Rupa Subramanya shared examples including Ottawa’s push for the ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ ideology and suppression of the Freedom Convoy.
A Canada-based journalist has shared a cautionary tale with a U.S. House subcommittee highlighting a “creeping authoritarianism” within the Canadian government that she says is eroding free speech and individual liberty in the country.
Rupa Subramanya, a journalist with
The Free Press, was testifying on Nov. 30 before the
Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. She began by asking the audience to imagine her as a time traveller in a time when citizens, in the name of the common good and social justice, face unjust penalties for supporting political views that differ from those of the government.
“Of course, I’m not a real time traveller. I just live in Canada,” she said.
“Americans, and perhaps those in this chamber, surely think Canadians are too nice. We’re too polite to embrace the sort of proto-authoritarianism, but it’s more accurate to say that our niceness made us susceptible to the new authoritarianism undermining the foundations of our liberal democracy.”
To illustrate her assertion of “creeping authoritarianism” in Canada, Ms. Subramanya told of three incidents that she said showed its harms inflicted on Canadian citizens. She attributed them to the Liberal government’s promotion of the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) ideology, recent adoption of the Online News Act, and suppression of Freedom Convoy protesters.
Ms. Subramanya asked the U.S. subcommittee to draw lessons from Canada and proactively safeguard America’s own liberties.
“I came here today not simply to warn you about what lies ahead, but to plead with you to do something about it,” she said.
“Now is not the time to be polite. Now is the time to defend loudly the liberties and rights that have given us the greatest freedoms in human history. Across the world right now, governments, in the name of the good, are considering or adopting measures like we have in Canada.”
‘A Less Just Society’
The first incident Ms. Subramanya cited was the humiliation and subsequent suicide of Toronto high school principal
Richard Bilkszto.
As first reported by
The Free Press, during an April 2021 DEI training session, Mr. Bilkszto challenged the diversity trainer’s assertion that Canada, despite its laws, is a “bastion of white supremacy and colonialism.”
In an audio recording, the
consultant was heard repeatedly referring to Mr. Bilkszto’s “whiteness” and reacting harshly by telling the class that “your job in this work as white people is to believe,” not to question claims of racism. Suffering from mental distress as a result of the DEI training, Mr. Bilkszto
ended his life in July this year.
Mr. Bilkszto’s death prompted Ontario Education Minister Stephen Lecce to
order a review of the case and to commit to examining “options to reform professional training and strengthen accountability on school boards so that this never happens again.”
Before his death on July 13, Mr. Bilkszto, aged 60, had filed a lawsuit against the Toronto District School Board, his employer for 24 years. He had also submitted a mental stress injury claim to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) in May 2021. The WSIB ruled in Mr. Bilkszto’s favour and in a letter in August 2021 described the DEI training as the cause of his severe mental distress and characterized the trainer’s behaviour as “abusive, egregious, and vexatious.”
“The principal’s crime, besides being white and male, was that he objected to the consultant’s assertion that Canada is a less just society than America,” Ms. Subramanya told the U.S. subcommittee on Nov. 30.
Curbing Freedom of Expression
Ms. Subramanya’s second story revolved around the impact of the Canadian federal government’s Online News Act, previously known as
Bill C-18 before becoming law in June.
The legislation mandates that major tech companies such as Google and Meta
pay news publishers for Canadian news content that appears on their platforms if that content contributes to revenues. In response, these tech giants had decided to
block Canadian news from their platforms.
The journalist said the repercussions of the Online News Act have hit hard independent journalists like Christopher Curtis. Mr. Curtis, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and journalist in Montreal, runs an independent digital newsletter called
The Rover. Being independent, unlike government-funded media outlets, The Rover faces hindrances under the law, which prevents it from reaching new subscribers and growing its subscriber base on platforms like Facebook or Instagram.
Ms. Subramanya also highlighted the impact of the Liberal government’s stringent COVID-19 policies on Canadians including Danny Bulford, a former RCMP officer. Mr. Bulford resigned from the force in 2021 because he did not want to receive COVID vaccination. In early 2022, he joined the Freedom Convoy protesters in Ottawa in opposing the vaccine mandates. Then, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act and declared a state of emergency in February 2022, both Mr. Bulford and his wife found their
bank accounts frozen.
Ms. Subramanya emphasized the profound impact of what she described as the “de-banking” practice on Mr. Bulford, who she said had expressed the distressing sentiment of “not believing in the country I’ve spent my career serving.” He also described a pervasive feeling of “being watched, torn apart, made to feel like a much hated other in our own country.”
“Canada was once a bastion of free expression, but now not so much,” she said.
Ms. Subramanya drew a parallel between the government’s curbing of the freedom of expression for Canadians and journalists holding views opposite from those of the government and the widespread pro-Palestine demonstrations observed across the country in the aftermath of the October attack on Israel by the terrorist group Hamas.
“Consider that at the same time, the government and its corporate allies are curbing the free expression of truckers and journalists. The government is defending the rights of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, many of whom engage in what can only be called anti-Semitism,” she said.
