After a decade of Liberal government, the slow erosion of freedom of speech has escalated. The latest example of this comes from the Edmonton Police. An X post last week included a link urging people to “report online hate” with the message: “You typed it. Someone lived it. Online hate isn’t ‘just a comment.’ It hurts real people and harms real communities. Hate has no home here.”
The post immediately triggered backlash and was deleted (it can be viewed here). It included a video with examples of reportable comments.
“Some of these posts call for violence and could meet criminal threshold, but I struggle to see how most of these sample hate posts would be illegal (which is different from offensive, hurtful, uncivil, etc.),” MP Andrew Lawton wrote in response. “This is precisely the chilling effect I warned about with Bill C-9.”
Howard Anglin, a commentator and former Deputy Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, concurred. “This is outrageous,” Anglin wrote. “None of the comments I can see, as offensive as they may be, meets the standard for hate speech set out by the Supreme Court in Whatcott. The Alberta government needs to remind the (Edmonton Police) what the law they are supposed to be enforcing is, and isn’t.”
Most of the example comments used by the Edmonton Police are, of course, cruel and offensive, and thus Canadians might be tempted to shrug off the specter of police officers visiting social media users in their home to interrogate them about X posts or Facebook comments. But as I noted in April, the Carney government has a very expansive view of hate speech, and includes “deadnaming” — that is, using a trans-identifying person’s pre-transition name online — as an example of “gender-based violence.”
Canada’s intelligence services have been tracking online opposition to LGBT ideology for years. Parental rights activists have been cited in CSIS reports as potential threats. In June, the National Post published a report that should have been widely discussed but went largely unnoticed. According to a CSIS memo from the integrated threat assessment center, over 10,000 “anti-LGBTQ” posts were made in the wake of the mass shooting by a trans-identifying shooter in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia. From the National Post:
The details, contained in a memo prepared by the Canadian Security Intelligence Services’ integrated threat assessment centre, warned that those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer were likely to face “increased intimidation, harassment, criminal and extremist violence,” along with public officials affiliated with the community.
“Changes to the hate speech policies of major social media platforms, the amplification of hateful rhetoric on social media, and the increased visibility of (LGBTQ) individuals and events have likely heightened the risk of violence in Canada targeting the (LGBTQ) community, including public officials,” reads the assessment, obtained by the National Post.
The unclassified document, dated April 2, outlines how despite a rise in hateful rhetoric online and the greater risk of being targeted, a violent extremist attack targeting LGBTQ public officials was unlikely.
The report cites “violent extremists based in Canada,” but as always, definitions are important. Everybody should oppose “violent extremism.” But what does the Canadian government define as “violence?” And what do they mean by “extremism?” Based on their own online definitions, “deadnaming” — that is, referring to the Tumbler Ridge shooter by his given name — would qualify as a form of “gender-based violence.” According to the LGBT activists, rejecting LGBT ideology is a form of “extremism.”
Violence and terrorism are obviously morally unacceptable. From a Christian perspective, vile pejoratives, crude or cruel name-calling, and similar forms of speech are also immoral — but (and this is very important) not illegal. The problem arises when the government redefines and expands the definitions “violence” and “extremism” to encompass the expression of basic doctrinal views of Christians on sexual behavior, sexuality, and biological sex.
“According to open-source analysis of social media,” the CSIS memo stated, “Canadian users made more than 10,000 such posts the day after the attack, which was the most pronounced spike in anti-(LGBTQ) hate speech between August 2025 and February 2026. This coincided with a parallel increase in online activity from Canadian domestic extremists, who according to open-source reporting used the attack to increase their anti-(LGBTQ) posts from approximately 20 per day to over 230 per day in the aftermath of the attack.”
Considering the Liberal government’s online definitions on federal websites, I’d like to see what Canadian intelligence services included as examples of “hate speech.” The memo rather vaguely says that anti-LGBTQ extremism derives from “extremist interpretations of gender roles” as well as “extremist interpretations of religious doctrine.” What “interpretations of gender roles” or “religious doctrine” are the theologians over at CSIS referring to? The catechism of the Roman Catholic Church? The beliefs of Canadian Protestants? The doctrinal views of many other religious groups?
The now-deleted video posted by the Edmonton Police give us a glimpse of how some in law enforcement view freedom of speech in Canada. But as Lawton warned, it may have been a brief glimpse of things to come.
