Free speech a principle that’s worth the fight

Shopify founder and CEO Tobias Lütke drew wide attention this week with a post on why his Ottawa-based e-commerce company won’t stop doing business with Breitbart News, the right-wing American website that favours anti-immigrant views, personal attacks and generally racist sentiments. Lütke’s article adds to a flurry of impassioned argument over the merits of free speech and what, exactly, our moral obligations are when it leans toward prejudice and falsehood.

The debate has played out in Canada in a more poignant manner, after an attacker shot to death six men in a Quebec City mosque. Premier Philippe Couillard linked the killings to anti-Muslim sentiments in public discourse. “Freedom of speech has consequences, good ones and bad ones,” he said. “When I say words matter, it means words can hurt, words can be knives, slashing at people’s conscience.”

Many immediately homed in on extremeright commentators and anti-immigrant media. In Quebec City in particular, “trash radio” (radio-poubelle) often goes after non-whites and religious minorities. English Canada has its own versions of such media too. And some politicians feed cultural divisions. Kellie Leitch, for instance, with her Canadian values test, alarms people both in and outside her party who sense the slippery slope of xenophobia.

There is the question of how far we should go to pressure into silence those whose views repulse us. But the much harder question is always: how far should we go in defending their rights to speak freely?

The Citizen’s long-held motto, “Fair Play and Daylight,” hints at a mission to shine light on controversy, including the dark corners of extremist views. We feel it is better for democracy if all citizens can speak their minds. The right response, for instance, to someone such as Leitch, is not to hang banners from her riding association office with slogans like “Hate puts us all at risk”; it is to consider her actual ideas, identify the flaws therein, and rebut — or better, refute — them.

Many of us assume Canadians are generous and will always welcome newcomers. Yet last week’s extensive study of attitudes by the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada showed a large cohort aren’t fully embracing of minorities. Consigning such people to their own dialogue bubbles does nothing to shift their ideas or expose the problems within. Free speech is not simply a defence of ideas we agree with. It is a willingness to invite all views into public view, where those that can’t stand daylight will wither.