| In the last fifteen years, a constitutionally protected right to speak without fear or favour on all matters of society, history and governance in Canada has been put in serious doubt. The idea that official meanings and even official histories can take the place of publicly constructed ones, for fear of what the public might themselves construct, has gained widespread acceptance. Hate propaganda law and resort to its moral authority in otherwise ordinary discursive contexts, has been seminal and symbolic in this trend. Freedom of speech in Canada is being squeezed from all directions with the progressive Left leading the way and the Supreme Court lending a sympathetic ear and a helping hand.;The author argues that the current state of juridical balancing of rights of expression and tolerance has reached an intellectual impasse, which serves neither social progress nor political democracy well. Thinking has become paralyzed in traditional forms with neither side able to move the debate forward. The crux of the problem is not that opposing sides have stopped talking to each other but that they are talking past each other. The author calls for new approaches and new thinking as a way to break this deadlock. This dissertation constructs a multi-perspective multidimensional approach to the problematic which aims to show on progressive theorists' own terms of reference, that hate censorship undermines its own cause in the very process of promoting it. This dissertation is an appeal to the progressive Left to reconsider its discursive devolution and return to its historic role as moral guardians and public defenders of freedom of expression. It is also a warning to the Left and the Supreme Court of the dangers to both society and polity, of continuing along the present course. |
