Nuanced. - 110. Camden Hutchison: Is Freedom of Expression in Danger? Law Professor Provides Key Insights

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

Aaron and Camden Hutchison discuss the fundamental concept of freedom of expression and its origins, as well as the ideas of influential thinkers such as John Locke and Sir John Stuart Mills. They explore why freedom of expression is essential and the various approaches democracies take to protect it. Additionally, the conversation turns to the controversial Canadian Bills C-11 and C-18, also known as the Online Streaming Act and Online News Act, respectively. Aaron and Camden present compelling counterarguments in favor of these bills while highlighting their potential risks and dangers. Camden Hutchison is an Associate Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, where his research and teaching focus on corporate transactions, comparative corporate governance, and the historical development of corporate law. He has also published on corporate taxation and competition law. His current research focuses on the relationship between legal policy and entrepreneurship.Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron. Freedom of expression is a topic we're hearing more and more about government censorship, Bill C-11, Bill C-18, whether or not the government is starting to control what Canadians are able to see. This is a topic I dive into with my guest today. What freedom of expression is, where it comes from, and how we should think about these complex topics. My guest today is Camden, Hutchison. Camden, it's such a pleasure to sit back down with you.

We did an episode a long time ago on how to start a business. And here we are in the brand new studio. Would you mind introducing yourself for individuals who may not have heard of you? Yeah. Hi. My name is Camden Hutchison. I'm a assistant professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia.

And I teach and research primarily in the area of business law, which is what I talked about with you the last time I was on your podcast, but I'm here today to talk about freedom of expression, which is another sort of growing research interest of mine. I'm very curious to get started on this, because first I want to understand, why does it matter? Where does this idea of freedom of expression come from? Well, freedom of expression is really one of the kind of cornerstone ideas of, you know, sort of Western liberal democracy. It's one of the cornerstone. ideas of Canadian democracy specifically. It's enshrined in the Charter of Rights and

Freedoms. So freedom of expression is something that, you know, I think that we're all, we're all, you know, familiar with the sort of general concept. But, you know, since the, you know, 19th century and earlier, it's really been kind of one of the core aspects of kind of modern liberal democracy and really one of the core aspects of modern liberalism, right? And so it's, it's enshrined in a constitutional sense in Canada and in many other countries. But it is important in a broader sense in that freedom of expression, which is the freedom to express your opinions, express your ideas, express your political viewpoints, your ideological viewpoints, your religious viewpoints, free from government prosecution or persecution or interference or regulation,

that freedom of self-expression is really, in my opinion, at least, the fundamental freedom upon which all other political freedoms rest, right? So, you know, your freedom to vote, to participate in democracy, your freedom from, you know, kind of arbitrary political interference in your life, right? All of those depend on your ability to express yourself, right? So if people are not free to express themselves, if people are subject to criminal punishment for the things that they say, things that the government doesn't approve of, that renders democracy itself hollow, right? Like, how can you participate in democracy if you're not allowed to communicate with your co-citizens about core ideas if you're not allowed to express yourself?

So it's a really, really important right. It's a fundamental right, and it's described as such in the Canadian Charter. So it's literally, you know, it's in Section 2. It is a fundamental freedom. So in the language of the charter, it's one of our fundamental rights. Where does it come from? Because you think we didn't always have this. At certain points, you didn't agree with someone.

You would just get in a fist fight with them. You'd just start a fight. You wouldn't grant this. So what was that early 19th century, the John Stewart Mills? Where does this come from? Because it needs to be articulated for people to really understand why it's about it. Yeah, that's a really good question. Because it is a fundamental freedom.

I think most people who live in, you know, kind of free. countries like Canada are aware of and appreciate to at least some extent. But in historical terms, it is a relatively recent political freedom. It's really sort of a post-enlightenment freedom. So it's something that, that, you know, kind of really emerged in the sense that we think about it today from, you know, the Enlightenment. So kind of from the development of kind of early liberal ideas in European polities. So people like, you know, kind of like John Locke in England.

were kind of like early advocates of this kind of freedom, more in the context of freedom of religion, right? So it sort of emerges out of, in the European context, it kind of emerges out of like very, very intense, violent religious strife that, you know, kind of racked Europe for decades and centuries. And right, so this idea of tolerance and kind of like allowing people to have their own views on things and allowing people to have their own ideas about things without just, you know, killing them or throwing them in prison or something like that, really kind of came out of this, this religious strife and sort of a, a recognition of the need for pluralism in society. The idea that if we don't tolerate each other, there's going to be violence, basically, right? So it kind of came out of that. And I would say that freedom of expression was articulated in its modern form, you know, by John Stuart Mills, who you mentioned. So he was, John Stuart Mills is kind of one of the foundational thinkers of liberalism.

He was a philosopher and a political economist in 19th century England, and he wrote on freedom, on liberty. His major work is called On Liberty. And in that work, he articulated an understanding of freedom of expression as being a negative right, so being in the sense that freedom of expression is a right. to be protected from government interference, right? So it's a, it's not a positive right in the sense that people have a positive right

to a platform necessarily or that they are, you know, have a positive right to some kind of resources that will allow them to express themselves, but it is a right against prosecution by the government, right? And he took a very, you know, for something like a very absolutist stance

on freedom of expression. And so I think that John Stuart Mill, Bill's ideas about freedom of expression are probably the kind of the modern basis for freedom of expression kind of under the First Amendment in the United States. Most of the jurisprudence for the First Amendment developed in the 20th century in the U.S. actually. It was kind of a – there wasn't really a lot of protection for freedom of expression before then. And certainly in the Canadian jurisprudence as well with the adaptation of the Charter. So if you look at the U.S. jurisprudence around the First Amendment and you look at the Canadian jurisprudence around Section 2, Section 2B specifically, where it protects freedom of expression, a lot of the ideas that are articulated by courts and jurists come, you know, indirectly and sometimes directly from Mills, from John Stewart Mills. This is one of the issues, I think, because how long ago was that 100 years ago getting close to?

John Stewart Mills. Oh, 150, 60, 70, so more than a century and a half. So our disconnect from those ideas, he's the modern person that we still refer to today. And nobody's come up with any clearer or more demonstrated arguments that it comes to everybody's minds as clearly as some of the points he made. Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously, I mean, there's been a lot of writing and thinking about freedom of expression since Mills. But, yeah, you would be surprised how much of even kind of the modern philosophy and jurisprudence around freedom of expression can sort of be tied back to mill. So in Canada, there's this conception of freedom of expression values or section 2B values. So in the Canadian charter, it's section 2B is what protects freedom of expression and other kind of expressive rights.

And the court, the Supreme Court of Canada, I should say, has articulated section 2B values. So these are values that are not in the charter itself, but which undergird the protection of freedom of expression that's in the charter. And those values, I mean, there's three of them, right? And it's the search for truth. That's one reason we protect freedom of expression is to facilitate the search for truth, participation in democracy, right? So we need freedom of expression to allow people to participate in democracy.

And then finally, individual self-fulfillment. The idea that freedom to express your ideas is kind of how people realize themselves. as individuals. So those three values, that all comes from John Stewart Mills. Like, he articulated those values. So it's, you know, he's been enormously influential. Can we go through some of those? This search for truth is always one that fascinates me because what does it mean?

What does it mean to search for truth? How do we think about that concept when we can't seem to agree on anything? And so it seems like truth is somewhat arbitrary to some people. Yeah. I mean, that's a really, really, really. deep question, which I'm probably, you know, not equipped to answer from a philosophical standpoint, but I would say, you know, truth, like the concept of truth may seem arbitrary to some people. I would say that, you know, truth is contested, right? And that different people

have different views about what is or is not true. And so there's a constant process that occurs in our society and occurs in all societies where truth is contested. Different people have different ideas about what's true. Different people have different ideas about the types of evaluative methods that you would use to assess what's true, the types of evidence that are relevant, right? Some people draw on spiritual sources for truth. Some people draw on scientific sources for truth. Like lots of people have, you know, many different conceptions of what is true. And it's sort of natural and expected and normal and perfectly fine that people would disagree about what's true. People disagree about, you know, whether or not, like I'm just

objective truth even exists, right? I'm probably more on the side. I'm a bit skeptical that we can really identify objective truth, just given the very wide variety in human psychology and human understanding. I think it's very difficult to say with authority what is or is not true in a kind of metaphysical sense, or at least I'm not prepared to make those types of judgments. And I don't think that the government is really in the right place to make those kind of judgments. But this idea that truth, is contested speaks to the importance of freedom of expression, right? Because if truth is contested and different people disagree about what is or is not true, then we need some kind of process to mediate those differing views. And we need a process to maybe help people get a better understanding of what is or is not true. So this is like referred to sometimes as the concept of the marketplace of ideas. That kind of like society is sort of a competitive marketplace place where a lot of people are throwing out ideas about what they believe is or is not true, trying to convince others. And the ideas that are the most persuasive will win out in this

competitive process. And that's kind of what we will accept as true. And I think that's basically how it works, right? I think that that's, you know, people are trying to persuade themselves or people are trying to persuade others of what they themselves believe. And the ideas that we should allow free expression of ideas and we should not allow, you know, either state. violence or interpersonal violence to kind of interfere with that process, right? We can't, we can't force people, you know, through coercion or through physical force to believe or not believe anything, right? We have to convince them.

We have to persuade them, right? We have to use evidence. We have to use arguments. And so this, this kind of competitive, interactive, you know, kind of organic process is what leads to a social understanding of truth. And that's one of the three, you know, primary philosophical justifications for for protecting freedom of expression and preventing, you know, kind of arbitrarial coercive interference

with what people believe. That seems like one of the challenges is that it takes work to uphold a democracy. It takes effort. You have to have conversations when you disagree with someone. And that seems like in this political climate, something we're less eager to do. If we disagree with someone,

it's a lot of work to find a middle ground, to work towards that. And this idea that we need to put in that effort in order to uphold these ideas and hold up these values, seems like a challenge. Yeah, I think that you're exactly right. So this kind of search for truth to the extent that it involves a contestation of ideas and to the extent that it involves engagement with ideas that you disagree with and, you know, toleration of the existence

of ideas that you disagree with and maybe even ideas that you find, you know, highly offensive, perhaps even threatening. That's hard, right? It's really uncomfortable. And it is kind of hard work to accept that people have all sorts of wild views that you may find dangerous or reprehensible, but you just kind of have to either accept it and live your life or you have to engage with those people and kind of try to convince them that they're wrong in some way or that you have a better perspective in some way. That is difficult work. And I think one of the disturbing trends that I've observed in our society today is that more and more kind of people across the political spectrum are willing to resort to coercion to deal with

ideas that they disagree with, ideas that they don't like. So people seem more and more comfortable to kind of enlist the power of government to control what people are saying or what people are thinking, right? So it's like now if somebody's saying something that you think is horrible, what's like, well, you know, they ought to pass a law, right? And then you're kind of enlisting the coercive force of the government to really kind of force people to say or not say whatever you believe that they should. You're an intellectual, so searching for things, this idea of truth, is something that you work through. You read other people's ideas of what they think is true, and you try and delineate some sort of understanding for yourself. I'm just curious,

What does the pursuit of truth look like for you? That's a great question. And again, I think that that, you know, that sort of speaks to, I don't know, like, I think that that question has philosophical aspects to it and even psychological aspects to it that I don't fully understand. But I can say that myself, you know, as an individual, the truth and trying to understand what is true and trying to find what is true, even though I think to a certain extent that's kind of an impossible goal is something that's deeply important to me, right? So I'm very,

very motivated by the search for truth. I want to understand. I mean, like, I'm an individual. I'm very aware of kind of how poorly I sort of understand the universe around me. I want to learn more. I'm a curious person. I want to, I want to search for truth, right? I want to understand what's going on. And I also have a very strong aversion to what I believe is untrue. So, when there's people out there in positions of influence or positions of authority and they're saying things that are not true, you know, and they're getting away with it. That bothers me, right? So it's kind of, and I, you know, again, and I'm not saying that we should pass a law and force them to shut up, but I'm saying, you know, like, I want to engage. I'm like, no, like,

that's, you know, that's not true, right? And, you know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll engage with that person and I'll rethink my position and I'll think, oh, actually, I, you know, I was wrong-minded about this and what, you know, they actually have some points, you know, when I kind of dig into what they're saying a little bit more. And that's part of the process of searching for the truth. Your third point was this idea of self-actualization, self-realization, that through this process you actually understand yourself better. And you think about going through high school, like I know a lot of people who will say,

oh, like, I'm not a math person based on like grade 11 math or I'm not this type of person based on some old information, but you keep combating those demons. You keep fighting the things that challenge you. You start to grow and see yourself in a different way. start to understand things, people who go through different religious belief systems, they start to go, well, I like this piece of this belief system, that piece, and they start to understand themselves in a deeper way. What does that mean? And how does that look for you? I mean, yeah, so that's, again, that's one of the traditional justifications for freedom

of expression that comes from, comes from Mills and then has been kind of developed and elaborated in a lot of the jurisprudential and kind of philosophical literature that came after it. you know, what it means for me personally is I think, you know, I'm, I'm an individual. I'm an individual list. I have a pretty, you know, kind of liberal attitude about things. And I sort of do believe that people should be free to realize who they are for themselves. And I'm very suspicious of, you know, kind of group mentality, you know, sort of group think, this idea that like everybody should kind of go along with everything, that everyone should sort of be a member of a community that sort of dictates what they think or what they say, whether that be a

national community or an ethnic community or a political community or what have you. Like, I'm thinking myself as just kind of a free thinker and I tend to like people who are free thinkers. I just think that makes the world more interesting. And I just think that that's like a really important part of being human, I guess. And, you know, fitting in and being part of a group and having, you know, being. a member of like a communal identity is also a part of being human, right? So there's a, you know, there's a tension. It's not like, you know, I'm not like some kind of like

radical, you know, extreme eccentric who like lives in a cave or something. You know, like I live in a society. I'm part of a society. I'm product of that. But like self-realization is something that's, you know, it's really important. I guess, you know, for my personal experience, it might be like kind of, you know, corny to bring up, you know, your own personal experiences, but since you asked, like, I was raised in a religious family, right? So I was raised Catholic, you know, went to church regularly. That was kind of an important part of my identity when I was young, and I was a believer, right? So I was a, you know, practicing Catholic. I had no reason to question what I was being taught, you know, all throughout high school. And then when I went

to university, and I was kind of living on my own for the first time, I took, you know, science classes in university. I took astrophysics. I kind of learned about the nature of the universe, and I'm not going to get too much into the details, but just kind of like having that sort of scientific perspective on the universe rather than a religious perspective, I just found the, you know, largely to the methodologies of the scientific method and kind of the types of, the sort of rigorous types of tests, the scientific knowledge sets for itself in sort of in making its truth claims, as opposed to the faith-based methods that, you know, religion uses for making its truth claims. I just found the truth claims of science

just so much more convincing and completely at odds with what I'd been taught in my religious background that I just completely gave up, like, very quickly. I was just like, okay, no, this is like, right. So I just like lost my religion in a very, very rapid process by being exposed to different ideas. And so like that was, I think, a self-realization on, on my part. And I think it's, you know, it's not like, I'm generally not like easily swayed by I think it was just like that it was like science spoke to my intuitions and a way that religion didn't. So like I was always kind of like growing up, I was always like, even though I like believed

it, I was always like never really satisfied with what I was being taught. It didn't, you know, just kind of believing things on faith just never really worked for me. But, you know, science doesn't ask you to believe things on faith, right? Science, you know, test itself, right? science is like the scientific method um you know is when it's working correctly it's like you're like literally actively trying to like disprove um the sort of scientific orthodoxy right in practice it doesn't always work like that but at least in theory it's a much more sort of rigorous

method for testing truth claims and again i'm not saying that to in any way like disparage spiritual beliefs or spiritual truth i mean i think that that's you know not for me personally uh but that's a completely legitimate understanding what's true as well I think my point is more just like everyone needs to kind of figure out what works for them from like, you know, an epistemological standpoint. And without freedom of expression, people can't do that, right? So in freedom of expression, it's not just about expression. It's also about being an audience and like hearing things, right? So, you know, you can imagine like in European history, it would have been a crime to teach anything that was kind of inconsistent with the Bible, right?

Like, you could be thrown in jail or killed, right? So in a social context where there's an absence of freedom of expression, people aren't allowed to figure out what they believe. I mean, it's actually quite terrifying, right? Like, you really need free access to ideas to figure out who you are in a very fundamental sense, I think. There was a lot there. The first piece I think that I'd like to go through is it's really important to get your

personal perspective on things because I think. a lot of the ideas we're going to be talking about are so abstract for everyday people that it's hard to figure out exactly where the rubber hits the road. The next piece is this relationship between religious ideas and rights, because there's an idea within the Judeo-Christian ethic that, like, the individual has some sort of value. And science would not say that. You think about how many thousands of people die every day. it's hard to feel to any one individual amongst 10,000 people died yesterday.

It's hard to feel any emotion towards that because it's just a number. And so I'm interested, what are your thoughts on the relationship between religious ideas and how we get to freedom of expression? Because as you said, disagreements happening in Europe that spark this conversation. Yeah, I mean, like, I think that kind of the – and I'm not an expert on the subject, but I think that, like, the history of religion and the history of freedom and expression are intertwined, right? So, like I said, like, you know, kind of, you know, when Locke was, was, when John Locke was arguing for religious tolerance, this was in a context of religious strife and religious violence between Protestants and Catholics in Europe where there's, you know, very, very little in the way of religious tolerance, right? So, like, religious identity was, you know, something that people killed each other over, right?

And it just led to, like, horrible, horrific wars and suffering. And so people kind of figured out, no, like we actually need to figure out how to like tolerate each other and get along. And so, you know, kind of, I think like radical religious intolerance is one of the things that led to freedom of expression. And then, you know, I think, and I'm not, I'm not a religious expert, but I think, you know, certainly Christianity and other religions, like they, there is a freedom. I think that there's a sort of respect for freedom of expression even within those religious traditions, arguably, right? So, I mean, like, the, you know, kind of the Protestant Reformation was to a certain extent. I mean, like Martin Luther was not by any means an advocate of freedom of expression. But, you know, the Protestant Reformation was sort of a, was a rejection of essentially what was perceived as an abuse of authority.

And it's kind of understanding that the individual, I mean, like Protestantism, to a certain extent, was sort of the emphasis of the individual's relationship with God, right? And kind of like, well, you can read the Bible and interpret the Bible and sort of, you know, understand the truth of God for yourself rather than depending on, you know, a human authority, right, that's sort of telling you, like a hierarchy that's telling you, like, well, this is what the Bible means. This is what you have to believe, right? That's kind of sort of, you know, at the origins of the Protestant Reformation. And I think that, you know, Protestantism is at a major impact on, on Europe.

European social history and that it did kind of inculcate the sort of individualism that we kind of associate with the Anglo-Saxon political tradition, for lack of a better term. This idea that like we have individual rights, we have individual freedoms, we are not subservient to any kind of hierarchy, whether it be a religious hierarchy or a political hierarchy. I mean, I think that that's something that you really kind of characterizes modern liberal democracy, particularly in the English-speaking world. The challenge I think we have today is that so many of these ideas go so far back, it's hard for the everyday person to reconnect them,

which is why I think it's important to kind of revive them and understand them and talk about them and rethink them. The second point you had was this idea of democracy. What is, by your definition, a democracy, and how does freedom of expression interact with that? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, a democracy, just to give like the sort of, you know, very, I'm not going to give it like a technical definition. I think we all kind of know what a democracy is in a general sense. A democracy is a political system in which, you know, you are allowed to vote for who leads you or who represents you, right? So in Canada and most countries, we have a representative democracy. So we vote for representatives who will ideally represent our interests in government. And that's how the country is run. Right. So we participate in choosing our leaders. That's that's democracy, essentially, at least in its practice. form. And freedom of expression is absolutely essential to democracy. Like, how can you have

free, fair, competitive elections if people are not allowed to express their views, either on political subjects or any other subject, right? So if you outlaw or you criminalize or you persecute or you somehow limit the range of subjects that people are allowed to talk about or the range of opinions that people are allowed to express, you have a sort of pseudo-democracy, where people are only allowed to talk about certain things, which means political discourse only involve certain things, which means that, you know, kind of your choice of who you potentially vote for or kind of, you know, what issues you're voting on is limited by the government, right? So it's kind of like the incumbent authority is sort of narrowing the scope of

what people are allowed to talk about, and that's going to have a big impact on political outcomes. So I think that, you know, freedom of expression is absolutely crucial to democracy. And any, you can have a democracy where there's not freedom of expression, but it's going to be a very, a very limited and truncated form of democracy. It's easy for us to think, because we've always had it, that it's going to stick around and that this is just normal and that when people, I think, talk about the idea that it's being infringed upon or that we're going down a slippery slope, that that's not going to happen. because it hasn't happened.

Can we go through some countries that you think lack freedom of expression? I mean, yeah, like, so like a very easy example of a country that lacks freedom of expression is the People's Republic of China, right? So in modern China, I mean, it's not a democracy. There's not even a veneer of democracy.

It's not a democratic country, but there's not freedom of expression. And I don't want to go too far and kind of like commenting on other countries' political systems. but there's clearly very severe costs and pathologies that derive out of that absence of free human expression, right? So it's like the government very, very tightly controls what people are allowed to say online to like a, you know, very, very broad extent. And, you know, that basically means that people, you know, and, you know, many, many, many people in China are, you know, free thinkers and they figure out ways to kind of get access to, you know,

information that they're otherwise not allowed to get. And, you know, I'm not saying that, like, you know, people in China are sheep or anything like that. But a lot of people in China are living under a sort of false information environment, right, where they're basically only told good things about the government. They're only told bad things about the things that the government thinks that they should feel bad about. And, you know, I don't know. I, I don't live in China, I've never lived in China, so I can't, that's not my experience, I can't speak to what that must be like. But for me, as someone who values the search for truth and values my individualism and

values my ability to kind of make my own decisions about things, that sounds horrifying. That just sounds absolutely horrifying. You know what I mean? Like I would never be able to tolerate living under that kind of political system. And, you know, a lot of people leave, right? So, you know, in Canada, right, we have, you know, tons and tons of very, very, very, bright, talented young people come from China to get educated in Canada, and a lot of them stay, right? I mean, it's just a much freer environment.

How do we think about this in our modern political climate? Because I think one of the challenges we're facing is we're afraid to talk about this spectrum. You've talked about the idea of absolutism and the idea of maybe a more democratic or a more balanced approach. I'm just curious as to what the sides are when we're talking about freedom of expression. Yeah, I mean, So I guess when you say like an absolutist understanding of freedom of expression, what you would mean is that freedom of expression should be an absolute right that the government should not infringe on in any way. That is often how the First Amendment in the United States is characterized as an absolute protection for freedom of expression. And in reality, it's not. There are certain forms of expression, certain types of expression are regulated in the United States.

So there's not absolute freedom of expression, even in the United States. Although I would say the United States, certainly out of large major countries, probably has the strongest freedom of speech protections of any country in the world, right? At least in like kind of major countries that I would think of. I think the United States does have the strongest freedom of. So it's kind of the closest to sort of the absolute. And then freedom of expression protections in Canada are very strong, but they're not absolute. Right? So because the protections of the charter, including Section 2, are modified by Section 1, the government can, you know, in certain cases, restrict freedom of expression. It's kind of subject to the sort of proportionality analysis of Section 1. So I guess I would say that, like, the First Amendment in the United States is written in absolute terms and is often interpreted in very absolute terms, whereas in Canada, I mean, really none of the provisions of the

charter are absolute. And so the government can make a case basically saying, well, in this instance, we actually do have to infringe on a charter right because it's so important, right? And then they have to, you know, kind of demonstrate in court, you know, why the interest is so important and why their approach to regulation is proportionate, right? So there's, I would say that there's a lot more wiggle room in Canada, which generally, I mean, like the government, you know, generally doesn't abuse. Like, I don't have like major, major concerns about kind of the state of freedom of expression in Canada, although I sort do have concerns about some of the, some of the future trends I'm kind of observing under the

current government. But then you look to maybe, you know, European countries and you have, you know, or from my perspective, actually kind of weird or concerning limitations on freedom of expression. In European countries, it's very, you know, it's very common to, you know, for reasons that are probably obvious. There's a lot of restrictions on. on, like, advocating Nazism or, you know, displaying swastika, that kind of thing. But even, like, weird things, kind of, like, insulting the government. It was, like, there was a woman was prosecuted in France recently for, like, insulting the president. Just, like, you know, like, very, you know, but, like, every, you know, and there's a lot of freedom expression in France.

It's just, like, every country kind of has its, it's sort of, you know, kind of weird. So it is sort of a spectrum. It's, you know, countries like, like China, other kind of what I would describe as maybe sort of, you know, like Vietnam, kind of like pseudo-communist country. They're sort of post-communist economically, but they maintain kind of the political unf freedoms of communism. Those countries don't really have robust freedom of expression protections. But it's something, you know, freedom of expression is, you know, you kind of made the comment that it's something that's kind of old and maybe we've like lost touch with it.

But I actually think that like most people really around the world do have a kind of intuition that they should be free to say what they think. You know what I mean? This kind of like, even people who are not really well-versed in law or in political. You know, there's kind of this like, hey, it's a free country. Like, you know what I can, you know, it's kind of like, you know, if you don't like what I'm saying, don't listen. Like that, I think that's a pretty common intuition that people have. And then it gets difficult, like, I think another common intuition that people have is when they hear something that they don't like, they're like, no, no, you need to shut up, right?

So it's like, I mean, I think that that's kind of the tension that a lot of modern societies have to deal with. What's your preference? I mean, I'm very, very strongly on the, I wouldn't say I'm a, I wouldn't say I'm like a free speech absolutist because I'm not an absoluteist about anything. Like I always sort of reserve, like I just don't think the reality of human experience is based on absolute principles. So I'm not an absoluteist on anything, but I'm pretty close when it comes to freedom of expression. I think that like, yeah, people should be allowed to say what they want. And if you don't like it, just I don't know, don't listen, don't engage. or oppose them, right?

Like, you can engage and, you know, tell people why they're wrong or tell them why they're wrong. But, no, I mean, I'm, I'm very, I'm personally, I'm very tolerant of disagreement. I don't get bothered when people disagree with me. I don't get bothered when people say things I disagree with. I'm very rarely offended. So that's kind of my mentality is like if somebody says something I disagree with that I don't like, I'm just, okay, I'm going to live my life. Like, it's not something that really gets me worked up.

Where are your red lines in terms of freedom of expression? What things, if I started taking away some of your rights, would you see as concerning that you would start to change your behavior? You'd decide this isn't a place that I can withstand. What are some of those? You mean in terms of like political limitations on freedom of expression? Just your experience as we start to look at certain laws as a law in France stand up. Yeah, I mean, I guess I would give an example. Like one example I would give, so I'm an academic, right?

And so freedom of expression is particularly important in the academic context. That's, you know, so academics, like a university professor. So I have academic freedom to kind of say what I want, teach what I want, research what I want, right, as long as I'm not, you know, like being abusive or something. Like I can kind of like say what I want in the classroom. I can teach what ideas I want to teach. I can do the kind of research I want to do. There's no, there's really like no limits on kind of like the content of my expression because there's a recognition in the academic world that. academics need to be free to pursue unpopular ideas, offensive ideas, potentially even dangerous

ideas, because the university is kind of a special place where you really need that kind of intensely protected freedom to pursue what's unorthodox, right? Because that's kind of how knowledge is advanced through kind of like breakthroughs that often come from unorthodox positions. So in the United States right now in Florida and Texas and a number of other states, the state governments are implementing or planning to implement very, very severe restrictions on academic freedom. So it's

typically from Republican governments in the U.S. that are sort of reacting to what they perceive as excessive wokeness in universities by essentially banning the teaching of those ideas. So it's like a very, very severe restriction on academic

freedom. And that's a situation where, and like I know people who are at university, you know, like, university professors in those states, I would not be able, I would leave. I would absolutely not be able to tolerate that. Like, even if it wasn't, you know, and I'm not someone, just in my own teaching, my own thinking, like, I'm not one of, I'm not teaching, like, particularly, like, woke ideas in the classroom, I don't think. So I probably wouldn't be affected by those laws directly. But I just, I just, just, just the idea of it, that you can, like, regulate what I'm allowed to say, that you say, like, I can't teach,

you know, critical race theory or critical race theory or critical. gender theories, like, absolutely not. Like, there's just no way I would be able to tolerate that. Like, I would, I would leave. And if I couldn't leave, I would quit my job. There's been an increase in this idea of being offended by bad ideas and that that should be restricted to a certain extent. How do you think we think about these issues?

That the idea should be restricted or that people shouldn't get so offended? Both, I suppose. I mean, I think the people in our moment, right, like so, like in the year 2023, something I've noticed, a lot of people have noticed, I would say over the last 10 years plus, I think people are too easily offended, right? I think that we, I don't know, I can't diagnose where it came from, but we're in a culture of just constant outrage and offense. And I'm old enough to remember when that wasn't the case, right? It's something, it really is kind of a recent thing. I think it corresponds to like the rise of kind of online culture to a certain extent,

but just this idea that everyone is aggrieved and offended by everything and just like everything has to be a fight and like you know cancel culture to use sort of a cliched term but you know what I mean just the kind of like you know sort of informal persecution of people for like having the wrong ideas or like bad takes or whatever or just like oh how could you say that you're a villain like I don't that doesn't speak to me at all like I just I don't get that offended by things and if it's like something that's really serious then I'll comment on it or maybe I'll engage with a person who said it but like I would never try to like silence someone like I just don't believe in that like I'm not I'm not I just don't

believe in like trying to shut people down um so that is that's sort of an unfortunate development in our culture um I think that people are just way too offended way too often and it's just sort of like like I think it has I think it has freedom of expression implications right I think it chills speech and it chills discourse but like it's also just like it's just lame like it's just like chill out you know what I mean like it's just like it's just sort of

annoying so I don't I don't really care for that but that again is like that if it's as long as it's as long as like the government's not involved like I don't really care like you know what I mean because like just like I said like maybe I think people

should chill out but like they don't have to right they don't have to do what I say like they can go and they can, you know, engage and, you know, criticize people constantly if that's what they want to do. It's not, it's not up for me to tell them to how to react to things. So it's, it's really, that's more of an annoyance. That's more of an annoyance and kind of culture right now. But what concerns me a lot more is when the government gets involved, because the government, you know, has a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence and can literally, in theory, like, put you in jail, like if you say the wrong things, right? So, and that's, you know, in Canada,

there's a number of laws that sort of restrict expression. And if you violate those laws, the consequences are very serious. They're much more than annoying. Let's start maybe with hate speech because it's existed longer, so we've sort of seen it start to play out. First people experience perhaps being offended by something, being insulted by something, feeling like something isn't fairly representative of the average person and want to call that out. Slowly, that leads into laws and rules and restrictions. And now we're starting to see

the idea of tribunals and rules around how we're able to communicate. What are your thoughts? This isn't something that exists in the United States, but does exist here in Canada. Yeah. So, right. So I guess just to kind of point out, one of the big differences in the freedom of expression landscape between the United States and Canada is that in Canada, hate speech, engaging in hate speech, right? You can be criminally prosecuted for engaging in hate speech. Whereas hate speech in the U.S., the Supreme Court of the United States has deemed is protected by the First Amendment. So you cannot be criminally prosecuted for engaging in, you know, hate speech, quote-unquote,

in the U.S., but you can in Canada. And I think the issue of hate speech is an issue that, as you mentioned, like, the history of the issue of hate speech extends far, far, extends back a lot further than kind of like the current sort of like call-out culture that I'm describing, right? So hate speech is like, you know, is a real issue. I think the criminalization of hate speech is something that really kind of came out of the post-World War II environment and the Holocaust. And like, you know, hate speech is like, you know, hate speech that's criminalized. I think that the target is like very, very extreme speech that's really meant to develop or derile hatred, you know, like literal hatred against ethnic minorities or ethnic groups, right?

And so, like, in the United States, you have a, you know, in both the United States and in Canada, not only you have the example of the Holocaust and, like, you know, horrible kind of crimes against minority groups that have occurred in European history, but in the United States and Canada, I mean, you have a lot of just, you know, outright hatred towards minority groups, whether it be black people, whether it be Asian Americans, Asian Canadians, indigenous Canadians, right? Like, there's a real history there, right? And so hate speech laws kind of respond to that. I think what's going on right now to kind of tie this to our cultural moment. And in my article, we're not talking a lot about my article, but in my article, I'm very critical of the Supreme Court of Canada's hate speech jurisprudence. But I do say in the article, I believe the Kiexter case was correctly decided. So just Kiekstra for the audience is kind of like the sort of the first landmark

freedom expression, post-charter freedom expression cases in Canada, where someone was prosecuted under the criminal hate speech statute for basically teaching anti-Semitic doctrine to high school students. And I think that that, I do think that the hate speech law in Canada is constitutional. Like, I do think that it's consistent with the charter of rights and freedom. So I'm not saying that, like, under the Canadian constitution, you can't have hate speech laws. But what concerns me right now is this sort of inflation of hate speech or this. kind of using like so you see this where people will say well if you say x that's hate speech or if you say why you're a nazi or if you advocate this you're defending genocide or if you do

this that's eugenics and kind of using the most extreme language possible to describe disagreements that really don't warrant that type of extreme language right so there's this kind of inflation and rhetoric I've noticed where like if somebody encounters an idea and sure it might be an offensive idea but it's not necessarily hate speech or it's not necessarily Naziism or it's not necessarily calling for genocide or something like that but then they label it in these really extreme terms and that creates the implication that the government should be able to regulate it and so I think that that's a really you know I hate to use the cliche of the slippery slope but it is like that's a very dangerous path to go down where you just sort of have this inflation

of rhetoric where like anything that people don't like is sort of labeled in the most extreme negative terms possible in a political context where, like, you can actually outlaw what people are saying. So if you're like, well, that's hate speech, well, you can outlaw hate speech. Or if you're like, that's, you know, you're advocating genocide. It's like, well, you can outlaw that. And I think that these terms are being applied to things that don't really warrant that extreme language.

Can you tell us about your article? What's interested you in this field, in this topic? Yeah. So the article, it's a pretty straightforward. kind of doctrinal article on Canadian freedom of expression jurisprudence. It was an odd project in that I am not a constitutional law scholar. I'm not an expert on Canadian freedom of expression jurisprudence. I'm not even Canadian. I'm from the United States, and I get to move to Canada about six years ago. And my expertise such that it is is in business law and corporate law. So it

a very kind of odd project to take on. And I guess the history of it is, you know, sort of living in Canada, kind of observing what's going on, some of the things that we've talked about over the last few minutes. I was sort of concerned by a lot of the legislative projects that the current federal government has been working on and that they've successfully enacted recently, some of them. And I disagreed with them. I was concerned with them. I was like, I think people should be talking about these issues more. And so I thought about like writing an op-ed kind of on freedom of expression and like why I thought some of the things that the government was doing were not consistent with with my understanding of freedom of expression.

And I realized pretty quickly that if I was going to write anything that was intelligently responsive to freedom of expression as it exists in Canada, I would really have to like educate myself on the charter and on the charter jurisprudence. And I sort of, you know, I kind of went back and forth about whether or not I really wanted to make that investment because that would take a lot of time. time. I have to do a lot of reading to kind of understand the jurisprudence. And it just so happened, this was like two summer ago. I think I had a couple of research assistants were working on an empirical project for one of my corporate law articles. And I was kind of waiting on them to do the research. And it was in the summer. And like that was the main project I was working on. And so I was knew it was going to take them a couple months. And I had kind of a lull. And so I was like, all right, well, maybe I'll just try to like, you know, I'll just spend like the next. couple of months reading about, you know, reading freedom expression cases, reading freedom expression articles. And I, you know, I got myself up to speed to the extent that I was

like, no, I think I can actually write more than an op-ed. I think I can write, you know, a, like an actual peer-reviewed academic article. And I was very, very uncertain about what I wanted to do that. I'm, yeah, I'm an assistant professor, which means I don't have, I don't have tenure yet. and so I was like, should I be taking on a topic that's kind of outside of my expertise? It's also, frankly, it's a controversial topic, right? I was writing about hate speech. And so I was very hesitant to really commit. And then I talked to some of my colleagues and they were very supportive.

They're like, no, no, no, absolutely like, you know, don't worry about tenure. Like, you should be writing about what you're passionate about. Like, that's kind of the whole point of being a professor. And so, you know, thanks to my colleagues, they kind of like, you know, pushed me in that direction and I ended up writing it. And I don't think it's, it's not a perfect article by any means. I think it has some strength in its weaknesses. But I'm very proud of it. I'm very proud that I sort of made the decision to write something that I am passionate about. So it was kind of a risk and it turned out well. What are some of your key takeaways? Some of the things that you

were like, I learned something. I changed my perspective on this. I grew in this way. Yeah. I mean, I think that, I guess like maybe two things. So as I'm mentioned, I'm from the United States, and when I say that freedom of expression is a passion of mine, I'm not a constitutional law scholar, but when I was in law school, I went to law school in the U.S., just always, and again, I really kind of, I kind of have trouble articulating why, but just freedom of expression is just something that is just, it's just very important to me. Like, it's just one of the core intuitions I have, like, as a human being, is that, like, we should be free to express themselves. Like, I don't know where that comes from. It's just,

that's just my attitude. Was that in your family? Because that is sort of, more of a U.S. thing when I think of like U.S. shows. Yeah, I mean, I'm from, I mean, I'm from the U.S. So it could be cultural, right? It could be like in, but like, to be honest with you, before law school, I was never really, I was like, I was never really political. I wasn't really, I didn't know anything about the law before I went to law school. Like, that wasn't really my background.

So I don't know where it comes from. I mean, my parents, I would say particularly my mother, is like very kind of, just very like plain talk like she just says what she thinks you know like I love her for it but she's like that's like her personality she just like does not care like she just she just you know says what she thinks and she doesn't really you know and if you have a problem with it she's like she's okay with that right it's so maybe I just maybe I got that from her um like she she's like a truth teller right she doesn't she doesn't try to be politically correct um so maybe I got that from her um so shout out to mom uh but it's just a strong intuition I had

and I think I approached this project one of the things that was really, really important to me and I think I succeeded at is I really did not want to approach the Canadian freedom of expression jurisprudence

from a U.S. perspective and be like, well, in the U.S., we have the First Amendment and we have absolute freedom of speech protections and that's the way it should be in Canada. That's not the way I approach the project. The way I approach the project is I want to learn how the charter works.

I don't want to learn how Section 2B works and I want to figure out if the jurisprudence makes sense or if I agree with it on the terms of the charter, right? So I started with the charter. I didn't start with the First Amendment. I started with the charter and I was like, duh, I was like, is it true to the charter? I kind of use that as my touchstone. And I'm very, you know, kind of originalist in my thinking about constitutional law. So, like, for me, like the written text of the charter was kind of like, that's the key. That's kind of like where I started. And so I learned a lot about the charter, right? And I, And it did change, I am, after writing this project and after doing the research, it did change rate of views.

I am less of a free speech absolutist than I was. So it is, it has made me less of a free speech absolutist. I think I was probably, probably, you know, I was like, I'm not absolutist about anything. I probably was absolute about freedom expression before I started this project. And now I think of it in more practical terms, right? It's like, if you could actually, like, if you were certain that you could prevent something terrible from happening, you know like the Holocaust or something like that by infringing people's freedom expression then I'm like no you should infringe the freedom expression like that's

like I've kind of have like a more kind of pragmatic view on it now was there something that happened something you read an experience you saw that changed that I think it was more um and I don't I don't want to say that my views before were wrong or that my views now are right or anything like that it's no not any personal experience you're just thinking about it and and sort of like I'm like you know what maybe I think it's easy to take absolute stances on things, right? Like, it's sort of seductive. Like, it's easy to just say, like, well, no,

freedom of expression, no matter what, because it's simple and, like, not thinking about the edge cases where it's like, well, actually, maybe there's situations where you do need to compromise on principle. Like, that's not satisfying, but I think a more kind of mature view of things

as sort of recognizing that, like, life is messy, life is complex, and, like, principles don't always carry the day, if that makes any sense. Embrace the ambiguity. Yeah, yeah. And so it's like, I think there are an edge And, like, you know, I think, like, restricting hate speech, if I, you know, if it was up to me to design the laws of Canada, would I include criminal, like, would I make hate speech a crime? Probably not. But, like, I'm also, like, okay with it. You know what I mean? I think that the hate speech statute in Canada is, like, quite narrow. And I think it's consistent with the charter. So that was one thing that changed. And then in terms of what I learned, I guess my overall approach in the article is I'm very critical of the Supreme Court's hate speech jurisprudence.

So like basically my main argument, and I'll try to sum it up very broadly, but my main argument is basically that the existing Section 2B jurisprudence around what I describe as disfavored speech or marginalized speech. So this is speech, like hate speech would be an example of this, speech that's basically outside the bounds of mainstream society. So speech that like pretty much everybody agrees is bad. Like, that's what I described as a kind of like marginalized speech. And the Supreme Court of Canada basically calibrates constitutional protections for that type of speech, and I'm simplifying a bit, based on its assessment of the value of the speech. So, like, in the hate speech example, right, the Supreme Court calibrates and weakens the constitutional protections that are afforded to hate speech by its assessment that that is low value speech, right? So my main argument is that those kind of judicial assessments as to the value of speech are illegitimate and are inconsistent with the very concept of freedom of expression.

And so what I say is you can regulate disfavored speech, right, to a certain extent. You can, like, for example, you can regulate hate speech. You can criminally prosecute hate speech, but it has to be based on the anticipated harms of the speech, not the value of the speech. So the current framework is sort of like, well, we're not going to afford protection of the speech because it's low value speech, right? This is like, you know, and the kind of, the evidence that's presented as to why the speech is low value is, is very weak. It's essentially like, well, everybody knows that this is bad. Like, you know, it's just sort of an assertion where I'm like, no, no, no, we actually

need evidence that allowing this speech to take place in society is going to lead to tangible harm to human beings, right? And that's sort of my alternative approach. And that approach, I mean, I won't get into it too much. That approach, I mean, it has its issues too, right? It's not, that's not a perfect solution. But I think focusing on, like, what are the tangible harms that will occur if we allow this speech to take place is a much more objective standard of analysis than just the value of the speech. Because I think that whether or not the speech has value is completely subjective, right? The Supreme Court of Canada may think that a certain category of speech is low value.

And most Canadians may agree that the speech is low value. But clearly the person who's saying it doesn't think it's low value. And like there's probably some people that agree with them, right? So just because they're in a minority, even if it's a very, very tiny minority, and even if the speech is, you know, deeply problematic or even dangerous in some sense, I don't think that's what matters. What matters is, I guess what matters is like the danger part. Like, is this going to lead to people being harmed in some material way?

So, yeah, if I'm understanding you correctly, it's that oftentimes some of the best revolutions and ideas and new thoughts are unique and one person has them. So if we all, if all of Canada and all of the Supreme Court all agree that this is not value speech, then this person gets shut down. But there was no harm. And so the risk is that we're conflating, judging the value. of something with the harm of it and misusing one for the other because in this unique circumstances sounds like likely the speech is low value and it's harmful but you can't use

that every single time yeah and i mean like you know so if it's a lot of a lot of hate a lot of actual hate speech prosecutions are kind of it's it's people who are frankly like very marginalized people i mean they're like you know tend to be sort of eccentrics um they don't really have like much of a following they're sort of saying crazy crazy things. And often what they're saying is legitimately very reprehensible. But it's just like I don't really, so we have to put these people in prison, like I just don't really see the justification for it. Now, if it's somebody who has like a following and they're like inciting violence and it's like, oh my God, this person is actually, you know, going to, like what they're

saying is going to lead to really negative outcomes for people. That's a different story. But yeah, I mean, and just sort of the, again, it's so easy to just dismiss, you know, hate speech as bad or wrong and just not afford any protection. And, you know, in my opinion, it is bad and it is wrong. But like, you know, there's so many sort of cases, both in history and hypothetically, where like almost everyone in society agrees that something is right. And then there's like a very tiny minority that has a different view. And then kind of thinking changes, social circumstances change, society develops a certain way. And then that tiny minority opinion is vindicated, right?

And I'm not saying that, like, hate speech theories will ever be, will ever be vindicated. What I'm saying is, like, we don't know from any kind of authoritative standpoint what will or will not carry the day in the marketplace of ideas. Yeah. Cannabis is a good example. Obviously, everybody kind of agreed 50 years ago on a perspective on it. Things have changed. Now it's legalized.

A lot of people didn't see that coming. Cilocybin would be another. They had an early day's opinion that it was all good. Then it went all bad. and for the past 50 years we've dealt with it being viewed as all bad, and now we're starting to reopen kind of the conversation and go through some of these things to really understand it better. Can you tell people how they can find your article?

Yeah, so probably the best way to find it is to just Google it. I mean, it's available on like a number of online sources. So if you just Google, the title of the article is freedom of expression, colon, values, and harms. So if you just enter that as a search query on Google, it'll probably come up by me, Camden Hutchison, you can access it through, like, if you Google my name, it'll take you to my UBC webpage, and then you have to navigate a bit, but you can find it there. So, you know, it's out there. Do a little bit of sleuthing, and you'll find it. Bill C-11. It has gotten a lot of feedback, doesn't seem to have changed to the government's perspective. Seeing this legislation

early on, what are your thoughts on it? It's now the law of the land. How do we think about it? Yeah, it's now the law of the land. I'm not an expert on. Bill C-11 or what it contains. As a content creator, you may know more about it than I do. But I think, so basically just to kind of describe what it is, so Bill C-11

essentially updates the Broadcasting Act to include online media services within the jurisdiction of the CRTC. So it's basically bringing online services like YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, that kind of thing, into Canadian broadcasting regulation, which a lot of people would argue is sort of a necessary update. But it sort of interacts with CanCon requirements in a deeply problematic way.

So what Bill C-11 requires is that online tech companies that either platform or produce their own media, many of these companies being based in the United States, they have to invest a lot of money in producing CanCon, which is like, okay. What is Canadian content? Oh, yeah. So when I say CanCon, what I mean by that is Canadian content. So it's sort of a long story, but like basically Canadian content or CanCon is legally defined media content or artistic content that is produced in Canada and receives special

protections from the Canadian government, right? So I didn't grow up in Canada, but I'm sure anyone who did, you'll know that if you listen to, like, the radio, there's a, like, a very, very significant proportion of, like, the music you hear on the radio is by Canadian artists. And that's not because Canadian artists are the most popular or because that's what audiences are demanding, it's because radio stations are legally required to play Canadian content, right? So you have kind of a similar thing in, like, the television industry. So they're extending that to... I didn't know that. They're extending that to the online realm, and they're requiring companies like Netflix to basically finance the creation of Canadian content, which people can agree or disagree

with that, but that's one of the things they're doing. I think somewhat more problematically, they're also requiring content platforms like YouTube would be probably the most salient example to modify their algorithms to prioritize Canadian content for Canadian users. So right now with YouTube, and I'm someone like, I use YouTube personally. I know you like upload, you know, your podcast to YouTube. YouTube has a kind of proprietary algorithm which sort of predicts what different users will like and presents them with that, right? And it's kind of, and YouTube's interest is like basically YouTube has an economic interest. It's, you know, the company's based on advertising to try to provide people with what they

want, right? So it kind of analyzes the videos that you watch and then provides you videos based on that. So what the Canadian government is going to require under C-11 is that YouTube and other kind of similar service providers, they change their algorithms to basically boost Canadian content and then, you know, necessarily, you know, kind of throttle non-Canadian content, right? So we're going to get, we're going to start to get like an artificially high amount of Canadian content. I think that that's problematic in and of itself. And then that I think that Canadians should be able to choose what they watch. And, I mean, I guess they're not literally choosing.

YouTube is kind of choosing for them. But YouTube is using a algorithm that's based on their own viewing history. Right? So YouTube is trying to provide audiences with what they want. That's going to change. So, like, you're no longer going to be presented with what you want necessarily. You're now going to be presented with a lot of media content produced primarily in Eastern Canada. So it's going to, like, sort of skew your.

And we don't know, like, we don't know how this is going to be implemented. So what I'm describing, it could be a very minor thing that nobody notices, or it could be huge, like, now we're just getting inundated and, like, CanCon. We'll have to see. Like, it's not going to be, it's not going to be implemented right away. But for me, it is, it's a little bit different than freedom of expression, but it is deeply concerning to me that the Canadian government would be choosing or filtering what Canadians are viewing on YouTube or anything else, right?

Like, it's, you know, it's, we've seen this with, with Twitter, with Facebook. There's been a lot of, a lot of controversies over media companies kind of filtering or boosting or throttling or silencing different voices. I'm not, I don't have a lot of energy around those kind of controversies, but I do have a lot of energy around the Canadian government doing that, right? So, like, I just, I do not, I'll be very frank, I do not trust the current government to be, you know, to be fair or impartial in the type of content that it tries to, it tries to boost or it tries to throttle. So, and also the definition of what is CanCon is itself deeply problematic. And that, like, a lot of things that you would assume are CanCon because they're produced almost entirely in Canada are not due to, like, very kind of arbitrary aspects of

the legal definition. And, like, let me just, again, let me describe, like, what, like, okay, so, like, the Steelman argument in favor of supporting CanCon is, you know, that we need to, this is a way to preserve Canadian identity, and we need to, like, you know, kind of boost Canadian voices and, like, you know, Canadian stories and media and art, and this is like kind of like a national pride thing. And I think that those arguments are legitimate, right? There's, there's arguments to be made in favor of that. But I think, in my opinion, the reality is that this is much more of a, basically a cash transfer to legacy media creators in Eastern Canada, who have very close ties to the liberal government.

Like, that's, you know, this is just basically forcing U.S. tech companies to fund the production of media in eastern Canada. Like, that's essentially what this is. It's very, very cynical. And I feel like the government is sort of playing with fire when they're, like, sort of making these moves that really have pretty significant implications for freedom of expression, or at least freedom to, like, kind of have, have a sort of, you know, like a, to be able to watch YouTube or, or, you know, read the news or listen to music or whatever kind of not filtered by the government like to me i think that that seems pretty important um and they're just doing that it's just they're just literally doing this as like a forced subsidy right it's just it's just to kind of fund and company media interests and yeah the cancun thing is very weird and i i know that and this might be

something you you would know more about maybe i can ask you about it offline but like a lot of content creators in canada are very concerned about this because they don't know if they'll be deemed cancon or not. Like, you actually, you could be like, you know, a Canadian in Canada producing content. Like, it might not count as CanCon, right? And even if it does, if YouTube boosts your content in Canada, they might tweak their algorithms. You basically get de-boasted like everywhere else. So, like, it actually limits your worldwide audience because YouTube might be like, well, we need to kind of balance things out from a revenue standpoint. So a lot of content creators in Canada are very, very opposed.

to Bill C-11 because they do not know how it's going to affect them and they're concerned that it's going to hurt them. So this just seems like, and again, it's a nuanced issue, right? I'm obviously presenting my own kind of biased perspective on it. It's a nuanced issue, but it just seems, it seems problematic and just, it's very kind of fitting with the current, and I don't want to be partisan about this, but just like the current government is just very enthusiastic about regular. and controlling the information and the media that Canadians are exposed to.

And it's just something it really sets off alarm bells for me. But they seem to be very, very eager and willing to regulate, monitor, and potentially even censor what Canadians are exposed to online. The counterargument being that when you get like a PVR or something, you get maybe 100 channels, you don't get to choose what's aired on those channels. you get 100 channels with YouTube, the same sort of concept is that you get access to everything, but what you see might, like, on your algorithm may be different, but you can still type in whatever you like.

Yeah, totally, totally. So like, so Bill C-11 will not, it will no way, like, prevent you from viewing certain types of content. It's just about the algorithm. So on YouTube, you know, like, as I'm sure you know, as I'm like, probably anyone who uses YouTube knows, and I like YouTube, I use YouTube quite a bit, YouTube kind of just serves up for you suggested videos and like you kind of like and I'm not even saying that that's like I don't think the algorithm is that great like I have a lot of you know it seems like the way that

the algorithm works is like you'll watch a video and they're just sort of like just sends you more and more videos that are like that which is like not really doesn't really seem like that that guy even videos from the same channel um but like now we're like we're just going to be getting like a lot of like weird videos that are like from Quebec and it's just like why are like why am I getting you know what I mean like so it's just going to be surfacing videos that I'm guessing that users are probably not going to be interested in because if they're interested in it, they'd be searching it out and therefore it would already be presented to them as part of the algorithm. But you're absolutely right. So this is not prevent people. But like,

I don't, I would say I, like I used to, there's literally four YouTube channels that I subscribe to. I don't go on YouTube and like type specific content creators or like search for specific things. I just kind of go on. Like I'm into video games. I'm in other stuff. And YouTube just kind of like gives me that stuff. That's kind of how I use YouTube. It's very serendipitous. So I do kind of rely on the algorithm. So now the algorithm is presenting, I don't know. And I'm, again, like, that's like, I don't, I don't know. I just don't like it. The fear, I think, is this idea that you won't know, and we already don't know with YouTube, how they make these decisions, what the logic is, what the roots are that are allowing this video

to appear first. Oftentimes, I mean, if you type in horses five times, likely going to see a video about horses. But the idea that the government is now in control or influencing what you're seeing as a priority that may eventually start to shape your perspectives. Right. And again, we don't know how this is going to be implemented, right? So maybe this will be implemented in a way that's innocuous, that doesn't raise concerns. Maybe it is just like, hey, we need to expose these Canadian artists a bit more.

And it's not a big thing. And maybe I'm getting worked up over nothing. But, like, we don't know because the law is very vague, and it allows the government to do quite a bit, right? So it could totally change people's experience using, and it's not just YouTube, right? It's a whole variety of different online media platforms. And to your point, it sounds like this government is not going in with the idea of we're treading very carefully. We understand that the waters are muddy. We want to be very gentle and very cautious about how we implement this.

They've done it somewhat boldly. I interviewed Michael Geist. This is his whole enchilada, and he was very concerned that it doesn't seem like the government is genuinely listening to the people you described who have genuine concerns about this. No, no. And I watched the interview you did with Michael Guy. So he's someone, he's been like one of the leading voices kind of in opposition to this, right? And I think that a lot of his arguments are very, very persuasive, right? And I think that he's right that the government has approached this in a really kind of, I guess, bold would be.

like the nice way of putting it, but, you know, like kind of a, you know, very aggressive way. And I think one of the, one of the fights over, like Bill, like C-11, something I would rather just didn't exist at all, but if it's going to exist, well, one of the fights was whether or not user-generated content would be excluded, right? So basically, can we be, at the Senate, there was an amendment to exclude user-generated content from government regulations. So can we at least be sure that Canadian citizens who are generating content and uploading it that they're not subject to these regulations. So the government's not regulating them.

And the government just flat out refused to accept that amendment. So they said no. And they were very frank about it. They're like, we need to preserve the flexibility to regulate this content because otherwise our regulatory scheme, which by the way, we don't know what that is yet. That's to be determined. Like basically we need maximum flexibility. Otherwise we're going to be kind of hamstrung in this. And so that's very concerned. It's like, well, what do you need maximum flexibility to do. Like, what do you, like, what are you anticipating doing? Like, why do you need, why do you need all this power to regulate, you know, what Canadians

are posting online? Is this a freedom of expression concern? It's a, you know, this is a, yes and no, it's a weird one. I think it's sort of adjacent to freedom of expression. The government is not, in Bill C-11, to my knowledge, is not planning on censoring anyone, right? What they're doing is they're basically, again, to kind of recap, they're forcing U.S. tech platforms to moderate and filter what Canadian audiences view based on decisions made by the Canadian government. So that's not a freedom of expression issue per se in that it doesn't involve censorship. But what it does involve is the government platforming certain types of content.

And I guess they're doing it, I think, largely for economic reasons. And in Canada, there's a tradition of that, right? So maybe this might be the American enemy. Like, I'm from the U.S. So just the idea that the government would be actively platforming certain types of content or certain works of art. or certain types of information, like, for political reasons, for economic reasons, that doesn't really happen in the U.S. So, like, I'm very suspicious of that. But in Canada, like, you have

the CBC. Like, the CBC is an institution that's been around for decades. Canadians are very familiar with it. They're very comfortable with it. It's a very trusted news source. Well, I mean, from my-courous, like, from my perspective, as an American, right, I'm like, the CBC is state media. Right? That's not, that's not different than, like, R.T. Like, you what I mean? Like, it's, it's just literally state media. So, like, I'm very, and, you know, I mean, it's, it's obviously different than RT, and I think that it's, what's RT? The, that was the, it stands for Russia today, but that was like the Russian state media. It was basically, um, uh, media propaganda run by the Russian government. So it was, it was a, it was a, it was sort of like a pseudo news channel that disseminated both news, but also like Russian propaganda to Western audiences, right? I don't want to say that the CBC is propaganda, but I also, as somebody like, I'll watch the CBC, I'm like, this is not objective, neutral news or opinion reporting.

Like, it's, you know what I mean? It's very, it's, it definitely has. I mean, Fox News, CNN, we're not dealing with unbiased. No, no, no. So I guess, yeah, and this might be the American to me, but like, I actually prefer the American media environment where news organizations are, they're private. profit-seeking companies. So in the U.S., I don't like Fox News, right? I actually kind of like that Fox News exists, right? There's Fox News, which presents media for, and the reason that Fox News is so popular

is that many Americans felt very alienated from mainstream news, right, because it was liberal-leaning, right? So they wanted a conservative news source. So that's why Fox News is popular and why it has such a big audience. You have, like, CNN, which is like kind of left of center, you have MSNBC, which is sort of like the anti-Fox News. So you have like a variety of different voices. And of course, like people are going to be like, oh, Fox News is bad or like, oh, mainstream media is bad. Like different people are going to have different views, but they can kind of like make their choice over what they want to watch. Whereas in Canada, news media is really dominated by the CBC. That's like the major source of news for most Canadians. And it's like, it is not objective. Like, in my opinion, I mean,

there's other people might disagree with me, but I watched the CBC and I'm like, they are presenting a Like, this is ideological content, right? And I'm not even necessarily saying I disagree with it. I'm just saying that, like, this is, it's a very kind of middle-the-road sort of, like, left liberalism, right? That's, like, you know, very, very consistent with the ideology of the Liberal Party of Canada, which strongly supports the CBC. It's not a coincidence to the Conservative Party in Canada is very critical of the CBC, because the CBC doesn't say good things about the conservative party. I think that's a problem. I think it's a major, major problem where you have, like, a dominant state media source.

that is sort of implicitly picking sides and political questions. I agree with you. I think the challenge we face is that oftentimes you can be right and then on certain issues, it can be wrong. And then that's what seems to stand out for people and trying to find this balance is such a challenge. Just briefly, I want to talk about where this funding is going to be going because that's one of the things you've said is it has less to do with addressing societal issues, making sure Canadian content creators feel supported. If that were the goal, the bill and the legislators would have been listening to those individuals coming forward. It seems to do with subsidizing Canadian. It's for subsidizing the Eastern Canadian media industry.

That's what it's for. And what does that look like? I mean, it's just all of the film, theater, music production that occurs in Ontario and Quebec. I mean, a lot of it, and there's, you know, again, like I'm being, right, I'm being a bit harsh maybe, right? Like, I mean, there's good arguments you can make, like, well, actually the government should subsidize, like, French language media, for example. Like, that's an important part of Canadian identity, right? I get it. Okay.

But it's not, it's generally not going to benefit kind of small, independent Canadian content creators online who basically oppose it, right? So, you know. And it's the same thing. Like, you have, you know, Bill C-18, which is somewhat similar. It's basically kind of forcing U.S. tech companies to. pay money to news sources in Canada they link to their articles

it's just to subsidize legacy media in Canada it's basically to just kind of like take money from US tech companies and then redistribute it to legacy media in Canada which is suffering because of a declining you know advertising environment but again

like it generally doesn't help like kind of small independent journalists right it's going and there's this tradition and it extends where you have the cbc in canada which i find somewhat weird as an institution but even beyond the cbc like there's the and it's it's and you know it's not a partisan thing like this is something like conservative governments have done the same thing um that there's just like there's very immense subsidization of news media right so like post media which is kind of like runs like the more conservative um news publications in can they get tons of money from the federal

government right so the government is like very actively involved in subsidizing media and it's just it might be because like I'm American and I just don't get it but it's a there's a very long tradition in Canada of protecting and subsidizing media so like like Canada I teach about this in class to a certain extent like Canada is one of the kind of like leading countries in the world in terms of free trade or it's a very you know very very active leader in free trade which I think is great except for media where it's deeply protectionist it's just this weird kind of thing where we have to, I mean, there's historical reasons for it. I think it emerges out of a concern which still exists, but was probably more salient in past decades, that Canadian

culture was just going to be totally subsumed by American culture. And so it was like really important to kind of protect, you know, Canadian media and Canadian voices and Canadian stories. You know, I think these days is really much more about protecting incumbent economic interests. But again, that's my opinion. I could be wrong. The last one thing I wanted to cover is that it also seems like the government's bringing about new rules around journalists and their need to identify sources. And I just wanted to hear if you have any thoughts. I'm not aware of any new rules. One thing that got, I mean, yeah, so this is, it's one of the reasons I wrote the article is that the federal government

they were talking about in sort of vague terms that they were going to have these regulations around misinformation or disinformation in the media, which is something I find deeply concerning, right? I think that the whole notion of misinformation is just a very dangerous concept, right? I'm very alarmed when the government, the incumbent government, which is in control, is labeling and delegitimizing certain opinions as misinformation. So if you call something misinformation, you're saying like, that that's excluded from discourse. Like,

that's not something you should even listen to. It's just misinformation. It's not legitimate, right? And so when you're talking about regulating misinformation, so, like, what does that even mean? Like, that's, but that never really went anywhere. But recently, something I got some news coverage recently, is that the Liberal Party of Canada,

their recent convention, their 2023 convention, they put together this platform of, like, basically two dozen kind of key ideas that they're going to try to promote. and it's if you read the document which I read like a lot of the ideas seem silly the document itself is like poorly written like there's sort of like inconsistent use of language

so I don't know how seriously we should date and it's really I don't think it's meant to be like this is what we're going to do it's kind of like well this is like what we think is important so like we're going to work towards these things but one of them was basically saying that they have this kind of resolution that they should explore options

for ensuring that online news sources, ensuring the veracity of online new sources, so basically legal prohibitions on saying anything that the government thinks is false, and then also requiring that all news sources have verifiable sources. So it's like, what? Like, what is it?

Like, it's something that's just like on the face of it, you read and you're like, that's completely insane because, like, to implement what you're describing, like, the government's going to require that like all, sources of news information have verified sources, like if the government, they're serious about what they mean, like, that entails like a massive regulatory and censorship regime is what that entails, right? So like any news information that doesn't have a verified source is like

going to be outlawed or something. So just on the face of it, it's, it's completely bizarre and preposterous. And I do not think it's something they would realistically try to do. But just the fact that they're even, like, it's more the mentality. It's like, why would you even think that that's a appropriate. You know what I mean? Like it's, you know what I mean? It's just like it's so, it's so beyond the pale, right? It's not something that, that's not something that occurs in any liberal democracy that I'm aware of. I mean, maybe I'm wrong about that, but that's just, that's not normal. So it's like, why are they thinking about doing things that are not normal? Do you feel like we're on the wrong path in our political discourse right now?

In what sense? Do you feel like this current government has the wrong mindset and is leading Canadians on the wrong path without good incentives. Do you think that they're following through on, we want Canadians to have the best future and this is why we're making the decisions we're making, or do you think that there's perverse incentives that are bringing us down the wrong path? I think that the kind of incumbent political leaders of Canada, like pretty much all political leaders around the world, I think, you know, probably believe in what they're doing

and think that they're doing it for the right reasons. And again, without, I don't want to sound partisan, but I would say on that. this specific issue, I have very, very deep and fundamental concerns about the expressed attitude of the current government and the Liberal Party towards freedom expression. It seems like what's going on in the government right now is they believe that they can and should regulate the Internet significantly. That seems to be, and they've implemented some of that. I think, you know, there's Bill C-11, Bill C-18, but some of the things that they've hinted at

trying to do in the future around regular. disinformation and misinformation, and misinformation, it's very concerning. It's very concerning. And I think that they are on the wrong path on that particular issue. Do you feel like, from what you've seen living in Vancouver, being online, that the average person agrees with you? No, I don't. I think that, I think, I don't think that the, like, you know, Bill. Bill C-11, for example, Bill C-18, I don't think these issues are highly salient, right?

I think if we ask the average Canadian, what's in Bill C-11? They'd be like, what is B-Sled? You know, they wouldn't know. So I don't think these are salient issues. I don't think that there are issues that a lot of people are very concerned with. And I think... Of the people who do, do you think that they agree with it? I think probably the people who know the most about Bill C-11 oppose it.

I think it seems like one of those things where it's kind of like the government's putting it through and the people who are paying attention or against it. But I would say, and I don't want to, like, Canada is a very diverse country. It's geographically diverse. It's culturally diverse. It's politically diverse. So I don't want to say anything about what the average Canadian does or does not believe. But I would say probably a distressingly large percentage of the Canadian population would be agreeable to say, like, regulating misinformation.

Like you say, like, oh, we should, like, prevent people from saying false things online. They'd be like, oh, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. right and and I think maybe they thought about it more and like thought about it deeper they probably realize that maybe it's not just great idea it's one of those things that like sounds fine it's like yeah we don't disinformation you know it's like oh people were you know they were spreading like conspiracy theories around like the COVID vaccine and stuff like that and you're like yeah that's that's not good we don't want people doing that but then you think about like well how is that actually implemented and like what does that entail and like what are the potential

consequences and like what are the risk and then like I think as soon as you're start thinking about it at a deeper level, you're like, okay, that's actually not, you know, that's not a path we want to go down. So maybe it's just people need to like, I don't know, maybe we just need to like think about these things in a more careful way. Final question, probably the most controversial for you personally. I would say that you're a person who has a very balanced perspective on many issues, but to some you might come across as a little bit more conservative in some of your thinking. I'm just curious, I hear a lot of rumors about the challenges of having a conservative person on campus or somebody who might

have more conservative opinions on certain issues facing on campus? Is this something you experience? And do you have any concerns about that? Oh, that is a, that is a very, uh, that's a very tricky question to answer. Um, you said your, your, your team was excited about the idea of you writing about this topic. That's, that's, that's, I would say, I would say two things. I would say two things. I would say so, and I don't, I don't really want to say too much about my personal experience at UBC, but I would say that it's not always easy being, and I don't think I'm particularly conservative, but it's, let me just say, I would say that in Canadian universities, there's a strong left-leaning orthodoxy that leans quite far left, right? So it's like,

you know, I feel like I'm, I do feel quite conservative in the environment in which I inhabit, but I don't think like, you know, by the standards of just sort of like Canadian society, I wouldn't say I'm particularly conservative. And I think that that's not always, that doesn't always feel great. You can feel like an outsider, you can feel alienated. It can be frustrating. I would say that, you know, my colleagues at UBC are, everyone has always treated me with respect and with kindness, and I've always felt supported. So I would say, I do think that there is a problem in that the academic world and universities, I think, have been captured by an ideology that is not representative of society. I do think that that's a

problem. But I would say at an individual level, I personally have had no problems and I, you know, I feel valued and supported by everyone I work with. I would tend to agree with you. And that's all the The only reason I ask is sometimes I feel like a conservative, but it's just because I feel like I'm bringing perhaps a more middle ground to be, particularly with indigenous issues, where there are the things that everybody kind of parrots and says, and then there's the actual potential solutions, and those don't seem to arise very often. And when I start talking about that, it seems less interesting to the people who are focused on the things that you can parrot and say regularly that get a lot of kind of response and emotion and reaction. Yeah, I mean, obviously I can't speak to, you know, like kind of discussions that go on in indigenous communities, but like, you know, kind of like in the university setting, in a lot of other kind of social contexts I've inhabited, I have noticed that there is, like, there's a lot of resistance to kind of like saying things that are, I don't know, that are unpopular or don't quite fit the mold. And there really is, and I really genuinely don't say this to, like, put anyone down or disparage anyone or anything like that. But there's, like, a real kind of distressing sort of amount of kind of group think. You know what I mean?

Where it's just like, where it's kind of like everybody's kind of going along with something. And then it's just like, and then it sort of is like self-reinforcing. And then, like, the thing that everyone is going along with kind of becomes more and more extreme. And, like, the, you know, and now it's like, well, I don't know, like five years ago. And we all agreed this, but now it's gone even further. And now it's like you can't even, you know, and so like sometimes you feel like you can't even say what is just like very uncontroversial common sense statements about things. And it is, I think it's kind of a social dynamic.

Like I think, and it's sort of like sometimes it's like the loudest voices kind of push things out. And then maybe not everyone agrees with it. They kind of go along with it. And then that's sort of like like, like, kind of like, you know, shifts. That kind of like, you know, shifts the framework of the debate. right so it's now and now it's like well like this is what you can and cannot say and then like you know it gets pushed out and it's like well now it's this and then like you're sort of like

you feel like you got left behind right it's um but you know I also don't care like I'm the kind of person like if I think something's important I'll speak my mind on it and if I don't think it's important I'm fine not speaking my mind so it's really not something that bothers me very much Camden this has been such a pleasure I could talk to you for another hour and a half I appreciate you do you want to let people know how they can connect with you on LinkedIn Twitter Oh, yeah. I mean, you can, I'm on Twitter. I'm pretty active on Twitter, so you can just Google me, and I'll come up. It's just my Twitter handles Camden Hutchison. At LinkedIn, you know, feel free to connect that way. And then if you want to read some of the research I've written, you can go to my, my UBC webpage, and there's a list of my publications. I appreciate you so much for making the trip out.

Oh, thank you. It's a great conversation. Awesome. I