Canada’s push to remove handguns and many assault weapons seems to show the government is going to push the population to the brink of rebellion. We see several provinces trying to succeed, which I don’t think the crown will allow, and when citizens have their votes wiped and their will ignored, these types of laws being passed will be used against citizens resisting the government. Canada seems to be setting up something even worse than what is happening in the UK. When they pass laws where you can’t even preach or say Bible verses, your society is cooked. And just look at the duplicitous propaganda in this one paragraph by a Liberal MP.
“This post is embarrassing to our profession, Leslyn,” responded Liberal MP Kristina Tesser Derksen. “You are a lawyer. You have completely ignored the objective ‘reasonableness’ standard that the legislation applies. Your examples are absurd and would never be captured under C-16. You are so bent on obstructing Parliament’s work to pass legislation that you will sacrifice abused women and exploited children for partisan gain.”
With the Liberals in charge for over a decade, it’s hard not to feel as if the noose is tightening.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark CarneyCole Burston/Getty Images
By Jonathon Van Maren
(LifeSiteNews) — Mark Carney’s Liberal government wants to control everything. With Bill C-9, they seek to remove the religious exemption for prosecutable hate speech; MP Marc Miller specifically cited Bible passages as examples. With Bill C-16, they could open the door to criminalizing conversations between family members after the fact.
The new Bill C-16 (not the 2017 bill of the same name, which prohibited “hate speech” on the grounds of “gender identity and expression” and made Dr. Jordan Peterson famous) has been titled the “Protecting Victims Act,” and was introduced by the Liberals in the 45th Parliament. It has not attracted much attention, but as MP Leslyn Lewis recently highlighted, it may have far-reaching effects.
Bill C-16 creates a new offense under Criminal Code Section 264.1 for patterns of “coercive or controlling conduct” in relationships but goes far beyond abuse and lists non-violent behaviors that are subject to after-the-fact interpretation.
“Do you think the government should criminalize everyday interactions in your home with your family? If not, you should read Bill C-16,” Lewis wrote on X. “The bill creates new offences (Criminal Code Section 264.01), which are deeply concerning for normal, loving family interactions, based on a ‘pattern of coercive or controlling conduct,’ even when no violence, threats, or illegal acts occur.”
“It criminalizes a pattern of otherwise lawful and often common behaviour that may later be perceived as threatening by an intimate partner,” Lewis continued. “That means ordinary family interactions could be re-interpreted as criminal after the fact.” She cited a series of examples that should make Canadians sit up straight:
- Asking a spouse where they are after they said they’d be home,
- Expressing concern about excessive drinking,
- Disagreeing about finances or spending,
- Asking a partner not to give children junk food,
- Raising concerns about time away from family,
- Setting household boundaries or expectations,
Obviously, many of these cited examples, which could be interpreted as “criminal” under the Liberals’ new crime bill, are common discussions and arguments in the family context.
“These are not crimes,” Lewis wrote. “They are part of marriage, parenting, and shared responsibility. This does not diminish the seriousness of coercive control in genuinely abusive relationships. But criminal law should target clear abuse and violence, which are already addressed in law. Bill C-16, as written, opens the door to police intervention in the homes of ordinary families.”
Critics immediately accused Lewis of exaggerating.
“This post is embarrassing to our profession, Leslyn,” responded Liberal MP Kristina Tesser Derksen. “You are a lawyer. You have completely ignored the objective ‘reasonableness’ standard that the legislation applies. Your examples are absurd and would never be captured under C-16. You are so bent on obstructing Parliament’s work to pass legislation that you will sacrifice abused women and exploited children for partisan gain.”
Derksen’s point is well taken. But what she misses is that conservatives no longer trust the Liberal government’s interpretation of “reasonableness.” The Liberals are currently making the same argument about Bill C-9, insisting that the tens of thousands of religious Canadians expressing concerns about the bill are simply being misled into believing that it could criminalize sermons on certain Bible passages. But a government that believes that the basic traditional Christian view of sexuality is fundamentally hateful cannot be trusted when it makes such claims.
As I noted recently, the Liberal Party has presided over a country in which over 100 Christian churches have been vandalized or burned to the ground in the past five years, and has responded primarily by launching new initiatives to combat Islamophobia. In fact, the Liberal government funded a study recently titled the “Rainbow Faith and Freedom Report,” which systematically made the case for targeting places of worship that are not LGBT-affirming, and recommended concrete action be taken against these churches.
In fact, the Liberals used similar rhetoric in pushing through Bill C-4, which banned so-called “conversion therapy” – but defined the phrase so broadly that it could criminalize conversations between pastors and their congregants, and even family members. Despite a campaign by Conservative MPs to “fix the definition” of “conversion therapy” to ensure that the legislation would not criminalize the discussion of basic Christian beliefs, the Liberals refused. Their intent was clear. The legislation was written broadly deliberately for both chilling effect and future use prosecuting those who hold to traditional beliefs.
The Liberal playbook is now standard: put forward legislation under the pretext of combatting hatred and protecting the vulnerable but define terms so broadly that the laws could be interpreted broadly. Then, attack those who object to the wording as paranoiacs who oppose protecting victims. If the last decade has taught Canadians anything, it is that the Liberal government cannot be trusted with our freedoms – and Leslyn Lewis’s warnings should be heeded.