Canada. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I thought you misspoke. I just want it. I didn't want it to make sure no one thought that our national holiday is called I love Canada. No, no, no, no, no, I know about that. They just, they just, they had called it that. And, and, and like, like, I want to warn Canadians for the simple reason is that that the next trajectory of something like the online harms act and the build C 63 is going to be actual blasphemy laws in Canada. They're not far away, John. And then unless people like you and I and many others start warning people about these things because blasphemy is the only logical conclusion after this, because there are certain people and certain cultures that don't like religion to be criticized. And there's so called solution for it is what exactly that what the British did in the 1920s in India, they will have blasphemy laws and it will happen in Canada. And I can literally pinpoint the groups that were demanded. And I know they're going to demand it because they intend to. I'm a little bit more optimistic than you because look, the kind of people who come to Canada, look, let's, let's not dance around. I mean, there's some people who are listening to this who's going to say, aha, they're talking about Muslims like, let's, let's, let's not dance around that. In my experience as a Canadian, the kind of people who come to Canada, Muslim, Hindu people from Eastern Europe, people who are not necessarily religious, certainly people from Iran, the Iranian community in Canada, which is, is mostly composed of Muslims. There is a self selection, I think, of people who have liberal values. Like, if you look at the Iranians who have come to Canada, it's kind of like the Iranians who have come to the United States or the Cubans who have come to Florida. Like, many of them hate the regime, like they, many Iranians in Canada, Iranian Canadians, a majority of Canadian citizens now, came around 1979 or shortly before, shortly thereafter, because they were disgusted by the idea of living under a Muslim theocracy. And you often will meet Arab-descended Canadians who take the same view in regard to like Syria or Libya or wherever they came from. And so, I'm a little bit more optimistic because I got to say, when I'm online and some of the people who are my most strenuous defenders online, when I'm defending free speech and stuff, they're off, they're not people who were born in Canada in many cases. They're people who were born in communist countries or in Islamist run countries, or people who otherwise, or China, or people who come from countries where you can't say what you think. And that kind of fills me with hope, right? That these are people who don't take for granted free speech and stuff like that. And you hear people say it, you say, "Look, I came from a country where you had to spout government propaganda if you were going to be a good citizen." To be a good Iranian, you had to say death to Israel and you had to say, "Long live the Ayatollah," and stuff like that. And I don't want to live in a country like that. I want to live in a country where I can say and think what I believe. Whereas it's many white Canadians who are, I hate to say, who are atheistic, who have forgotten their Christianity or Judaism or whatever, they're often the ones who pick up the religion of social justice and they're the ones who are policing everybody's thoughts and ideas and speech the most aggressively. So, I take a different view from you just because of the self-selection process that goes into the people who come to this country. That's just my view. I understand where you're coming from, John, but again, I hang out with the lot way more. I don't know how to say this in any other way and it's not just the Muslims. I think the calisthenes will be the ones who will demand blasphemy laws in Canada, the earnings. I have a lot of problems with, of course, when we say calisthenes seeks, we're talking about... I'm not talking about Sikhs, I'm not saying Sikhs. I'm a pajavi, John. I know my people. Okay, so when I say calisthenes, people who are maybe militantly radicalized people who pursue the idea of a Sikh homeland in what's now India. So, yes, there is a radicalized faction of Sikhs in, especially in British Columbia, but also to some extent, other parts of Canada, but they're not even a majority of the Sikh population. And often, these are people who... It's a diaspora population who they have historical memories from, obviously, the rate on the Golden Temple, I think, was 1984. And I don't see that as a long-term engine of political developments in Canada. I'm more optimistic than that, but I take your point that this is something we have to be careful about. We have to be careful for because, listen, the trends are there. We can look at trends in the United Kingdom where demands from blasphemy laws from certain corners of society have been made. I remember Sadhanan Dumay wrote this piece in the Wall Street Journal in 2023. What was it called? Key blasphemy laws out of the UK is that it was written on 16th March, 2023 in the Wall Street Journal. Sadhanan had written that. I remember, and I appreciate Sadhanan for writing about that. I've been someone who is a vocal voter. In fact, my next book is literally going to be called blasphemy. I'm going to make the case for blasphemy. Yeah, it's going to be the case where I literally explain why as a Hindu, I believe blasphemy should be legal and allowed in every single country on planet Earth until and unless we don't do that, religions will have their authoritarian tendencies intact. What's your security budget for your book tour in India? Because it's interesting. A lot of people have told me why are you doing this, but I just can't help it. I have to, I have to make the case for intellectual case for blasphemy in India, because somebody has to talk about it. And when I read laws like this in Canada, I can smell it from a mile away. And yes, I hope you're right, John, and I'm the one who's wrong on this one. I sincerely hope you're the right one. I want to be wrong on this one, but because I've seen carnage in India, laws being abused in India, people's lives being ruined in India, because of this. I know a great friend of mine, Anand Ranganathan, he's a scientist, he's a famous personality in India. He said profound lines once. He told me, "Kushal, you and I are not in jail because the Indian state and its wisdom has decided we should not be jailed, because there are laws to put you and I in jail anytime in India." And it's true, John. No, it's, yeah, I mean, because as you said, these laws are written in such a vague way that it's based on the political currents. And then, hey, you could become a refugee here in Canada, and I don't know, maybe you'll have to stay at my place or something like that. The way things are going, it might end up that I might run there and they might come after me over there with last week's laws. Oh, well, then I'm rescinding my invitation, because I don't want to get involved in that. But before we wrap up, I truly believe that, you know, I truly believe there is hope and there is hope in the Canadian system too, because at a philosophical level, these things are very hard to adjudicate because it's very hard to define. Hate is hard to define, and a harm is very hard to define until and unless we know very clear cases like child pornography or incitement to violence and stuff like that. Those lines are very clear, but in the case of laws, right, it's the classic in philosophy we have that surate is paradox where everything is a grain until it becomes a heap and then when it becomes a heap, we don't know when it became a heap. So, and lawmakers play around in this, and there is this new zeal in the Western system or the Western orthodoxy where they want to control thought because they feel they are, you know, somewhere down the line in the Western thought, I think the state became your parent, which should not have happened. The state was never supposed to be my mom and dad. The state was supposed to be at best a helper, not a mom and dad. This is when the state tries to parent you. Yeah, so that's one aspect and I think there's a lot of conservatives who would agree with you, but I'm a little bit of a technological determinist in the sense that I think a lot of these things emerge from technology and the internet has allowed people to exist with the expectation that everybody around them will agree with them and that if somebody disagrees with them, the universe is out of whack and you need a lot to correct the universe. So, when I was a kid, it was just, you know, I'm older than you. I grew up in the, well, politically my political consciousness was the 1980s. If you were on a university campus or a similar marketplace of ideas, you just took it for granted. You'd be surrounded by people who agreed with you and didn't agree with you. And then the internet came and people started sorting into electronic silos where everyone agrees with them. So, even like atheists and stuff, like, I guess a lot of people listen to this are atheists and I'm also guessing a lot of them spend a lot of time in the electronic forums where, yeah, they argue, but they're arguing with other atheists. So, that kind of didn't exist before and so people had to learn to get along a little bit. I mean, often unsuccessfully, but at least they had the expectation that in the course of their daily intellectual life, they were going to have to deal with people they disagreed with and they couldn't solve that problem by just accusing everyone who disagreed with them as being hate criminals because then they'd like be accusing 17 different people of day of being hate criminals. And so, I think a lot of it is now people spend a ton of time in Twitter channels, Facebook channels, YouTube channels, Tumblr channel, I don't know, whatever the Indian equivalent of a lot of this is, although as we've discussed, YouTube is like, you know, super popular in India, that they have developed the implicit expectation that if somebody disagrees with them, it's a weird thing, it's unusual. Like, we have to kick this person out of our group, we have to, we can't invite them to, to our parties, they disagree. Like that wasn't a normal way to think 30 years ago. It's a normal way to think now. And so, yeah, it's the nanny state, I agree with you, because the nanny state to some extent has emerged from that because politicians aren't stupid, they're like, hey, there's this whole generation of kids and 20-somethings and 30-somethings who have grown accustomed to the belief that the universe isn't in its proper state if, you know, some rando disagrees with them. And so, we have to have a law against that rando, but politicians are responding to the technological change. So, I think human beings are still trying to figure out how are we going to live in that world? And how are we going to break down those silos and try and convince people, hey, just because you're Twitter silo, everyone believes the same thing, doesn't mean you live in a country where everyone believes the same thing. And you have to manage those, you have to walk and chew gum. That to me is the challenge that principled politicians have to face. Yeah, I actually agree with you. That's actually fully on board that we have confused our digital reality to our actual reality. I often use a famous analogy that is used by many people that the algorithm works as such that if I get, when I look at a video of a fire somewhere in India, the algorithm will go on showing me videos of fires everywhere in the world, or in India, based on my search location. And if my reality, if I go online, is that the whole world is burning, but actually it's not. The world is just going on. Outstanding example. And it was Shark Week. I mean, this is something that, you know, it's on TV. It's not the internet, but I don't know if you have Shark Week in India, but I think it's the discovery channel. I don't watch a lot of TV, but it's whatever channel has Shark Week and all they show is Shark. And like, maybe less so now, but I went Shark Week started. People were like terrified that they jump into like a river or a freshwater lake and get attacked by a shark because they were just like watching Shark Week all the time. And you had to say, no, no, Dora, you know, you could go into your bathtub without getting attacked by a shark. Like, because in their minds, sharks were like everywhere. Like, you know, you walk through a forest and you get mugged by a shark. Like, it was just, there's a psychological term for this. I think it's called the availability heuristic or where if information is available to you and fear and anxiety is available to you, that just kind of dominates your thinking. So, it's the same with hate, you know, it's like in Canada, we've become, well, not we, but like, the progressive hot house has convinced itself that like neo-Nazis around every corner. And there's this tiny little group called Diagonalon, which is like, I don't know, it's like seven people who run a podcast and progressives are convinced that like the Diagonalonians are going to take over the Canada and it's crazy, but it's true because they've like, that's their Shark Week. Their equivalent of Shark Week is Diagonalon Week where they think that there's going to be this Diagonalonian Nazi revolution and they believe it. And unfortunately, this seeps its way into, to some extent, mainstream left-of-center politics. And so we get things like the Online Arms Act. It's something we have to fight against. So, I want to ask you a question of a live viewer who's asked you a question, just by the way, this person is from Canada. This person has asked, is it fair to say that incredibly diverse societies that are not day-to-day fully socially cohesive will tilt towards draconianism. India, UK, Canada are examples. USA and France seem for now to resist this. Is the national core cohesiveness a non-negotiable for free speech? That's a good question. Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with whether our politicians feel like they can gain more points by exacerbating tensions or by bridging them. And I think, and I don't know how to answer this question, that Canada is at this inflection point where you've got a guy like Justin Trudeau, like, so Justin Trudeau's memoir was called Common Ground. And he came into power, this was almost a decade ago, explicitly on the idea that I'm going to bridge people's differences. That's going to be my political meal ticket. I'm going to be the guy who bridges differences. And I don't care about your faith. And by the way, back in those days, that primarily meant bridging separatist differences in Quebec, because he's like me, he's from Quebec. And so, his big political challenge was overcoming Quebec political separatist sentiment, because he and his father, Pietrudo, famously were federalists. They wanted to keep Canada together. So, Common Ground was sort of like, no, no, French, English, Catholic, Protestant, whatever, like we're one people. And during the course, during a very short historical period, during the course of his tenure as prime minister, certainly on the progressive side of the spectrum, the narrative is flipped, and to be an enlightened Canadian in some circles now consists of rejecting that idea. It's saying, no, it's not Common Ground. Us were enlightened people. And then there's all those mouth-breathing conservatives who believe in all kinds of crazy things. And, you know, they probably like Donald Trump and they want Donald Trump to be the Prime Minister of Canada and their anti-vaxxers and this and that. And it's the opposite of Common Ground. Like, if Justin Trudeau wrote his political memoir now, I don't know what the title would be, it certainly would not be Common Ground. And so, the problem, what the question presumes is absolutely accurate, the practical question is how do we create a politics where mainstream politicians are not incentivized to exacerbate the worst instincts that we now have to separate into political tribes? I think Justin Trudeau's memoir will be called People Kind because he has a problem with mankind. It's, you know what, it's amazing what little scandals like stick in people's minds, and it's incredible that people kind of thing, I still, I hear people talking about it. Like, I'm saying, hey, you know what, like he's had like 17 scandals that were really serious. And those things, people forget, oh, all right, SNC, Lavalin and all that stuff. Yeah, I kind of vaguely remember that what they really remember is like him dancing, like a lunatic, him saying things like People Kind, like all the kind of weird little flourishes of language and behavior. That's what sticks in people's memory. You know, it's the opposite of kissing babies, right? It's just like when you say stupid things and 10 years, five years later, people are still laughing about it. Yeah, it was hilarious when I heard it correct that girl who had asked the question the girl must be cursing herself. What weird is that of all the stupid things Justin Trudeau has said, he kind of got a bad rap out because I think he was being like semi sarcastic. It was, I mean, I don't know what was in his head, but like, in a way, like he said, so many crazy woke things in the past. But in that moment, I kind of got the sense he was almost being like self-aware and satirical. But he did, but because he had said so many other dumb things in the past, people were not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. And so everyone jumped on it. Yeah, as it'll be in his political obituary, it'll it'll mention the People Kind incident, I'm sure. Yeah, lover of people kind. Yeah. All right, John, before we go, is there anything else in the law specifically that you think we did not cover? Well, my name doesn't appear in the law. So that's a good thing. And neither does yours. So this is impersonal. You know, this is just us standing up for free speech and want to emphasize that it's not the law yet, because sometimes I'll be in a podcast like this, and people will email me and they say, Oh, my God, should I take this tweet down? Should I take this Facebook post down? Like, and I want to caution people and say Canada has this really complex and dilatory lawmaking process was a first reading and second reading in the Senate needs to approve it. And once this law, if it ever comes to pass, if it is a law, the courts will probably deem it unconstitutional. So I just throw on people to panic and say, Oh, my God, Canada has become a police state. And I have to take down all my social media posts. Like, we are having this conversation, I hope, in order to get people aware about the threat of this. But I don't want to be dystopian. You can still largely say what you want in Canada. So if you are a Canadian, use your free speech power to oppose this law. Don't respond to this podcast by saying, Oh, I better shut up because they're gonna throw me in jail. That hasn't happened yet. So fight the good fight. Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you, John. John, it's always been a pleasure to talk to you, man. I consider you one of the most sensible voices in Canada. I always reach out to you whenever I have these kinds of issues. And you've always been kind to me. So once again, thank you for coming on the podcast. I come here for the praise. You're very generous. Thank you so much. And I hope you keep writing for Quillat. Thank you, sir. Yeah, I will. And this time, I owe you breakfast, John. So I'm gonna be back mid July. I'll give you a call. We'll meet up. Sounds good. We'll do the next podcast in person. Yes, we will. Yes, we will. So ladies and gentlemen, go follow Jonathan Kay. I have his X or Twitter handle in the description of the podcast. Also go support Quillat. If you if you want to support them monetarily, you can do that too. And John also hosts the Quillat podcast. And I have left a link for this entire law that this bill that has been proposed by the Justin Trudeau government. If you are a Canadian and I know there is a decent chunk like a good five to seven percent of my listener base is actually Canadian now. Thanks to so many podcasts with the Canadian. So Canadians who are listening to this, read this law, figure out who your member of parliament or your member of provincial parliament or your counselor is go tell them we don't support this nonsense. Better get your act together and Indians don't celebrate blasphemy laws. What you have over here will eventually go over there too. So there goes your plan to run away from India. So oppose that in A2. I'll see you guys next time. And just one other announcement, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to be in Chennai on the sixth for the book launch event with Harsh Madhusas and Gupta and Abhijita Yarmitra. So if you are from Chennai, do come over. The details are on my Twitter timeline. Just go and look at the image I've tweeted out. Keep supporting the child web podcast. You know the drill. I'll see you guys next time. Until then, Namaste. Take care. Bye bye. [Music]