It's a hard concept to grasp. Canadians have been so used, for so long to believing what the Charter of Rights and Freedoms seems to guarantee — 'freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication' — that it's difficult to accept that the Trudeau Liberals are trying to redefine what those things mean.

However, tonight’s discussion takes place against last week’s announcement of a $273 million grant program by Diversity and Inclusion Minister Karmal Khera, that she said was designed to bring ‘unity’ and ‘safety’ to Canadians. Meanwhile, her cabinet colleague Justice Minister Arif Virani, who claims to be ‘terrified’ of the Internet, calls Khera's fund a ‘key component’ of the government’s Bill C-63, the Online Harms Bill.

And under Virani's Bill C-63, people can launch anonymous, third-party complaints against people whose views offend them, including for comments published prior to passage of the bill. (It currently sits as Second Reading in the House of Commons.)

The fund announced by Khera pays them to do it.

Again, to anybody who doesn't pay attention to these things on a frequent basis, it seems an outlandish claim, and the more so because these connections are seldom made by the mainstream press. (There are exceptions, but between the sea of woke-ism in which today's younger reporters swim and the rather natural inclination not to question the motives of people who are paying half your salary, perhaps it's not so surprising.)

The other obstacle to accepting the clear evidence is that our default assumptions are obsolete. When Liberal politicians talk about 'hate groups,' Canadians default to old campaigners such as skinhead gangs, or the Klan.

Leis, a vice-president at the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy, says this is to fundamentally misunderstand the situation.

“This is Marxism, where it's about identity politics. It's about identifying groups that are part of your constituency and mobilizing them, so that they can actually fine, penalize and put in jail those that disagree with them.”

And in the absence of a functioning Klan, that will be (for example) parents running for school board because they want to argue against teaching seven year olds about trans sex. In the Trudeau Liberal universe, they are defined as haters. So are Conservatives who Minister Khera says incite hate against women. It offends some that the US mockumentary ‘Am I a racist?’ plays in Canadian theatres.

However, when anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, hate-filled mobs invade Toronto’s Jewish neighbourhoods or harass Jewish students, nothing comes of it. Who you hate, matters.

“You have to look at the the whole spectrum here, but you basically have a variety of groups that are generously funded by the taxpayer to create a coalition that, combined with other Acts of Parliament such as the so-called Online Harms act Bill C-63, can be deployed to attack people who challenge the Liberal narrative.... These are all very powerful ways to basically assault not only the rule of law, but freedom of speech, and they're funding it through a number of groups, the Canadians Race Relations Foundation for example."

Leis notes that "they're bringing it together with police forces, particularly the RCMP, as well as Stats Canada (as Stats Canada of course redefines what ‘hate’ means in this country,) and to people who will say they feel victimized or offended somehow. So I think these are huge red flags as this story unfolds. This is a dark day for this country as we look at how this government is funding and facilitating a policy initiative that's really about upholding the Trudeau Liberal narrative and systematically narrowing down the sense of freedom of speech and of course changing the rules.”

Who’s at risk?

“They’ll identify a variety of parties that offend their sensibilities around key narratives. So, for example, you have the so-called residential school denialists, you have parties that dared to disagree that somehow residential schools were not simply akin to Nazi death camps, and there were myriad of mass graves and as we know, there has not been evidence to suggest that there are mass graves.”

Says Leis, “You have something more profound going on, you have an effort really to take on anyone who would question this so-called diversity equity and inclusion narrative, and that as you know is is very much based on a Marxist cultural ideology ,where there's an endless drumbeat of oppressor versus the oppressed. And in this case, anyone who would dare question that narrative is going to be positioned to be able to be sought after and complained about. And they're not going to be going after people through the regular court system but rather through human rights tribunals where the application of the law, and the availability of truth or fair comment defences, is not the same as that provided by our larger court system.”

And those Section 2b Charter protections? Remember, they are subject "to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society," as interpreted by... well, a court with judges appointed by the Liberals. "A dark day for this country," indeed.

Hannaford airs tonight 7:00 p.m. MT.

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