WATCH: Justice Minister advocates for Bill C-10 and limiting freedom
Justice Minister and Attorney General David Lametti said freedoms are not “absolute,” and it is the right to limit those freedoms to conform to “public interest.”
Justice Minister and Attorney General David Lametti said freedoms are not “absolute,” and it is the right to limit those freedoms to conform to “public interest.”

While discussing the Liberal Bill C-10, Justice Minister David Lametti seemed to have bent over backwards to justify limiting Canadians' freedoms to suit the federal government’s agenda. The Justice Minister, who is also the current Attorney General, advocated for a wide-spectrum interpretation of the reasonable limits clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and expressed the goal of limiting freedom for the government's vision of the public good.
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View on XIn the Committee on Canadian Heritage meeting, Minister Lametti spoke on the Charter statements that are in bills and address their constitutionality. "It is also important to stress that when Parliament legislates, it may affect Charter Rights and Freedoms. This may include limiting their enjoyment or exercise when it is in the broader public interest to do so. This is entirely legitimate. The rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Charter are not absolute but subject to reasonable limits, so long as those limits can be demonstrably justified," Lametti said.
Bill C-10 is an internet censorship bill that seeks to regulate and censor the social media activity of everyday Canadians. Under the bill, certain Canadians' social media pages and YouTube channels may be subject to CRTC restrictions and broader censorship. There is even speculation that the legislation will censor social media algorithms that decide what a user sees.
In an interview with The National Post, Former CRTC commissioner Peter Menzies said that Bill C-10 "doesn’t just infringe on free expression, it constitutes a full-blown assault upon it and, through it, the foundations of democracy."
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