Under Stephen Harper, left-leaning charities were often intimidated into silence by the CRA, harming all Canadians. Justin Trudeau seems to want to reverse that trend. In his mandate letter to Finance Minister Bill Morneau, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a laundry list of things he wants his new cabinet to accomplish. It’s worth a read, …
Has the chill on free speech begun to lift in Canada? Read More »
What does privacy have to do with freedom of expression? Everything, as it turns out. You can’t have one without the other.
The Bahraini government has temporarily released Dr. Abdul-jalil Al-Singace, a prominent opposition figure, to attend his mother’s funeral. Now that he’s out, I hope they realize that not only is he no threat to them simply for speaking his mind, but keeping him in prison makes them look absolutely terrible. Why is the government of …
Abdul-jalil Al-Singace temporarily released for mother’s funeral Read More »
My most recent op-ed in the Toronto Star urges the new Liberal government to repair the damage done to freedom of expression under the previous government.
This just went up earlier today. You can read it here: http://pencanada.ca/blog/canadians-have-the-right-to-film-police-officers/
Let’s review a few basic facts, shall we? First of all, in Canada, where I live, there is a thing called the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and in that Charter is Section 2(b), which goes a little something like this: 2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: … (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion …
In this article from the Dhaka Times, we learn that 19 more bloggers have received death threats from an extremist Islamic group calling itself Ittehadul Mujahideen. They’ve apparently already murdered four people for the crime of publishing their thoughts online, so these are not idle threats. Is the problem here Islam? No. This is just …
Read here about The Manama Incident, in which Fakhria al-Singace, the sister of Dr Abdul Jalil Al-Singace, was arrested for the crime of protesting her brother’s arrest. Her offense was to hold up a banner reading “It is forbidden to arbitrarily arrest and detain people”. Not only are the Bahraini leaders apparently a bunch of …
There is not much for me to add to this besides what’s in the article: someone, presumably Muslim fundamentalist militants, is murdering bloggers in Bangladesh for speaking their minds. It’s crazy to consider that there are places in the world where people will kill you for the things you put on your website. This is …
I can’t comment on this right now, partly because I’m late for work and partly because I’m speechless. This is rather huge news.
