Michael Cooper’s words removed from justice committee’s transcript and audio record

The edited transcript of Michael Cooper's comments during a meeting of the parliamentary justice and human rights committee.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don’t know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories. Just in that one instance, in my whole life, I did possess actual concrete evidence after the event—years after it.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

If there was ever a time when silence was deafening, it’s now. If you listen to the audio recording of a justice committee meeting last week and it stops abruptly, there isn’t a problem with your internet connection. That silence is the product of a successful effort by Liberal politicians to literally censor the words of a colleague.

The censored words are those of Conservative MP Michael Cooper, who was ejected from the justice committee by Conservative leader Andrew Scheer. Cooper read an excerpt from the Christchurch killer’s manifesto to challenge a committee witness’ assertion that “conservative commentators” inspire mass violence.

But the attacks on Cooper, and the truth he spoke, went beyond political. As I wrote about last week, members of the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights voted unanimously (with the Conservative members abstaining) to remove Cooper’s comments from the official record.

Not only were they removed from the transcript, pictured above. Even the raw audio feed of the testimony was retroactively edited, with silence replacing the offending words.

First, the stream goes dead when Cooper mentions Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch killer, by name. It goes dead again as Cooper reads the section of the manifesto disproving the slanderous assertion made by witness Faisal Khan Suri.

I was in the committee room when the motion to censor and censure Cooper was passed, but it was still chilling to hear–or not hear, rather–the new “record” of that May 28 meeting.

You can listen to the updated version of history for yourself here, though I’ve embedded the relevant excerpt below.

As noted in the above Orwell quote, in the absence of an official record we’re left only with memories, fallible and unprovable as they are. Even when reporting on Cooper’s comments, no Canadian media outlet included them in full. At this point, no publicly accessible transcript of the exchange exists, with the exception of my own, below.

I manually transcribed this after the motion to censor Cooper was passed. Regretfully I didn’t have the forethought to download the audio myself.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, Mr. Suri, I take great umbrage with your defamatory comments to try to link conservatism with violent and extremist attacks. They have no foundation. They are defamatory. And they diminish your credibility as a witness.

Let me, Mr. Chair, read into the record the statement of Brenton Tarrant, who is responsible for the Christchurch massacre. He left a 74-page manifesto in which he stated “conservatism is corporatism in disguise. I want no part of it,” and, “The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China.”

I certainly wouldn’t attempt to link Bernie Sanders to the individual who shot up Republican members of Congress and nearly fatally killed Congressman (Steve) Scalise. So you should be ashamed.

Michael Cooper, Conservative Member of Parliament, St. Albert–Edmonton, at a meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, May 28, 2019.

The justice committee’s strange relationship with free speech

Lindsay Shepherd, Mark Steyn and John Robson before their testimony before the House of Commons' Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

Neither Lindsay Shepherd nor John Robson nor Mark Steyn was censored today. In fact, they were all afforded a rare privilege for Canadians – the opportunity to testify before parliamentarians on a House of Commons committee.

But this is hardly worthy of celebration given how successful the efforts by members of parliament to diminish their platform were. These efforts were even supported by the Conservatives, who, despite inviting the three free speech advocates to testify as part of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights’ online hate study, backed a last-minute motion to scrap the video broadcast of the proceedings.

The meeting was scheduled to run from 8:45 am to 9:45 am Tuesday morning from Ottawa’s Wellington Building.

Committee members needed to address a procedural matter before turning things over to witnesses, appointing a Conservative to serve as the committee’s vice-chair. This was necessary after Conservative leader Andrew Scheer ousted Michael Cooper from the position for wrongspeak.

While Lisa Raitt was voted in as vice-chair, Barrie Conservative MP John Brassard ending up sitting in on her behalf for the meeting.

When it would have been time for the witnesses to begin speaking, things were delayed further by a motion from Liberal MP Randy Boissonnault to alter the official record and transcript from a prior meeting, purging it of Cooper’s citation of the Christchurch killer’s name and manifesto.

Cooper did so not to to support of condone the attack, obviously, but rather to correct blatant misinformation provided by a committee witness about the political persuasions of mass killers.

Boissonnault’s insistence that murderer’s names shouldn’t exist in public record seems rather shallow given, for example, the 21 instances in parliamentary records containing the name of Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the terrorist who killed a soldier and stormed Parliament Hill nearly five years ago.

Mentioning the names of heinous people is an exercise of truth, not glorification. But this fact is lost on the Left, who allowing something to be uttered is the same as endorsing it.

Boissonnault’s motion served not only to embarrass Cooper and the Conservatives, but also to stall. NDP committee member Randall Garrison added to the delays by calling for a recorded vote for no other reason than to waste precious time.

Brassard aptly called the motion a “stunt,” yet the Conservatives didn’t vote against it. All of the Conservative committee members voted to abstain.

The Liberals and New Democrats have been mocking Conservative concerns about censorship as this committee’s study has waged on for the last two months, yet literally joined in scrubbing the official record of words uttered in a committee meeting, by one of their (former) colleagues.

It’s a dangerously poetic view of how these same legislators would love to view western civilization. Just band together and edit out the words, thoughts and ideas you think have no place in society. With Cooper, they even succeeded in editing the person out of the committee.

Liberal MP Colin Fraser attempted to hang on Lindsay Shepherd remarks made by other people, as though Shepherd’s support for one’s right to express an idea is tantamount to endorsing the expressed idea.

When it came to Garrison’s turn to ask questions, he used his entire block of time to give a monologue about his experiences as a gay city councillor-turned-member of parliament, chiding the witnesses for not living in the “real world” while giving them no opportunity to respond or offer further testimony.

Not that there was anything to respond to. He asked no questions, but kept eyeing the clock to make sure he didn’t stop talking until his time had elapsed, before turning it back to the chair.

It’s his prerogative as an MP to use the time how he sees fit, but it demonstrates that the NDP legitimately has no idea in hearing from those with whom it may have disagreements. Indeed, if he had his way, these panelists would not have been given a platform in the first place.

Only those witnesses agreeing with the NDP’s position on free speech and online hate should have been allowed to take the stand, the party clearly feels.

The procedural issues are always where the meat of censorship happens, because it’s so muddled in process and precedent that most people stop paying attention.

That happened early on in Tuesday’s meeting, when the committee’s most enthusiastic censor, the NDP’s Garrison, moved to cut off the video stream (which was already in progress) of the morning’s hearing.

Garrison said none of the prior testimony had been televised, so this hearing shouldn’t have been. He also rejected these specific panelists ideas being given a public platform after making the obligatory, half-assed statement that he isn’t against people having ideas – simply against them being heard, evidently.

I knew the motion would pass given the committee’s Liberal majority. What I didn’t anticipate was the egregious display by the committee’s Conservatives, who voted unanimously in support of the NDP motion, making it so no one in Canada could view video of these proceedings.

It wasn’t censorship. The meeting still happened, and an audio stream was broadcast and remains available. This doesn’t take away from the malodorous fact that MPs enthusiastically supported a barrier between ideas and an audience, endorsing the prevailing progressive view of free speech that even if you have the right to say something, no one should be able to hear it.

The Left says no one is entitled to an audience, which is true. What they don’t say so openly is how they endeavour to block those who wish to be an audience from doing so.

Garrison’s moral stand against videography became particularly hypocritical when an hour later he voted against a motion to cancel the television stream of Tuesday afternoon’s meeting with a Google Canada representative.

In 15 minutes of points of order and cross-partisan motions, before any of the witnesses had uttered a word, the Canadian free speech problem was on full display.

Most chilling for Canadians is that the Liberals, New Democrats and Conservatives were all on the same team.

The fight for free speech is never over

It was a big victory against state censorship when section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act was repealed in 2013.

The repeal, accomplished through a private member’s bill by Conservative member of parliament Brian Storseth, eliminated the CHRA provision allowing for prosecution of online “hate” speech.

Yet not even a decade has passed and a parliamentary committee is weighing whether to bring back section 13 or an amended version of it.

The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights has heard from nearly five dozen witnesses since April as part of its study of “online hate.”

“The Canadian Human Rights Act does not include any mention of telecommunications and the internet since section 13 of the Act was repealed in 2013,” the scope of the body’s study says. “The Committee is particularly interested in how potential amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Criminal Code, or any other Act, could help stem the propagation of hateful acts and the enticement of hate such as racism, sexism, antisemitism, islamophobia, or homophobia, through online platforms.”

Shamefully, yet unsurprisingly, most of the witnesses testifying–including the chief commissioners of the Saskatchewan and Canadian human rights commissions–have advocated a restoration of section 13.

While the Liberal government may wish to pretend there’s a gap in the law regarding the internet, there isn’t. Anything that’s illegal in Canada–as criminal hate speech is–is prohibited on the internet.

I suspect what censors are actually pining for is the murky and reprehensibly broad interpretation “hate” that the Canadian Human Rights Commission embraced during the lifespan of section 13.

This week the committee will hear from Mark Steyn, Lindsay Shepherd and John Robson. Their voices will be important after weeks of dozens of witnesses wanting government to not only clamp down on online hate speech, but also social media companies that allow it.

(Only a couple of witnesses to date have made preserving free speech a priority in their recommendations.)

There’s nothing wrong with opposing offensive and hateful speech. Wanting government to do so with the force of the law is a different story. Especially when the umpteen hours spent investigating “online hate” have not yielded a definition of it.

Even so, that Canadian Human Rights Commission’s chief commissioner testified that it poses a “clear and present danger.”

The missing definition is critical here, especially if the Left gets its way and social media postings do become subject to government regulation, as a supercharged section 13 would allow.

Given how readily the Left accuses anyone it disagrees with of “hateful” rhetoric with labels like “racist” and “Islamophobe” and the like, I’m not optimistic a Liberal definition of hate speech will hew to Canadian criminal law’s high threshold.

That this committee’s study exists in the first place is evidence of victory’s impermanence. I joined the chorus of celebration when section 13 was repealed in 2013.

The climate of free speech has changed a lot in these last six years, however. Conservative commentators had allies in liberal journalists on the question of censorship and free speech back then. Columnists and even some politicians on the Left understood that a liberal democracy must uphold free speech.

Now, defending free speech is somehow synonymous with defending bigotry to the Left, which is more focused on pinpointing where free speech’s limits are than with preserving the overall right.

Groups like PEN, Amnesty and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression care far more about identity politics than upholding freedom of expression.

Amnesty Canada, for example, testified in support of online hate speech regulation, arguing the “right to free expression” carries “special duties and responsibilities and may therefore be subject to restrictions.”

Government bureaucracies don’t even pretend to care about freedom of speech. Case in point was Saskatchewan human rights commissioner David Arnot’s testimony before the justice committee last week.

Arnot said human rights commissions are the best way to curb hate, rather than criminal law, saying criticism of human rights commissions justifying censorship was merely “anecdotal.”

Except it wasn’t.

Steyn had to defend his right to publish a column about Islam before British Columbia’s human rights tribunal. The complaint against Maclean’s that sparked that trial was also put to the human rights bodies of Canada and Ontario, which declined to pursue only for lack of jurisdiction, not lack of support.

But Arnot, who I suspect is representative of the broader government-appointed human rights industry in Canada, rejects the premise that free speech is even a right in Canada, let alone one to be protected.

“Canada has no democratic tradition of unbridled free speech,” he said. “Freedom of speech in Canada has always been freedom governed by limits recognized in law.”

He argued there are “numerous limits to free expression that are justifiable in a free and democratic society.”

This is true when talking about threats, advocacy of genocide, and so on. Though Arnot said any protection against the “greater harm that flows from unfettered speech” is justified.

Anyone thinking the Conservatives will be reliable allies in this fight need only look at Andrew Scheer’s treatment of one of his own party’s members of parliament, Michael Cooper.

Until last weekend, Cooper was the vice-chair of the justice committee. Now he’s been booted by Scheer for the crime of being “insensitive” after pushing back against a witness’ erroneous claim that “conservative commentators” influence anti-Muslim attackers.

Cooper read from the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto to illustrate how the murderer actually disavowed conservatism. After the media falsely crafted a narrative of a Conservative MP beating up on a Muslim, Scheer capitulated, throwing his own caucus member under the bus for his “insensitive and unacceptable” comments, “especially when directed at a Muslim witness.”

This is one of the reasons I’m less optimistic about this renewed fight for free speech. A decade ago, Conservatives and even some Liberals were unified in their support for free speech. Now, Liberals and some Conservatives are united in the other direction.

Victory should never be taken for granted. The fight is the same as it was a decade ago, though the opposition is much larger.