What Canadians Actually Think About Free Speech
I’ll be honest. I don’t enjoy being offended. But if it were illegal for anyone to say or write anything that could annoy me, there wouldn’t be much left to talk about, would there? So I’m more than willing to put up with some discomfort and even outrage on the assumption that you’ll be equally considerate of my rights.
It turns out that I’m far from alone on this one. The Leger Opinion Panel - as part of their 2024 Democracy Checkup - asked if “you agree or disagree that people should be able to say what they think even if it offends some people”. 74 percent of the question’s 8,102 respondents agreed either somewhat or strongly. That’s up a couple of points from the 2019 survey.
Let’s break those latest results down a bit. 78.6 percent of all men in the survey supported the position against just 70 percent of women. When looking at specific ethnic identifications, the position was accepted by 77 percent of West Asians, 74 percent of whites, 70 percent of blacks, and 65 percent of Chinese. 70 percent of people born in Canada agreed as opposed to 73 percent of those born elsewhere.
In other words, even though the Liberal government is pushing hard to provide official agencies with the tools to suppress and punish offensive speech (which they call “hate speech” and “harmful rhetoric”), the vast majority of Canadians of all demographic profiles clearly disagree.
Bear in mind that this survey was conducted in 2024, so it largely predated the pendulum swing away from peak “woke-i-verse” popularity. Since then, the idea that everyone’s free speech rights should be restricted to account for the feelings of designated victim groups is probably even less popular.
Some of the other survey responses were predictable: 92 percent of all respondents agreed that “politicians are willing to lie to get elected”. The recent series of Liberal-bound Parliamentary defections have probably only strengthened that sentiment.
Other responses were thought provoking. For example, only 38.7 percent felt that most people are trustworthy. Specifically, men and whites agreed by 42.1 percent and 40.7 percent respectively, while only 35 percent of women defaulted to trusting people. But just 23.1 percent of blacks and 26.9 percent of West Asians felt that confident about the people around them.
Since I knew you’d be wondering, I won’t hold anything back. It’s true: I couldn’t resist using all that nice data representing more than 8,000 Canadians and felt compelled to tally up (average) income levels by educational attainment:
Looking at the disappointing experiences of high school dropouts compared with those who just finished elementary school, I can only echo Alexander Pope:
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
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Could the income difference between "Completed Elementary School" and "Some secondary/high school" be attributed to a generational quirk? I might guess that the Elementary School cohort are older and from a generation that worked more years and were more "trades" oriented. The High School cohort might skew younger and had gravitated to a more service industry orientation in their work.