National
Former human rights tribunal chair speaks out against Trudeau’s ‘Online Harms’ bill

From LifeSiteNews
‘If this passes, God help us, because I don’t know where it will go,’ former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal David Thomas warned of Trudeau’s ‘Online Harms’ bill.
A former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has warned that the Trudeau government’s proposed “Online Harms” bill could have a devastating impact on speech in the nation.
During a March 13 interview with independent media outlet True North, lawyer and former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal David Thomas blasted Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which could jail Canadians for “hate speech,” warning Canadians to be careful what they post online.
“What we are likely to see right away is a chilling effect,” Thomas explained, adding that the proposed legislation will have “a big impact on free political discourse in this country and I think that’s what we should all be concerned about immediately.”
“If this passes, God help us, because I don’t know where it will go,” he lamented.
Appointed in 2014 for a seven-year term, Thomas is the former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, the body tasked with adjudicating violations of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
“The reason I am speaking out right now is that nobody who is on the tribunal is free to speak, they’re like judges sitting on the bench,” he revealed.
“That’s why I think it’s important for somebody with inside knowledge to convey these concerns about this legislation,” Thomas continued.
He explained that the “vagueness” of the proposed legislation means that “that nobody really knows” what would be considered “hate speech.” He warned it would cause uncertainty and fear across Canada.
Thomas described the Online Harms Act as “an incredibly damping piece of legislation, which I think, of course, will infringe on our Charter rights to freedom of expression.”
“It will take years to get a case to the Supreme Court of Canada to make a decision about that. In the meantime, people will be afraid to say anything,” he warned, adding that Canadians should “be very careful” what they post online considering the legislation’s vague definitions.
Thomas further warned that if the bill is passed, Canadian Human Rights Tribunal will be overrun with the number of cases against Canadians for “hate speech.”
“To adjudicate these cases themselves takes years. When someone lodges a complaint when they get a final decision, it would not be surprising if it took three to five years or even longer,” he predicted.
“That’s a terrible thing, especially for an administrative tribunal which is supposed to be delivering access to justice to the public,” Thomas lamented.
Bill C-63, introduced a few weeks ago, will create the Online Harms Act and modify existing laws, amending the Criminal Code as well as the Canadian Human Rights Act, in what the Liberals claim will target certain cases of internet content removal, notably those involving child sexual abuse and pornography.
However, the bill also seeks to punish “hate speech” and increase punishments for existing hate propaganda offenses in a substantial manner.
Penalties for violations of the proposed law include $20,000 fines and jail time, including life in prison for what it deems the most serious offenses.
According to the proposed legislation, the bill would not only punish those who committed a “hate crime” but also those suspected of committing one in the future.
“A person may, with the Attorney General’s consent, lay an information before a provincial court judge if the person fears on reasonable grounds that another person will commit; (a)an offence under section 318 or any of subsections 319(1) to (2.1); or (b) an offence under section 320.1001,” the text of the bill reads.
Thomas is not alone in his concerns over the legislation. Increasingly, prominent Canadians and even Americans have begun commenting on Trudeau’s authoritarian rule over Canada, particularly his restricting of internet speech.
Earlier this week, tech mogul Elon Musk called the proposed legislation “insane” as the new law would “allow judges to hand down life sentences for ‘speech crimes.’”
In late February, prominent Canadian anti-woke psychologist Jordan Peterson warned the new bill would undoubtedly lead to his criminalization.
Similarly, a top constitutional lawyer warned LifeSiteNews that the legislation will allow a yet-to-be-formed digital safety commission to conduct “secret commission hearings” against those found to have violated the law, raising “serious concerns for the freedom of expression” of Canadians online.
Additionally, Campaign Life Coalition recently warned that Bill C-63 will stifle free speech and crush pro-life activism.
Business
It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers
The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.
Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.
These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.
Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.
In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.
Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.
According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.
Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.
A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.
These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.
Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.
Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
2025 Federal Election
Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is planning to borrow more money than former prime minister Justin Trudeau.
That’s an odd plan for a former banker because the federal government is already spending more on debt interest payments than it spends on health-care transfers to the provinces.
Let’s take a deeper look at Carney’s plan.
Carney says that his government would “spend less, invest more.”
At first glance, that might sound better than the previous decade of massive deficits and increasing debt, but does that sound like a real change?
Because if you open a thesaurus, you’ll find that “spend” and “invest” are synonyms, they mean the same thing.
And Carney’s platform shows it. Carney plans to increase government spending by $130 billion. He plans to increase the federal debt by $225 billion over the next four years. That’s about $100 billion more than Trudeau was planning borrow over the same period, according to the most recent Fall Economic Statement.
Carney is planning to waste $5.6 billion more on debt interest charges than Trudeau. Interest charges already cost taxpayers more than $1 billion per week.
The platform claims that Carney will run a budget surplus in 2028, but that’s nonsense. Because once you include the $48 billion of spending in Carney’s “capital” budget, the tiny surplus disappears, and taxpayers are stuck with more debt.
And that’s despite planning to take even more money from Canadians in years ahead. Carney’s platform shows that his carbon tariff, another carbon tax on Canadians, will cost taxpayers $500 million.
The bottom line is that government spending, no matter what pile it is put into, is just government spending. And when the government spends too much, that means it must borrow more money, and taxpayers have to pay the interest payments on that irresponsible borrowing.
Canadians don’t even believe that Carney can follow through on his watered-down plan. A majority of Canadians are skeptical that Carney will balance the operational budget in three years, according to Leger polling.
All Carney’s plan means for Canadians is more borrowing and higher debt. And taxpayers can’t afford anymore debt.
When the Liberals were first elected the debt was $616 billion. It’s projected to reach almost $1.3 trillion by the end of the year, that means the debt has more than doubled in the last decade.
Every single Canadian’s individual share of the federal debt averages about $30,000.
Interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers $53.7 billion this year. That’s more than the government takes in GST from Canadians. That means every time you go to the grocery store, fill up your car with gas, or buy almost anything else, all that federal sales tax you pay isn’t being used for anything but paying for the government’s poor financial decisions.
Creative accounting is not the solution to get the government’s fiscal house in order. It’s spending cuts. And Carney even says this.
“The federal government has been spending too much,” said Carney. He then went on to acknowledge the huge spending growth of the government over the last decade and the ballooning of the federal bureaucracy. A serious plan to balance the budget and pay down debt includes cutting spending and slashing bureaucracy.
But the Conservatives aren’t off the hook here either. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will balance the budget “as soon as possible,” but hasn’t told taxpayers when that is.
More debt today means higher taxes tomorrow. That’s because every dollar borrowed by the federal government must be paid back plus interest. Any party that says it wants to make life more affordable also needs a plan to start paying back the debt.
Taxpayers need a government that will commit to balancing the budget for real and start paying back debt, not one that is continuing to pile on debt and waste billions on interest charges.
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