OTTAWA—A former Ontario university professor turned author warns that freedom of speech is under threat in Canada, saying there has been an “incremental creep” in regards to the changing definitions of words.
“What is it saying about our culture, that we’re so interested in doing this or that we’re so willing to accept these rapidly evolving definitions?” Julie Ponesse said during a panel discussion on free speech and ethics in Ottawa on April 28.
“I think one thing we’re seeing now is that there is a kind of what we call incremental creep going on all over the place.”
Ms. Ponesse was placed on leave and banned from campus at Huron University College in 2021 after not complying with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which she argued was coercive and ethically wrong.
Gradually introducing fear-based rhetoric can make people more willing to accept radically new ideas, rather than “slamming the door in your face,” said Ms. Ponesse, who holds a doctorate in philosophy.
She raised the example of Adolf Hitler’s genocide against Jews, a concept that was not outright proposed to the German population, she said. “It was very slow. It was insidious. There was a lot of language about fear, about how we’re protecting you, about how we are eliminating the threats to your livelihood,” she said.
She noted how words like “gender,” which had a long-established meaning, were being changed in Canada. “Even a term, something like gender ideology, when you hear it, it suggests to you that such a thing exists. But I would encourage you to pause for a minute: ‘Well, does that exist, or does only gender exist?’” she said.
Certain words and ideas are being disallowed altogether in Canada, she warned. “If we just start systematically shutting down certain ideas and certain ways of expressing certain ideas ... it’s kind of like shutting the door on truth. And you may never be able to open it again,” she said.
Free Speech
During the panel, True North journalist Andrew Lawton suggested to the crowd that the largest threat to free speech was not a single person, but “everyone in this room as an individual.” While government censorship can be the most “evil” way of silencing people, self-censorship is often the most effective, he said.“If you do not say the thing, firstly, you’ve self-censored, you’ve actually kept that idea locked up and confined in your head. It will never be uttered to the point where someone else can say ‘you know, that actually makes sense,’” he said.
“We need to have this cultural sensibility that encourages debate and discourse, because when you self-censor, you are preemptively giving in.”
While Canada has legal protection for free speech, it lacks “cultural” support for it, he said, offering the example of speakers “de-platformed” from events. If a venue decides it doesn’t want to host them, there is no “legal argument” for including them.
“But we can say there’s a cultural argument ... Why don’t we want people to have different beliefs? Why don’t we want to have different perspectives entertained in one discussion, in one place?” he asked.
