Canadian bureaucrats sued for censoring criticism of Trudeau, Fauci as promoting 'hatred'

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz's addition to the Democratic presidential ticket prompted arguments on X about whether the Land of 10,000 Lakes is culturally Midwestern – the supposed basis of Walz's appeal to the general electorate – or just "Canada lite," a knockoff of its socially and economically liberal northern neighbor.

In recent months, Canada reasserted why there's only one Great White North.

A business owner driven to retirement by pandemic lockdowns is challenging the Ontario Ministry of Transportation's ban on his billboard criticizing public officials for their COVID-19 policies, claiming it used white supremacy imagery and promoted "hatred" against them.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms filed the notice of application to the Divisional Court of the Superior Court of Justice in Ontario on behalf of George Katerberg, whose billboard depicts officials including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford and even former White House COVID adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Katerberg said he "witnessed many Canadians experiencing serious health consequences, including death, as a result of taking Covid-19 vaccines," with his brother and father both suffering strokes after boosters, and the sign is intended to "raise awareness, spark a public discussion on these issues" and hold officials accountable.

The ministry didn't respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

The case, which is comparable to an Administrative Procedure Act challenge in the U.S., recalls years of litigation against the D.C-area subway system for its prohibitions on ads for Christmas Mass, abortion pills, veganism and an anti-feminist firebrand. The Supreme Court declined to consider the Archdiocese of Washington's appeal in 2020.

The ACLU case will finish legal discovery Aug. 19, according to a May status report filed by the parties. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration is trying to consolidate the case with a similar challenge by White Coat Waste Project for rejecting its ads against federally funded animal experiments, in which legal discovery closes Nov. 22.

The ACLU brought a broader challenge with First Liberty Institute last year against WMATA's ad guidelines, used to reject ads by a nonprofit on "the important role religion played in the founding of our nation" but not for the religion-mocking musical "The Book of Mormon."

Trudeau's Liberal government has repeatedly portrayed criticism of its policies as based on foreign disinformation, particularly from the Kremlin but also from its southern neighbor.

He connected the Conservative Party's opposition to an update of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement to "right-wing American, MAGA influence thinking" last fall, two months after Trudeau claimed he didn't know a Ukraine "war hero" who got a standing ovation in Parliament had fought in a Nazi military unit. 

Later reporting revealed Trudeau's office invited the former solider,Yaroslav Hunka, to a Toronto rally honoring Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelenskyy when he visited Canada.

Canadian security officials accused Russia last month of spreading disinformation on social media platform X through a "bot farm" run by individuals associated with RT, the state-owned media company. Canada's TV regulator banned RT after Russia's Ukraine invasion.

As in the U.S., a university-run think tank goads Canadian officials to crack down even further. 

Toronto Metropolitan University's Social Media Lab Director Anatoliy Gruzd testified before a parliamentary committee this spring that "digital platforms should be mandated to bolster their Trust and Safety teams in Canada, expand their partnerships with fact-checking organizations and facilitate access to credible news" to counter Russian disinformation.

The government should also develop "pre-bunking campaigns" – a euphemism for psychological manipulation in favor of government narratives – "to educate Canadians about foreign inference," focusing on "diaspora communities in Canada," Gruzd said.

Trudeau's government maintains a regularly updated list of "the many lies by the Russian regime about its invasion of Ukraine, along with the truth," based on Canadian intelligence. 

But it sometimes conflates Russia's factual claims with opinions, such as the reasonableness of conditions for peace with Ukraine, contradicting its own "Countering Disinformation" guidebook for bureaucrats, which tells them to stick to "verifiably false claims" and not opinions or policy "interpretations" at odds with their own messages.

Katerberg rented the billboard just outside Thessalon, near Michigan's Upper Peninsula, for a year, starting March 1, according to JCCF's filing. His sign read: "THEY KNOWINGLY LIED ABOUT SAFETY AND STOPPING TRANMISSION [sic]" and “CANADIANS DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY." 

Between the two lines were headshots of Trudeau, Ford, Fauci, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh and Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam.

Katerberg also put an image of a Canadian flag over "two claw hammers intersecting," an homage to Pink Floyd's 1979 album The Wall, "which addressed government overreach," JCCF said in a press release that shows the original and revised signs.

Less than two weeks later, a redacted "Corridor Management Officer" ordered billboard owner Ken Shaw to remove the sign because the hammer symbol had been appropriated by "an American white supremacist music group" a decade after the album, the filing says.

The ministry required Katerberg to get pre-approval for a revised sign, and when he submitted a version without the hammers June 18, the bureaucracy shot it down.

"The message on the billboard may be seen as promoting hatred or contempt for the individuals pictured on the billboard which may violate certain policies regarding advertising," the June 28 email to Katerberg said without specifying which.

It's apparently referring to page 448 of the 487-page Highway Corridor Management Manual, which says: "The message on the billboard must not promote violence, hatred, or contempt against …any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, ancestry, religion, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, or disability."

The filing calls the regulation inapplicable to either Katerberg's message or the identified officials, whose "political and professional actions in response to Covid-19 are the subject of legitimate public expression and debate" under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The prohibition violates both freedom of expression and right to hear and "relies on the assumption" that the sign promotes hatred and violates a policy, using a "flawed and incoherent reasoning process" and "unreasonable chain of analysis" gives Charter freedoms short shrift against the Public Transportation and Highway Improvement Act, it says.

The billboard censorship is the softer side of Canada's clampdown on speech disfavored by the government. 

Rebel News sued the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on March 5 for arresting its journalist David Menzies while he tried to ask Finance Minister Freeland questions about the government's refusal to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist entity. 

Toronto police twice arrested the fedora-clad Menzies in the following month as he interviewed pro-Palestine demonstrators outside a Liberal Party fundraiser featuring Trudeau, then counterprotesters at a pro-Israel rally. Rebel News is running a legal fundraiser.