Canada’s new bill to restrict hate speech would remove protections for the Bible, meaning that posting or carrying a placard quoting Leviticus or other scriptures condemning LGBTQ behavior, or possibly even claiming there are only two genders, could be considered hate speech, a jailable offense. Since the existence of only two genders and the fact that a baby is a living, breathing human life inside its mother’s womb are scientific facts, ostensibly citing scientific textbooks could also be jailable if those facts hurt someone’s feelings.
Over the past decade, the UK and Canada, previously two of the freest countries on earth, have shifted so far left that they have become some of the most restrictive in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
UK police made over 12,000 arrests under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act in 2023 alone, roughly 30 per day, a figure that had nearly doubled since 2017. A separate investigation found 292 people charged under the Online Safety Act between its enforcement and February 2025.
The US State Department’s 2024 Human Rights Report stated that the “human rights situation worsened” in Britain in 2024, citing “credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression,” and noted that following the Southport attack the UK government “repeatedly intervened to chill speech.”
Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old white woman married to a Conservative councillor, was convicted for a social media post following the Southport killings and sentenced to two and a half years. Jamila Abdi, a 21-year-old Black woman, was criminally charged for using a racial slur on Twitter; her prosecution ran eight months before the Crown Prosecution Service dropped it, not on free speech grounds, but amid concerns that prosecuting a Black person for the word was itself racist.
Graham Linehan, the Irish writer who created Father Ted and The IT Crowd, was arrested by five armed officers at Heathrow Airport for posting three tweets from Arizona; his original bail condition barred him from using X while in the UK.
Police forces in Britain recorded 13,200 “non-crime hate incidents” (NCHIs) in the year to June 2024. Under previous College of Policing guidance, when someone claimed to be a victim of hatred, officers were required to keep a record against the name of the accused even where no crime was committed, with no investigation of the claims required.