Ezra Levant interviews MP Andrew Lawton, who warns Bill C-9’s removal of religious defenses—backed by over 50,000 signatures from Muslims, Jews, Christians, and Sikhs—risks criminalizing faith-based speech while failing to address actual hate crimes like Toronto’s pro-Hamas threats or vandalized churches. Lawton criticizes the Liberals’ fast-tracking tactics, denied witness meetings (e.g., Mark Joseph, Free Speech Union), and potential tech company enforcement under the Online Harms Act, arguing it mirrors the UK’s selective policing of tweets. With Parliament reconvening in January, the fight to restore religious protections and prevent censorship overreach becomes Canada’s defining free speech battle, as Lawton shifts from journalist to MP advocating for charter rights. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a journalist who became a freedom-fighting MP.
A feature interview with our friend Andrew Lawton.
You're watching the Ezra Levant Show.
Shame on you, you censorious thug.
Well, one of my favorite journalists is a freedom-oriented journalist, but then he got this big idea that maybe he would become a parliamentarian.
And indeed, he succeeded.
Wow, has he ever become a star in that place fighting for the same values that he did as a reporter?
You probably know who I'm talking to.
His name is Andrew Lawton.
He's the member of parliament.
Let me see if I can get this right for Elgin, St. Thomas, London South.
And what a delight to catch up with him after a very busy first, I guess, half a year.
Andrew, nice to see you again.
Congratulations, by the way.
Likewise.
Thanks very much for having me, Ezra.
You know, one of the things I'm really grateful for is that you have not lost your civil liberties spirit.
Sometimes when journalists enter parliament, they suddenly lose their principles.
All the things they talked about when they were writers.
I think of our friend Charles Adler, who Trudeau put in the Senate.
You, in fact, have done the opposite.
You have leaned in to your civil libertarian side and have made that a focus.
Why don't you share with our folks who might not be following Parliament closely, tell us about some of the battles that you've faced, some of the questions you've asked in committees, some of the question period stuff.
Just for folks who don't know, bring them up to speed and don't be shy about throwing to clips.
If we don't have those clips here immediately, we'll add them a little bit later before we publish this because you've had some exciting moments.
So bring us up to speed.
Tell me about the battle.
Well, look, first off, I appreciate it, Ezra.
I Spoke to Thousands00:02:52
I mean, when I made the decision to run, a big part of my decision was, can I continue to be a champion and an advocate for the things that I've always cared about and the things that I use my platform as a journalist to champion?
And I wouldn't have done it if I wasn't going to be able to do that.
And that was a key part of why I decided to run in the first place.
It was where can I make the biggest impact?
And in my maiden speech to the House of Commons, I actually said that the reason I went to Ottawa was to make Canada a freer country.
That was a commitment that I made to myself, to my constituents, and to all Canadians.
Let's have a quick clip of that.
And again, the maiden speech, everyone watches that one.
Your folks back home watch it.
Other MPs, they want to take your measure.
Here's a clip from Andrew's maiden speech.
My riding is made up of incredible communities filled with incredible people.
And I get to represent them.
Everyone, regardless of how they voted.
The farmers, the artists, the entrepreneurs, people who have just made Canada their home for the first time, and people who helped settle this country and settled the community generations ago.
But it's people in these rural and smaller communities in particular who have felt most neglected by the last 10 years of Liberal government.
And it was their struggles that motivated me to jump into politics.
As a journalist and broadcaster, I could not spend an election with the stakes so high on the sidelines.
I had to have a hand in the solutions.
Like most in this chamber, I spent the campaign knocking on doors.
I spoke to thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people in my riding.
And I want to share, Mr. Speaker, a few of the stories that have stood out and that I carry with me today.
One was a retired teacher from St. Thomas, a woman who said she had voted liberal every single election in her entire life.
And I asked her, why not now?
And she said, I just can't.
Now, a good politician probably would have taken the vote and walked away.
But I asked as a journalist one further question.
Why?
She said, because my sons are 28 and 30 years old, and they live with me.
And unless things change, they're never going to be able to move out.
That is one conversation I had that is so similar to countless more.
People whose families could not develop and thrive the way that most Canadians dream, the way people in my riding dream, because of liberal government policy that has made home ownership just fantasy rather than a dream and an aspiration.
Well, excellent.
Now, how have your fellow MPs, and there's some conservative senators too, how have they reacted to you picking up the torch of free speech?
Have they joined in?
Have they encouraged you?
Have some said, oh, fella, better calm down or something?
Freedom of Expression Debate00:08:26
What has been the reaction?
No, it's been incredible.
I mean, we obviously, look, as a Conservative Party, we didn't win this election, but we did tremendously well in terms of our raw vote total.
We made inroads in communities that are not used to electing conservatives.
And largely, I think the reason that that was so successful and so important and gives us something to build off of is because we need to be able to have these conversations about what's at stake.
And, you know, I was talking about freedoms for gun owners and rural communities and across the country, freedom of expression, freedom of the press.
And then we had this really dangerous government bill that was put forward called Bill C9, which is a bill that, again, the noble intentions surrounding it, as you've been covering, as I was covering as a journalist, the unbridled brazen hate that's been directed to the Jewish community in particular, but also we've seen arsons and vandalism of Christian churches in the last five years.
There are a number of communities that I think have been crying out for action, but the answer to that was not a bill that censors what Canadians can say.
So Bill C9 has become a bill that I've become very vocal and active on, especially now that it's expanded to remove long-standing religious freedom protections.
And certainly the support from my colleagues in the Conservative caucus on this battle has been tremendous.
Now, let me ask you, because when I was young and starting to learn about civil liberties, when I was in my 20s, let's say, I had a chance to meet a fellow named Alan Borovoy, who at the time was the head of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
I think it would be fair to call him a man of the left.
In fact, he was pretty progressive, as we'd say today.
But he loved civil liberties as much as anyone I've ever met ever.
There was a time when civil liberties used to be a non-partisan issue where people on the left and people on the right believed in it.
Maybe wokeism killed that on the left.
But let me ask you, have you had any of the more high-minded liberals?
I don't even want to ask about the block or the NDP because I think I know the answer there.
But have any more moderate liberals, more thoughtful, old style liberals said, hey, Andrew, maybe we disagree with you on a few things, but we love civil liberties too.
Have you seen any hope across the aisle on this stuff?
Look, not in parliament.
Now, I'm going to make a division between liberals in the House of Commons and people on the left who are not partisan liberals in Canada.
Because outside of Ottawa, I would agree there is in general among people on the left and the right an understanding that freedom of expression is important.
Religious freedom is important.
The right to protest the government.
This is an important fundamental right in a free society.
When the Liberal government, when the Justin Trudeau government was pushing forward the Online Harms Act, a lot of the criticism came from people that no one has ever mistaken for being conservative.
People like Margaret Atwood, people like, oh, I mean, Andrew Coyne and Neil McDonald of CBC.
So this is where I think we have to draw a line between some of these cultural people on the left and the political left.
The Liberal Party right now has been the party that's been advancing these really significant moves away from freedom of expression and away from religious freedom.
This was a hallmark of the Justin Trudeau government, and that has been picked up by the Mark Carney government.
But on Bill C9, the condemnation has come from left and right.
You know, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the BC Civil Liberties Association, which is even further to the left, have condemned it.
It's been condemned by Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, organizations on all sides of the political spectrum, leaving me to wonder why are the liberals still standing by it?
And the only reason is because fundamentally, they do not support freedom of expression.
I want to come back to C9 in a moment.
And you're right, it's a concerning law.
And I've read through the law, I've talked about it in a monologue, but you've really engaged the government with it.
Let's put that aside just for a minute because I want to ask one more follow-up question about how civil liberties, if it is still something shared by other people.
A lot of censorship comes from government, of course, and that is regulated in part by the Charter of Rights, which limits how the government can infringe on our freedoms.
However, a lot of censorship, in my observation, these days, comes from tech companies, that is, private companies, not governments, whether it's YouTube or TikTok or Facebook.
Now, Elon Musk buying Twitter and making it very free speechy has changed things.
It's really fostered communications and an international conversation.
Have you had any interaction with tech companies or their lobbyists since you've come to Ottawa?
Where are they on the free speech issue?
Because for a few years there, they were really the vanguard of censorship.
That's how it looked like to me.
Yeah, I've met with a number of stakeholders.
I met with YouTube.
I've met with Rumble.
I've met with X.
I have not had a meeting with anyone at Meta formally, but I've run into people at Meta.
And look, the position that I have expressed to them is one that I am firmly in the mindset that we need to have freedom of expression.
I have also been very clear on this that I do not believe government should be regulating what these platforms can have on themselves.
But I also want to take a step back here because, you know, I believe that one of the big problems we've seen is when government forces tech companies to do, not to take a particular decision, but forces them to regulate a particular aspect of what they do.
And then those tech companies respond in a way that they're the ones making the decision.
And I'll use a prime example of this, which is the Online News Act.
The Online News Act did not force Facebook to take news off of its platform, but it created a framework where that was the most logical thing for Meta to do.
But if you're an independent news platform and you're saying, well, hang on, now I've been banned from Facebook, the government says, well, don't look at us.
That's Meta.
Meta made that decision.
Well, yes, but they made that decision as a response to government regulation.
And I said the same thing when the Online Harms Act was being put forward.
If the government is saying to tech companies, these are the hate laws in Canada, and you have to figure out how you're going to keep this type of content from your platform, it's going to force an overbroad interpretation by companies that don't want to deal with the government and the government's regulatory regime.
So you end up with censorship that is technically being perpetrated by tech companies, but really your beef is with the government.
So I think the more we can disentangle government as a content regulator from social media companies, the better it is for Canadians.
Yeah.
I mean, we're effectively banned on Facebook.
It was a decision because the government would have taxed Facebook for every link.
But, you know, whether the government did it directly or they just, or it happened as a side effect, we're still banned.
It's that's, I mean, yeah, but you don't have the recourse.
You don't have the recourse available that you would.
You cannot take Meta to court because Meta would say, well, we're a private company.
And you can't take the government to court because they'll say, well, Meta made that decision.
So this is the problem when government is basically deputizing tech companies to do what the government really wants to do.
Well, and not just that.
A lot of smaller or independent or startup media companies need that word of mouth, that free marketing that comes from enthusiastic sharing.
If you're an incumbent in the marketplace, everyone's already heard of CTV Global and CBC.
They don't really need advertising.
I'm not going to say they're a monopoly, but they have big brand power.
You're a little startup.
You need that organic sharing.
That's how Rebel News goes.
We don't have a marketing budget.
Let's get back to C9.
Religious Freedom Under Threat00:12:49
And I mean, that bill, every weekend near my house in Toronto, and I live in a fairly Jewish neighborhood, there's a group of pro-Hamas activists.
I'm not saying pro-Palestinian because they're much further than that.
They literally had this recreation of the terrorist leader Yahya Sinmar in his final moments.
Like these folks openly support Hamas and they come into a Jewish neighborhood.
They block the streets.
They utter threats.
They disturb the peace.
They violate noise bylaws.
Sometimes they walk into residential areas screaming at people.
Other pro-Hamas protesters in Toronto have smashed windows, in some extreme cases, shot at a Jewish girls' school three times.
I guess what I'm saying is there's a lot of what I would call regular laws they're breaking, not hate laws, uttering threats, et cetera.
My view is the way to deal with those things is to enforce the law.
And those laws are not being enforced, in my view, for political or even demographic voter reasons.
C9 seems to me, and you tell me if I'm wrong, was sort of to say, hey, Jews, we're going to bring in a law against hateful words.
So we'll fix the problem with yet another law.
My first reflex is, well, why don't you enforce the laws as they are?
Why are you making another law other than avoiding doing the hard work?
I think the whole premise of the law is a distraction from the fact that police and prosecutors aren't enforcing the current laws.
What do you think of that?
I think you're right.
I mean, Bill C9 is the Liberal government attempting to deflect responsibility for how it has allowed anti-Semitic hate to fester over the last two plus years.
The lack of political leadership on this vile and often violent anti-Semitic rhetoric has been a failing of political leadership.
It has not been a lack of laws.
And this is something that even a lot of the Jewish organizations in Canada have been saying for the last two plus years, that we need to enforce existing laws, such as the law surrounding intimidation and harassment and mischief against religious properties, incitement to genocide, which is already a criminal standard or criminal code offense with a very specific meaning and a very high threshold, as there should be for anything relating to speech.
What C9 does is it retreads a lot of things that are existing illegal under existing laws.
And again, if the existing laws are not being enforced, how do we know the new laws are going to be?
But the things that it does that are fundamentally different are things that will go after speech that is right now protected.
And this is where we get very concerned about not just the lowering of the threshold for what constitutes hate speech.
They're putting in a new definition of hate, which lowers the threshold that's been used in Supreme Court jurisprudence on this.
And also now, a critical change in this is that the Liberal government has made an agreement with Lockheed Vécocois, and they passed an amendment at one of the last meetings of the Justice Committee that will remove long-standing religious freedom protections that have prevented people who quote scriptures the government finds offensive from being criminally prosecuted.
And this is a change that will target Christians, it will target Jews, it will target Muslims, it will target anyone of faith in this country.
And this is not protecting anyone from hate.
You are not protecting any community from hate if you're opening up, if you're opening them up to prosecution.
You know, Sean Fraser, the justice minister, says, oh, it's never been used, the religious defense.
Let's just actually talk about the substance of what's being proposed because there's a lot of misinformation that is being shared around there suggesting this is the criminalization of faith, which I don't think any parliamentarian would stand for.
But there will be concerns.
Like there are certain faiths, like I was raised Catholic, right?
You know, people, adherence to that, strict adherence, think homosexuality is a sin.
Gay marriage shouldn't be allowed.
Same-sex adoption shouldn't be allowed and might have concerns that if preaching that or advocating that, that they could be targeted for a crime.
The religious exemption would protect them from that, but you argue the threshold's much higher than something that way.
Certainly, the threshold is much higher to willfully promote hate against an identifiable group of people.
There's a difference between saying you have a point of view or reading scripture about same-sex marriage and actually promoting hate, vilifying, or inciting violence against a particular group.
Moreover, the protections that this individual provision could have potentially afforded a person would likely be protected by the charter or the existing public interest exemption.
From my point of view, we should recognize that religions in this country promote messages of love, of peace, of inclusion.
And I think it's a perversion of what the world's major religions stand for, to have people suggest that somehow reading scripture or holy texts from a religion of your choice would somehow constitute willfully promoting hate.
I grew up in a Catholic household too, read scripture on Sundays.
This is not what religion is about.
And I have faith that we're going to be able to move forward with the protections, including the ones that were designed specifically to protect religious communities in this country.
You know, one of the things in the law that scares me, Andrew, is that someone can make an argument in good faith, quoting their Bible or Jewish Bible or Koran or other holy book, and they genuinely believe it.
They don't mean it as an attack.
They're not using it as a sword.
It's more a shield.
Let me take three.
I'm sorry.
Andrew, one of the things about the law is that it removes what has historically been a defense to hate speech charges, which is religious belief.
If you genuinely believe a passage of the Bible or the Jewish Torah or the Muslim Quran, you could, to this day, plead that as a defense, saying, Your Honor, sorry someone felt I was doing something hateful.
I'm actually just relying on this scripture.
This law would remove the religious defense.
And a lot of people think that's, I mean, again, the government would say, oh, that'll stop some of the anti-Semitic hate speech.
I don't think so.
I think that this law will be selectively applied.
And I'm just going to go on record making a prediction that this law will be used against Christian street pastors, not against these Hamas thugs who are threatening Jews every Sunday in my neighborhood.
I don't know.
I'm just nervous that we're removing a defense, we're removing a freedom defense for everyone.
When, again, as we said earlier, we don't need to change the law.
We just need to enforce the laws that there are.
But it makes me really nervous that the government gets to decide what religious speech is hateful and what isn't.
Yes, and you're right to use the magic words there: good faith.
The defense only applies to good faith expressions of religious beliefs or citing religious texts.
So the one that's often held up by the liberals and indeed now, or by the Bloche Buk Law and now the Liberals, as being the sample case for this is a man in Quebec, Adeal Charkowie, a hate preacher, who called for basically Jews to be eradicated, but he did it in the context of a prayer.
And first off, there is no such thing as calling for genocide in good faith.
So even if you are using your religious justification, however distorted it is, to call for something so heinous, that is not in good faith.
But more importantly, the defense does not apply to violent speech.
It does not apply when the criminal charge of inciting genocide, for example, is engaged.
It only applies to willful promotion of hatred.
So we are talking about hate speech here and with a government definition that is lower than the current definition and testimony from people such as Bruce Party, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, that this combination will be used to go after people whose views government finds offensive.
And that's why we've been mounting such a significant defense of free speech, of religious freedom.
I have a petition that we put forward, which is to protect religious freedom.
This petition has gotten in the first week, I think, about 10, there's like 50,000 signatures.
It was something massive like that.
And from all over the country and still continuing because people realize how important this is to protect these fundamental freedoms.
We've had Muslims, Jews, Christians, as I said, that have all reached out the Conference of Catholic Bishops, again, an organization that is not yet particularly political, speaking out about what this means, that they're now being told by the government that you have to watch what you say in your sermons.
You have to watch which verses of scripture you quote.
This is from a liberal government who had a member who's now a cabinet minister talk about how ministers, priests, clerics who quote the Bible or the Torah should be subject to criminal charges if they read verses that he deems as hateful.
That's Mark Miller, now the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture.
So this is a very significant issue and one that we need to put a lot of pressure on the Liberal government to reverse course on before the House of Commons comes back in January.
Yeah, that was a crazy quote by Mark Miller here.
Take a look.
I just want to dig in a bit about the concept of good faith, Mr. Ross.
In Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Romans, there's other passages, there is clear hatred towards, for example, homosexuals.
I don't know, I understand how the concept of good faith could be invoked if someone were literally invoking a passage from, in this case, the Bible, but there are other religious texts that say the same thing, and somehow say that this is good faith.
I mean, clearly, there are situations in these texts where these statements are hateful.
They should not be used to invoke or be a defense.
And there should perhaps be discussion for prosecutors to press charges.
I just want to understand what your notion of good faith is in this context, where there are clearly passages in religious texts that are clearly hateful.
You know, there is one famous case that I think went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada that was sort of a trial run for this.
Let me remind you: tell me if you know the one I mean.
In the greater Vancouver area, there is a small Christian university called Trinity Western University.
It's a very good school, but as I mentioned before, they have a Christian ethos.
And they wanted a law school.
But the thing about Trinity Western is their student code of conduct, the student pledge, is not to have premarital sex.
It's just part of the rules there.
If you don't like it, go to any other university in BC.
So when this school applied for accreditation, including with law societies across the country, basically were saying, if someone graduates from Trinity Western U Law School, will they be accredited at the Ontario bar, at the Law Society of Ontario, Law Society of Alberta, et cetera?
And none of these law societies could find any flaws in Trinity Western's teaching, in their academics, in their teaching of contract law and constitutional law and criminal law.
But they rejected Trinity Western based on their religiosity.
And that basically killed the idea that a Christian school could have a law school, not because they would be teaching things incorrectly, but because they happened to have a student conduct pledge that you can't have sex outside of marriage.
And I think that's proof that the legal establishment in this country would use that as a weapon against particular religious enemies.
So obviously they're going after Christian conservatives.
Obviously, this would be used by transgender activists against, say, pastors like Derek Reimer in Calgary, who interrupted a trans book reading in a kid's library.
I think that not only is this not going to be used to stop hate crimes against the Jews, I think it will be used to persecute Christians, as we've seen in Trinity Western and in other cases.
The reality is that we do not know how it will be used.
Bill C9 Passes?00:09:46
And what I always tell people on the political left who want to give government increased powers is imagine how the next government would use something like this.
And this is the same argument against the Emergencies Act.
Say, you know, maybe the Liberal government didn't like the convoy protesters, but imagine how the next government that might not be as amenable to you would react if protesters you did like were protesting.
And that's the same argument I use on anything related to free speech: I will support the right of people I agree with to speak freely.
I will support the right of people I disagree with to speak freely.
I will support people of my own faith to express their religious freedom.
I will support people of other faiths to do it.
Because only if we protect these liberties for all can we protect them for anyone.
And this is so tremendously important.
And it's actually quite disheartening how short-sighted so many people are who want to give the government of the day powers that they would never want another government of a different political persuasion to have.
But we are dealing with a threshold here that if this, if Bill C9 passes, and again, I'm fighting it quite hard, as are my conservative colleagues, but if Bill C9 passes, this will be a full-on assault on religious freedom in this country.
Yeah, I'm worried about it.
And there's other laws to come.
I mean, in the last parliament before Justin Trudeau quit and prorogued things, and there were other censorship bills making their way forward, including the so-called Online Harms Act.
Do you have any information on that?
That was a much broader censorship law.
Do you?
Yeah, so here's one thing I will tell you that has not gotten a lot of attention: that under Bill C9, this new hate offense they're creating doesn't just apply in the criminal code, it applies to all acts of parliament, which means that there is now a hate offense that can be tacked on to a Canadian Human Rights Act violation, that can be tacked on to a Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission offense or infraction, CRTC.
So there already is through the back door a way for C9 to do what the Online Harms Act would have.
And when I had Sean Fraser before the Justice Committee on Bill C9, I asked him about this, and he quite candidly said, yes, Bill C9 will affect what you say online.
It will affect what you post on social media.
C9 makes reference specifically with hate symbols to public spaces.
Just to confirm, does that include the internet?
Generally speaking, the law will apply equally online as it does in real communities.
So this bill will affect what people can say and write on the internet.
Just in the limited circumstances where there is the willful promotion of hatred against people.
It will apply to the internet.
The internet is within the jurisdiction of.
It would be possible that someone could commit a hate crime on the internet, certainly.
So building off of Mr. Babber's points about the lower threshold for the definition of speech, there is under this law, assuming Bill C9 passes, something that might not be legal to say today on the internet, or it might be legal to say on the internet, could actually be illegal in the future under C9, could it not?
No, that's entirely inaccurate.
And I say that with no judgment to your perspective, but let me explain.
The only circumstance where you could imagine some online comment attracting scrutiny under this law would attach to behavior that is criminal today, but would be punished less severely.
The symbols piece that you pointed to, for example, is attached only to the willful promotion of hate.
This is not a blanket symbol span.
The willful promotion of hate is a crime today, but we want to recognize a distinct charge where that same behavior uses certain symbols of hate to bring a higher degree of culpability.
So there is no new human behavior that would attract the scrutiny.
I understand, but I'm building off of the discussion earlier on the definition.
Is your view that the change in wording, and there was a change in wording, you made a deliberate decision to change the definition that was spelled out in Keekshore and reaffirmed in Watcott.
Is your view that your definition in C9 will not capture anything beyond what is currently captured right now by the hate definition?
The definition was an attempt to codify, and the reason that we're going to be able to do that is that at all a lower threshold or a broader net on hate in Canada after C9 if it passes?
My view on the definition question, because the offenses would I would give a different answer to you for.
But on the definition, my view is that it codifies the same behavior that is there today, and it was meant to provide clearer guidance to law enforcement in the criminal code to apply the existing standard that has been recognized by the Supreme Court.
Because the same arguments that are being used by you and your government to push Bill C9 to protect people against hate, which on the surface sounds incredibly noble, but these arguments are the same arguments that have led to the United Kingdom having police literally knocking on people's doors over their tweets.
So, what guarantee can you give Canadians that we are not headed down that very road, especially in the context of other priority areas identified by you and your government, such as the Online Harms Act, which was introduced twice actually in the last two parliaments?
This legislation is not identical in kind to the reforms that have been put in place in the UK, and we've actually looked at their experience and see that there are real challenges with how it's played out.
For example, we've got a different approach where some jurisdictions around the world have adopted a more blanket glorification that could attract the scrutiny of a liking a Facebook post, for example.
And we chose a different path.
We instead tried to be very clear that we would not interfere with the charter rights of Canadians to freely express themselves, but at the same time, make it easier to lay charges where hate crimes are committed today.
To the extent that you think there is a better way to clarify and codify the existing definition, do know that I believe in Parliament, and I don't care which party comes forward with these amendments.
If it creates multi-partisan buy-in to codify the test, that's okay by me.
Can you guarantee that if C9 passes, no Canadian will end up being charged because of something they've posted on Twitter or Facebook?
Well, if they commit the crime of willfully promoting hatred against another person, a crime with a definition that you're changing.
But it's possible that they could be convicted for willfully promoting hate online today.
So certainly I would hope if someone commits a crime in the real world or online, that they would face the appropriate criminal penalty if, in fact, it's captured by the code.
Yeah, I mean, they're really not shy about it.
I mean, they have the support of the bloc and the NDP on most of this stuff, don't they?
So, you know, you can be hollering at the moon and they don't care.
They really seem intent on ramming this through, or do they?
Well, they certainly were trying.
I mean, we had a very, very important fight the week before Parliament rose.
The Liberals wanted to get Bill C9 just completely waived through without any scrutiny.
They actually denied us two of the meetings we were going to have to hear from witnesses on this.
And we had a lot of fantastic civil liberties lawyers lined up, including the Democracy Fund and Mark Joseph, including Lisa Bildey of the Free Speech Union that we never got to hear from.
So that was, I think, a big part of why they didn't want us to have all of the time on this that we should have had.
And they were threatening to have the committee sitting right up until Christmas because they wanted us to get this through.
But we told them this is a red line that we cannot cross.
So we were able to hold it off, but we need to ensure that the Liberals reverse course, in particular on removing the religious defense.
That's the issue, the amendment that has really awakened a lot of Canadians that I don't really think we're paying attention to this too closely because it is very personal.
When the government starts telling people of faith what views they can express, what scriptures they can quote, that is something that anyone understands.
Yeah.
Well, I'm glad you're in there fighting.
And I'm glad the Conservative Party has dedicated itself to free speech.
And I think that they have.
And I'm not saying that just to give a compliment.
I think they have.
And I think the Canadians care about this.
I think I've really never seen a poll where Canadians want more censorship.
I think every human being says, well, I can make decisions for myself.
Maybe he can't make decisions for himself, as in everyone, but everyone wants to be their own censor, if you understand my meaning.
Everyone wants to make the choices for themselves.
And I think that's a natural human streak.
Andrew, it's great to catch up with you.
What's the best way for people to stay in touch?
Do you have a newsletter or something?
Do you have a website people can sign up to?
Yeah, people can head to my website, which is at andrewlawton.ca.
And you can sign up there.
You can also follow me on X or Facebook and YouTube.
I try to post all the work that I'm doing on those platforms.
Well, thanks for taking the time to keep in touch with us.
We're excited that someone with your history of being an independent-minded, civil liberties-loving journalist is in parliament.
It's very exciting.
Gives hope to the rest of us independent journalists and keep it up.
And let's catch up in the new year.
I think you're right.
I think C9 will be a big battle, and hopefully we can get an update from you in a few months.
I look forward to it.
Merry Christmas, Ezra, and to all of your audience as well.
Merry Christmas.
Thanks.
And to you too, my friend.
There he is.
Andrew Lawton, one of the good guys.
That's for sure.
We miss him as a journalist, but he's doing very important work in the parliament.