Take this as a thought experiment, if you like.

On the balance of probabilities, three years ago Justin Trudeau incited a wave of hysteria without precedent in the history of religious bigotry in Canada.

By the Trudeau government’s own standards in these matters, the ordinary rules of evidence do not apply, and it is unnecessary to prove this charge beyond a reasonable doubt: In 2021, the prime minister himself incited hatred, violence and a wave of desecrations and arson directed at Roman Catholic holy places from one end of the country.

That’s the case I make in the National Post today. My point is to illustrate what has been almost entirely overlooked in Bill C-63, the proposed Online Harms Act, tabled this week in the House of Commons. It is either a deliberate throttling of free speech and the free flow of ideas and debates in Canada, or it is a kind of accident, a case of the yawning, gaping incompetence that has come to characterize the Liberal government.

It could well be both. In any event, the case I make out should also shed some light on the unjust distortions that are hardwired into the prevailing conceptual hierarchy of social castes the Canadian state deems deserving of special protection and “equity.”

Roman Catholics who do not possess refundable “intersectionality” merits are outside that privileged hierarchy altogether, and if you’re outside the ranking order of the equity-deserving, good luck to you. You’re on your own. You can find yourself at the mercy of a vindictive ruling party that is only too eager to excuse mob-rule vigilantism as “fully understandable.”

There is also a possibility that the dystopian order anticipated by Bill C-63 was deliberately built into it for a political purpose (I’m sure there’s a term for this, but Parliamentary field strategy isn’t my strong suit) I didn’t speculate about in the National Post: It provides the Liberal caucus with the opportunity to answer any number of criticisms Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives might raise, in this way: See, Mr. Speaker, the Opposition is defending pedophiles and genocidaires!

The Conservatives are already in an awkward position of having to articulate criticisms that do not alienate constituencies they’ve established warm relations with, such as the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and B’nai Brith Canada. Jewish advocacy organizations preoccupied with the current tectonic shuddering of antisemitism have long called for protections Bill C-63 contains, or purports to contain.

But I’m not going to be constrained by that awkwardness here. It’s not my job, despite my many detractors’ insistence that I am encumbered by an affiliation with the National Post stipulating “Zionist warmonger” in the job description.

In the Post piece I present several instances amounting to what I consider ample evidence that in its zeal for government-orchestrated “anti-racist” activism and its willing indulgence of lurid racism, bigotry and antisemitism in the “equity-deserving” organizations and individuals it lavishly funds, the Trudeau government has clearly demonstrated that it cannot be trusted.

The Trudeau government simply can’t be trusted owing to the intellectual slovenliness in what it considers “hate,” and its self-interested openness to the idea of criminalizing any public notice of the surfeit of lies it has repeated and consistently endorsed in the mass hysteria Trudeau himself encouraged during the Year of The Graves.

It certainly cannot be trusted to assign vast powers to regulate “hate speech” to a new bureaucracy commanded by overseers directly appointed by the federal cabinet.

I merely scratched the surface of Bill C-63’s invitations to gross abuse: the exemptions granted the new Digital Safety Commission and the additionally-empowered Human Rights Commission from the ordinary rules of evidence, from the conventional test of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and so on. Then there’s the star-chamber provision allowing proceedings to be conducted in secret.

After I filed, I noticed a couple of things that didn’t immediately jump from Bill 63’s omnibus-bill pages. In a radical departure from the ancient conventions of criminal law, you will not be entitled to confront your accuser. You are not even entitled to know who your accuser is.

Today, I see the Globe and Mail’s Marie Woolf has got Justice Minister to explain how Bill C-63 would empower the government to place people under house arrest on the justification that you might commit some kind of hate crime in the future.

I don’t know about my subscribers, but I can’t imagine how that provision is not an open invitation to the grotesque abuse of power.

Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, anticipates that the wholly new regime in Bill C-63 will trigger “a tidal wave of hate speech related complaints.”

It is as though the whole purpose of the proposed law is intimidation, to scare people away from saying things they know will make the Liberal establishment angry. Another thing I didn’t notice until after I filed involved another legal convention Bill C-63 abandons.

If you stand accused of saying something that contravenes the new law, truth is no defence. I’m going to get straight to the guts of this now. The hour is later than you think.