OTTAWA — As a young child, Dennis Saddleman's mother always ensured he knew how much she loved him, gave him kisses on his forehead and told him how beautiful he was.
It makes me very uncomfortable to make speech and holding opinions (whether factual or not) illegal.
It sets a dangerous precedent and is a double edged sword. What if we’d declared criticizing internment camps or the 60’s scoop as hateful prejudice against Canada? What if the next government makes speaking against oil illegal?
Education and acknowledgement is the answer. We need to continue making everything about residential schools public. It should be easy to see evidence of their practices, know who ran them, how many children died and where they’re buried, etc. It should be obvious this happened and was awful.
Censorship should make us uncomfortable for all those reasons, but I think history has shown hate speech can’t be beaten with just reason. Whether this specific proposal is worth the precedent is another question on top of that, though.
It makes me very uncomfortable to make speech and holding opinions (whether factual or not) illegal.
It sets a dangerous precedent and is a double edged sword. What if we’d declared criticizing internment camps or the 60’s scoop as hateful prejudice against Canada? What if the next government makes speaking against oil illegal?
Education and acknowledgement is the answer. We need to continue making everything about residential schools public. It should be easy to see evidence of their practices, know who ran them, how many children died and where they’re buried, etc. It should be obvious this happened and was awful.
Censorship should make us uncomfortable for all those reasons, but I think history has shown hate speech can’t be beaten with just reason. Whether this specific proposal is worth the precedent is another question on top of that, though.
I’m not against it for the tolerance/intolerence aspect, I’m against it for the potential weaponization.
Could a future government say “woke” speech is hate speech? That’s why I think we need to be careful.