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Amy Hamm: Oh great, Carney is giving the Anti-Hate Network a say over what speech to restrict

Canada’s march towards institutionalized censorship carries on unabated

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Not a day goes by that Prime Minister Mark Carney doesn’t further prove that he is cut from the same cloth as his predecessor, Justin Trudeau.

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This was made evident last week when the federal government appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) to contest the decisions of two lower courts, which ruled that Trudeau’s 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act was unlawful.

Amy Hamm: Oh great, Carney is giving the Anti-Hate Network a say over what speech to restrict Back to video

Carney’s 2022 Globe and Mail op-ed, in which he advocated for a crackdown and referred to Freedom Convoy protests as “sedition,” is now making the rounds. In light of the SCC appeal, it stands to reason that Carney’s opinion on the protesters hasn’t changed.

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And that’s not the only recent move the government has made showing just how similar Carney’s Liberals are to Trudeau’s. On March 12, it appointed Bernie Farber, founding chair emeritus of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, to an “expert advisory group on online safety” — for the ultimate purpose of reviving many of the provisions in Trudeau’s online harms act, which was killed when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025.

Many Canadians, myself included, breathed a collective sigh of relief when the online harms act disappeared. The proposed act was steeped in language about protecting vulnerable groups from online abuse but was instead, at its core, about government censorship.

It would have led to the creation of an Orwellian-sounding “digital safety commission” bestowed with the power to police the internet, and impose exorbitant fines — or even life in prison — for certain forms of speech. It was frightening and anti-Canadian.

Many of us wondered if Canada’s next government would dare to revive the act. Now, Carney has given us his answer: yes, he will. And, just like Trudeau, he will do it with the assistance of people like Bernie Farber.

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Farber’s government-funded Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) regularly attacks gender critical people and women’s rights advocates, such as myself.

One of CAHN’s board members, Richard Warman, launched a failed defamation lawsuit against National Post columnists Jonathan and Barbara Kay, who linked the organization to the violent activist group Antifa — something a judge agreed was true. (Well, that’s embarrassing.)

Farber’s personal history includes accusing Freedom Convoy protesters of distributing antisemitic flyers, when the flyers had actually been distributed in Florida — far from the snowy Ottawa protest.

He also accused Elon Musk of performing a “Nazi salute” (with an accompanying social media video of Adolf Hitler and Musk) at U.S. President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2025, a ridiculous assertion that one would expect from far-left internet trolls, not a government-appointed “expert” in online hate.

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Farber claimed, in a 2024 Toronto Star column, that Trudeau’s proposed online harms act should receive all-party support. He described the authoritarian proposals contained in the act as “decent resources” and “a fence of protection for vulnerable minorities.”

Farber should not be trusted to advise the government on acceptable speech.

I often wonder why more Canadians don’t see the similarities between Trudeau and Carney. (Carney’s positive polling numbers suggest that many Canadians believe he is governing in a new way.)

It could be that Carney is less flashy with his ideology. Unlike Trudeau, he doesn’t seem to want to preen for the cameras, use the latest woke vernacular or lap up the praise of every ingratiating sycophant in the country.

Trudeau-esque vanity and posturing aside, Carney seems happy to sit back and accept being perceived by the public as a fuddy-duddy banker who will take the Liberals, and Canada, in a new direction. But he won’t. Canada’s march towards institutionalized censorship carries on unabated.

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