Well-intentioned online harms laws can give the government powers we may find very difficult to take away

Canadians are unlikely to wake up one morning and discover that freedom of speech has disappeared.

There will be no announcement that they are no longer free to question governments, challenge prevailing ideas or express unpopular opinions.

It will happen much more quietly than that, one reasonable-sounding restriction at a time. Each will come with a persuasive justification. Protect children. Stop hate. Fight misinformation. Make the internet safer. Protect vulnerable people.

Who could possibly object?

That is precisely why Canadians should pay attention.

The greatest danger to free speech does not come from restrictions Canadians recognize as censorship but from restrictions we are persuaded are reasonable.

Ottawa’s proposed Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, provides a timely example. The government says the legislation is intended to protect children from online harms. Among other measures, it would establish a Digital Safety Commission of Canada and impose new rules on social media and AI chatbot services, including rules governing accounts for children under 16.

The concerns behind those proposals are real. Any parent who has watched what social media can do to children understands why government feels pressure to act.

That is exactly when Canadians must be most vigilant. The more compelling the justification, the more carefully we must examine the power the government is asking us to surrender.

Of course we should protect children from genuine online harms. But that doesn’t mean handing the government broad powers over lawful expression.

Bill C-34 itself recognizes the tension by requiring the proposed commission to consider freedom of expression and privacy. But many of the details would be worked out later through regulations, with the new system overseen by a regulatory body.

Of course, government should protect Canadians from criminal and genuinely harmful conduct, but it should not decide which lawful ideas we are free to express, encounter or debate.

Canada has spent years giving the government a bigger role in what happens online. The Online Streaming Act expanded the CRTC’s authority over online broadcasting. The Online News Act sought compensation from large digital platforms for Canadian news organizations, leading Meta to remove news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada.

The direction is clear: the government is becoming more involved in what Canadians see and do online.

Restrictions on liberty rarely arrive advertised as restrictions on liberty. They arrive as solutions. No single measure has to destroy free speech to weaken it. Government power can grow a little at a time, with each reasonable-sounding restriction making the next one easier to accept.

Why does this matter? Because free expression is not simply another right. It is what allows us to defend all the others.

Without freedom of expression, how do we challenge bad legislation? How does a journalist expose government failure? How does a minority challenge the majority and persuade others that it may be wrong?

Free expression is also essential to science, innovation and ultimately prosperity. Science advances because accepted ideas can be questioned and experts can be proven wrong. Innovation depends on that same freedom to challenge conventional wisdom. When a society discourages people from questioning what everyone else assumes to be true, it risks discouraging the independence of thought on which progress depends.

Something even more fundamental is at stake. Freedom of expression recognizes that human beings are capable of thinking, judging and deciding for themselves. The freedom to reach our own conclusions, express them, challenge others and sometimes discover that we are wrong is part of what it means to be a free human being.

John Stuart Mill understood this nearly two centuries ago. He argued that silencing discussion assumes infallibility.

Governments are not infallible. Experts are not infallible. Institutions are not infallible. Majorities are not infallible.

That is why free societies tolerate arguments that many people consider wrong, offensive or even foolish. Popular speech does not require much protection. The real test of our commitment to free expression comes when someone says something we strongly believe should not be said.

The answer to bad ideas is better arguments, stronger evidence and more debate—not government deciding which lawful ideas Canadians should be allowed to hear.

That does not mean anything goes. Threats, fraud, harassment and other criminal conduct should be dealt with. But we must keep a clear line between criminal conduct and unpopular expression.

There is a simple test Canadians should apply whenever the government asks for new authority over speech or information.

Would you willingly give exactly the same power to a government you deeply distrust?

If the answer is no, the government should not possess that power in the first place. Governments change. Ministers change. Political priorities change. The rules and agencies they create can remain with us for decades.

A power that seems harmless when exercised by politicians we trust can look very different when exercised by politicians whose judgment, values or motives we question.

That is why good intentions are not enough. Parliament must set clear limits on any restrictions on expression and ensure the government can justify why they are necessary. MPs should not hand regulators or cabinet broad powers over lawful speech and information.

But this is not simply Parliament’s responsibility. It is ours as citizens as well.

We have to tolerate hearing things we dislike. We have to defend the right of people with whom we profoundly disagree to speak. We have to challenge legislation that expands government authority even when its purpose and justification sound entirely reasonable.

And we have to tell our MPs that freedom of expression is not a partisan issue.

Canada is unlikely to lose free speech because Canadians consciously choose censorship. We risk losing it because we accept one reasonable restriction after another, each intended to solve a problem we understandably want solved.

We should think very carefully before giving the government more power over what we may say, hear or debate because once we give that power away, we may not easily get it back.

David Leis is the President and CEO of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and host of the Leaders on the Frontier podcast. A seasoned commentator on Canadian public policy, he focuses on restoring accountability, economic common sense, and civic health to the country’s national, provincial and municipal institutions.