Geoff Russ: Will you trade your liberties for multiculturalism?
Sacrificing our inherited rights will be the price of failed immigration policies.
Following the horrific Bondi terror attack in Sydney that killed 15 people on December 14, New South Wales Premier Chris Minns publicly stated that Australia does not have “the same free speech rules that they have in the United States, and I make no apologies for that.”
For Minns, free speech and expression are to be capped in the name of multiculturalism to prevent similar future incidents. He justified his position as a duty “to knit together our community, that comes from different races and religions.”
That “community” included Sajid Akram, an Indian national and Australian permanent resident, and his son Naveed Akram, who was born in Australia. The two men were identified by police as the gunmen, and were captured on camera during the Bondi shooting, which was apparently inspired by the Islamic State (ISIS).
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, new gun laws were rushed through, and police powers were expanded to restrict protests following terror attacks. There has even been talk of banning certain slogans in Australia that are associated with hate and intimidation.
Is multiculturalism truly so fragile that speech must now become even more managed to function without violence?
Perhaps it is, and it is not worth overhauling our societies to accommodate that.
In Canada, an officially multicultural state, we also do not have an American-style First Amendment. Instead, we have freedom of expression with “reasonable” limits that can be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
Progressive Canadian legal culture treats “reasonable” as something that can be stretched to suit the fashions of the moment.
The doctrine of “reasonable limits” is not enforced solely by unelected judges. It is also enforced by licensing bodies, human-resources bureaucrats, and crushing reputational pressure, with consequences for real people, including those who have done no demonstrable harm to anyone.
Take the case of Amy Hamm.
A long-serving nurse in British Columbia, Hamm was fired by Vancouver Coastal Health after her regulatory body found that her commentary on gender identity and related topics constituted unprofessional conduct, even though her commentary took place outside the workplace and was not tied to caring for patients.
Public money can also be directed to reshape “reasonableness.” Recently, the National Post reported that Canadian Heritage provided roughly one hundred thousand dollars to an organisation called Toronto Palestinian Families.
The grant funded a project titled “Combatting Anti-Semitism and Anti-Palestinian Racism for All.” Ottawa is actively funding groups that want to reshape what counts as “reasonable,” and to expand definitions of racism and other accusations that can ruin lives.
As these limits stretch, the justifications stretch too, from halting harassment to expanded policing of speech and managing the minds of the public.
Criminal law is also moving in the same direction.
Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, is being pushed alongside proposals to eliminate the Criminal Code’s “good faith” religious-text defence for specific hate-propaganda offences. The legislation’s supporters insist it will help prosecute hate speech presented as religious piety.
Critics warn that Bill C-9 will stifle legitimate religious debate. Considering the sheer variety of religions now widely practised in Canada, Bill C-9 risks setting up constant contestation over what can be said publicly.
The time has come to remember why and how those raised in Anglo countries like Canada came to enjoy their liberties, free expression being only one. These liberties are not floating abstractions, but inherited practices, habits, expectations, and reflexes formed by our people and their ancestors.
The British conservative icon Edmund Burke wrote that English civil rights are both “entailed” and historical, and are passed down as if they were property.
Former Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker bluntly stated that he was “a free Canadian, free to speak without fear,” alluding to this same heritage.
Ryan Alford of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute has urged a revival of rational public debate in Canada, one that does not treat speech and expression as hazards to be tolerated and then managed through authoritarian controls.
That debate is part of what formed Canada, a country with a history that extends far past the age of colonisation and back to medieval England, where the seeds of liberty were planted and their fruits later brought to this continent.
Official Canadian multiculturalism, on the other hand, has no such lineage or power.
Multiculturalism in Canada is a managed arrangement that depends on the host culture to integrate countless differences and foreign inheritances without buckling and dissolving under the pressure. It also demands concessions from the majority to maintain it, such as national culture and all that comes with it.
The now-unpopular phenomenon of mass immigration, once justified by little more than more diverse food options, has helped to import overseas blood feuds that are glorified in city streets. In the case of Bondi, it has resulted in outright bloodshed.
These are societal cancers, but expanding limits on speech and expression will not cure hateful beliefs. Rather, it will drive extremists into darker, underground places, while the rationale of multicultural “social cohesion” strips the citizenry of their inherited rights.
If the state refuses to truly control who enters the country, it will be forced to control what the public can say. Managing speech becomes the price for bad immigration policy.
There is another option, and it is straightforward.
Governments, such as those in Australia and Canada, must have the steel to limit who is allowed into their countries. They must take into account the ideology, history, and societies that prospective newcomers come from, and make a judgment about their compatibility with Canadian life. Furthermore, Canada must unambiguously demand assimilation into the host culture.
Incompatible norms from abroad, especially the violent variety, cannot be allowed to overrun our inherited liberties and traditions. However, removing bad actors is still treated as something of a moral taboo.
Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian national and Canadian permanent resident, was convicted in 2015 for his role in a plot to derail a VIA Rail passenger train, and he received a life sentence.
This man is a would-be mass murderer, and has no business remaining in this country. Yet it was reported that Esseghaier obtained a stay from the Federal Court that delayed the immigration process on the grounds of potential serious mental harm.
There is no injustice in expelling would-be murderers from Canada, as well as their supporters.
The just option is to ensure they can never have a home here, or gain entry into it and thereby abuse our rights and traditions. Those gifts were formed over hundreds of years, through war, strife, and finally peace, and became part of the gold standard by which we measure the goodness of any state or society.
The impulse to preserve multiculturalism is not worth sacrificing what made Canada or Australia good and worthy countries. Treating our liberties as sacred is essential.
Nonetheless, Chris Minns proves that some progressive leaders feel differently.
The need for reasonable limits on speech and expression is obvious, especially when it comes to threatening violence or inciting it. There was also no need for further restrictions before the modern era of immigration.
Why should pressure groups and terrorists be allowed to change what was once such a strong equilibrium? Western societies should not bend to ideological imports, and it is better to expel those with the intent to reshape our world.
A country that does not defend its inheritances will lose them.
If the modern price of “holding together a multicultural community” is to muzzle the citizenry and allow the state to further adjudicate whether a statement is lawful or unlawful expression, the bargain is worthless.
Geoff Russ is the Editor-at-Large of Without Diminishment. He is a contributor to a number of publications, including the National Post, Modern Age, and The Spectator Australia.
