Free speech is always free—except whe n it isn't

Basically, free speech is fine unless you're acting like a jerk

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The biggest news of the weekend came out of Quebec City on Halloween night, when a 24-year-old man in a medieval costume used a Japanese sword to kill two people and injure five others. After a two-and-a-half-hour-long manhunt around the city's historic district, officials arrested the assailant at 1 a.m. Police say the attack appeared premeditated but the victims were random, and the whole thing wasn't motivated by religious or political beliefs.

The limits of free speech. Following attacks in France by Islamic terrorists last week, which spiralled out from French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo publishing editorial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (again), Justin Trudeau was asked on Friday about his take on the newspaper's free-speech defense. In a fashion that has become typical of our PM, Trudeau tried to have it both ways : "We will always defend freedom of expression," he began, before clarifying that he didn't just literally mean always : "But freedom of expression is not without limits. We owe it to ourselves to act with respect for others and to seek not to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet." That plea for decency might ring true in the case of violent-inducing hate speech, but as the Twitter pundits pointed out, it's a hard sell when it comes to satirical drawings that result in multiple fatalities.

Today marks the start of a busy week on Parliament Hill, as the House of Commons prepares for a week-long hiatus next week. The health committee will meet today to discuss the latest stats regarding COVID-19, and will also convene a closed-door planning session to sketch out their probe of the government's handling of the pandemic. (This probe, recall, comes at the behest of all opposition parties, which ultimately successfully voted to investigate the government's actions after a couple false starts, outnumbering the protesting Liberals.)

Today also marks the kickoff of Financial Literacy Month, which will launch virtually at 10 a.m. with an introduction by Middle Class Prosperity Minister Mona Fortier and the head of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, Judith Robertson. This year's webinars may draw a little more attention for two reasons: first, it's FLM's 10-year anniversary; second, personal finance tends to matter more when the global economy is in tatters.

Forget the lane. As politicians and pundits are telling doctors to "stay in their lane" during the pandemic, one doctor is pushing back. In an op-ed for Maclean's, Jillian Horton argues why doctors shouldn't be afraid to speak out, talk to the media and take an activist stance:

Good news this weekend for Chrystia Freeland, who tested negative for COVID-19 after receiving an alert on the government's contact-tracing app and spending all of Saturday self-isolating. The deputy prime minister used the opportunity to promote the app, which has been downloaded 4.9 million times since its summer launch—even though only 3,000 users have used it to declare their positive COVID tests.

At 11:30 this morning, Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan and a slew of provincial ministers from Quebec will hop on a Zoom press conference for a "clean technology funding announcement for Canada’s mining industry". No details yet, but odds are good O'Regan will utter the phrase "build back better".

And in Ottawa, reps from all three levels of government will log into a virtual press conference to kick off the launch the trial stage of the city's new electric-powered automated shuttle. Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna will join Ontario's Transport Minister Caroline Mulroney and Mayor Jim Watson to, presumably, use many buzzwords to describe how excited they are about innovation, transportation and designing infrastructure for future generations.

Yesterday marked the debut of Rosemary Barton's new Sunday news program on CBC News, Rosemary Barton Live. Among her debut episode's guests were former finance minister Bill Morneau and ambassador to the U.S. Kirsten Hillman. Morneau didn't offer much Canadians hadn't already heard—no, he still claims his departure had nothing to do with the WE Charity scandal; yes, he's still all-in with his bid to be secretary general of the OECD—but he did concede that the second wave of COVID has been more economically devastating than expected, and that the country's recovery will be uneven. Hillman mostly discussed the U.S. election, but seemed unworried about a peaceful transition of power, saying her team is "confident" the country's electoral institutions will function just fine in the end.

Tomorrow's a day away. Speaking of America: tomorrow marks a day many of us have been waiting too long for, a day when, finally, this four-year-long election cycle will be over. Expect an incredibly long night that will almost certainly not result in a clear winner for at least 24 hours after the polls close. With that said, why stay glued to cable news that whole time when you can check Maclean's live U.S. election map? Better still, make today the calm before the storm: do anything else but think about American politics. You'll feel better, promise.

—Michael Fraiman

Politics News & Analysis