In Canada, freedom of speech is considered to be a frill, used selectively to further the interests of the ruling Liberal class and to thwart its enemies in the Opposition.  As such the bar for reputational damage is embarrassingly low, to the point where one could potentially sue without having to prove that the undesirable in question actually caused harm.

If you are a Liberal cabinet minister who has been besmirched by a parody account on Twitter, or a Prime Minister who wants a feminism mulligan, or merely some hack whose brain drippings are taken seriously due to your proximity to these Beautiful People, then you are simultaneously permitted the most bloated of rhetorical excesses and the ability to silence and shame those who you deem to be in the wrong.

When members of our Ruling Class want to play the injured victim, they can rightly expect all their vassals to rally to their defence, going All In against Donald Trump and the Forces of Evil.  It's so romantic that some of those vassals actually start to think that they can play a professional victim, too, and be held up as some unjustly wronged martyr for their pet cause.

(Let it never be said, of course, that when our Liberal overlords set this example, they are "whipping up" sentiment irresponsibly.  O no!  That dishonour is reserved exclusively for the misleaders on the right, who spread misinformation and un-facts for political benefit!)

These fakes, these pretenders to the Divine Right of Free Speech, are numerous and deadly.  There is the evil counsellor, Jon Kay, and his band of brigands over at Quillette.  There's the mad professor, Jordan Peterson, and his white-supremacy-normalizing Legion Of Doom.  There's the grotesque creature, Ezra Levant, and the plague of Rebels he fostered and unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.  There are the digital terrorists at Ontario Proud.  Most horrible of all are the Conservative Party legitimizers of speech-violence: Scheer, Kenney, Moe, Ford, and Bernier.

Then there are the benighted innocents on the left, those poor unfortunates like Nora Loreto, Jesse Brown, Desmond Cole, and Matthew Sears whose hearts are in the right place but continually bring shame upon their more centrist betters by speaking out of turn.

All the denizens of this rogues' gallery have cried victim at one point or another, or acted as a righteously indignated spokesperson for some unheard sector of the Canadian body politic.  Yet because they know no other way of being than to copy the Liberals (save for a few points of departure) they more often than not state their case as if their personal truths were self evident, as if they themselves enjoyed the privilege of Free Speech granted to members of the Liberal elites.

However, since they do not belong to the Ruling Class, they are usually subject to vigorous public shaming as punishment for such presumption, and rarely if ever enjoy the support of the various Legacy Media Columnists or the assent of the venerable cultural guardians at the CBC.

Because Canada is the greatest and fairest country in the world, however, the price for deviating from the acceptable modes of speaking is never higher than this.  Like a Batman villain, once the deviant has been appropriately shamed by his or her betters, they are free to enact their next diabolical plot to plunge us into a Trump-ian (or Sanders-ite) maelstrom of chaos.  But never shall they succeed, for the Canadian Model of Discourse, which will one day be affirmed by all nations as the antidote to populism, is eternal and undeniable.

Unless, of course, these career thought-criminals stop taking pages from that damned Liberal Playbook and actually put together an airtight case for how Canadians are being screwed over by some nefarious force, instead of just crying bloody murder and including a donation page link at the bottom of the email, or offering more than just an incremental and marginal benefit over the devil we know.

It's time we got over the fact that freedom of speech comes at a premium for most Canadians, and started working harder to be heard.

Written by Josh Lieblein

Watching Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's harassment accuser repeatedly refuse requests for further comment reminds me why I haven't publicly identified the Canadian media personality responsible for the closest thing I've had to a #MeToo moment.  For one thing, it was a matter of a few off-colour comments, nothing worse.  For another, the issue was resolved to my satisfaction within days.  Most of all, I'd have to hear more about it from other media personalities than I'd ever care to to wit, not at all.  For every woman who calls out an alleged perpetrator, there is at least one other who doesn't think it's worth the bother.

But the story has grown bigger than the account of this woman, whose name I will omit as she only released it under intense media pressure.  As of this writing, approximately every political columnist with a connection to Canada has demanded a straight answer from Trudeau about what, in the absence of a clever epithet, we call the "Kokanee Grope."  None of them is wrong to do so.  It is sadly predictable for the more-feminist-than-thou Trudeau, who has prosecuted sexual harassment in the ranks of his own cabinet with the greatest of ease, to duck accountability when it is asked of him personally.  To date, I believe only Anthony Bourdain has been completely candid about his own past behaviour without being prompted.

Trudeau has certainly done himself no favours with his mealy-mouthed statements.  By the standards he set himself in January, the woman should be believed, which is why he claims either poor memory or a lack of situational awareness instead of accusing her of lying.  But then . . . what?

Consider the other Liberal MPs who have been booted or demoted for harassment since 2014.  Massimo Pacetti was accused of coerced sexual consent by another MP.  Scott Andrews was accused of forcing his way into his accuser's home and grinding his pelvis against her.  An investigation found that complaints of unwanted kissing and petting against Darshan Kang, made by a former staffer who did release her name were substantiated.  Kent Hehr had a reputation for making female staff and colleagues uncomfortable, verbally and physically.  In terms of both their relationships with the complainants and the substance of the accusations, all four men have allegedly done worse as far as we know.  And since many of former Ontario PC leader Patrick Brown's remaining defenders have complained of double standards: 18-year-olds, dude.

This does not diminish the offence of a prime minister's son groping a journalist.  Even if he never had any political ambitions for himself, it would be rightfully seen as a famous rich boy's sense of entitlement to a woman's personal space.  If Ben Mulroney were accused of the same thing, we'd demand a groveling apology from him, too.  But because the offence is less recent, less specific, less power-imbalanced, less violent, and made by someone who accepted Trudeau's apology the next day, it may also be less bootable, even for the Liberals.

Most of these accusations never become criminal matters.  As soon as they go public, they become political matters.  The questions for party leadership concern neither due process or morals, just perception.  Can he survive this?  If not, can we afford to get rid of him?  If not, how should we punish him?  How bad will we look if there are others?  How can we root them out?

Trudeau will not step down or be pushed out.  In the midst of NAFTA renegotiations, and with a federal election next year, for him to go would be madness.  His only option is to explain what really happened (if that memory wasn't lost in a haze of bad beer and worse outfits), deliver a groveling apology, and admit to anything else he's trying to hide, if there is anything else.  Assuming the story doesn't get worse, there's a good chance it will disappear by the end of the summer.  By declining the many opportunities he's been given to do this, Trudeau is keeping it out front in the middle of the silly season the worst possible time to hope for a replacement story.

He has tried, though, bless him.  But haven't we all seen enough of his pecs already?  Constant partial nudity got old for Miley, Justin, and it's getting old for you, too.

Photo Credit: National Post

Written by Jess Morgan