Censorship is a shapeshifter. It arrives draped in the robes of morality, national security, or social harmony, but beneath these justifications, it is often a tool of control. In the modern Canadian landscape, where free expression is enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the question is not whether censorship exists (it does) but rather whether it is necessary and to what extent it can be justified without undermining the very freedoms it claims to protect.
At the close of the fifteenth century, Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola lit bonfires of the vanities in Florence, reducing books, paintings, and ornate garments to ash in a fevered attempt to purge moral corruption. Over a millennium before that, Socrates, through the voice of Plato, defended the necessity of censorship in his Republic, arguing that stories, music, and even the emotions of citizens must be carefully curated to maintain social order. The impulse to control information is ancient, but it is also adaptive. In democratic societies, censorship no longer takes the form of flames licking at forbidden texts; it operates through de-platforming, content moderation, and speech laws that draw the difficult line between protection and suppression.
In Canada, this balance is particularly fraught. Hate speech laws, obscenity restrictions, and national security considerations all impose limits on expression, ostensibly in service of the public good. Yet, history is littered with examples where censorship has been wielded as a weapon rather than a shield. The banning of books like The Diviners in Canadian schools, the suppression of Indigenous voices through policies of cultural erasure, and the persecution of political dissidents in wartime all reveal the fine line between necessary restriction and authoritarian overreach.
To argue that censorship has no place in society is to ignore the tangible harm that unchecked speech can cause. Hate speech, misinformation, and incitement to violence have real consequences. Yet, to argue for its necessity is to invite the ever-present risk of power being abused in the name of protection. When does the safeguarding of public discourse turn into the policing of thought? And who gets to decide?
The answer, in Canada, has been a shifting compromise. The Charter protects free expression, but not absolutely. Courts have upheld hate speech laws while simultaneously striking down provisions deemed overbroad. Governments regulate media content, but journalists continue to expose corruption. The internet has expanded voices while also enabling mass misinformation. The paradox is clear: the ability to express ourselves freely is both a right and a responsibility, and its limits must be drawn with surgical precision rather than blunt force.
Savonarola’s bonfires were not mere acts of religious devotion; they were an assertion of control over what could be seen, read, and believed. Socrates’ Republic, for all its philosophical elegance, is a city of intellectual constraint. Canada must decide whether it will err toward openness or restriction, knowing that either path carries risk. But if the choice is between the flickering fire of censorship and the bright, sometimes blinding light of free expression, history has shown that the latter—though uncomfortable, chaotic, and often dangerous—is always the better guide forward.