CLC Blog

The provincial government of Andrew Furey recently announced plans to impose speech-muzzling bubble zones around every educational and health care facility in Newfoundland and Labrador.

In a press release on January 10th, the government revealed its intention to expand and multiply its existing Orwellian “safe access zones”, which currently forbid pro-life speech around abortion facilities and abortionists’ residences.

The new version of the “safe access zone” law is set to create a sweeping prohibition against all speech that is critical of the government’s health and education policies in thousands of locations across the province. This will take us one giant step down the slippery slope of totalitarian state censorship and thought-control.

The new bubble zones will stretch 50 metres (160 feet) in all directions from the property line of all health care and educational facilities, which will likely include every hospital, health clinic, doctor’s office, elementary school, high school, college, and university in the province. Though the specific wording of this legislation is being kept under wraps, it looks as though it will follow similar anti-free-speech laws that have been hurriedly passed in several other provinces during the COVID crisis.

Can you imagine not being allowed to criticize a government health care or educational policy on certain public sidewalks and streets that our own tax dollars have paid for? Can you imagine some citizens having more rights than other citizens, depending on how much they agree with the current government? It’s thoroughly unconstitutional!

Above: Premier Andrew Furey

If this proposal passes into law, you will no longer be free to speak your mind around any hospital, clinic, or school – meaning a significant portion of Newfoundland and Labrador will become a censorship zone! You could be arrested or fined for merely “informing or attempting to inform a person concerning” health care or educational issues. You could be arrested or fined for “advising or persuading, or attempting to advise or persuade, a person to refrain from accessing” a particular health care service or educational event. (These tentative prohibitions are based on the current abortion bubble zone statute).

These restrictions will not only apply to protests and demonstrations, but they will also apply to one-on-one sidewalk counselling and personal conversations with strangers, friends, or family within the “zone”.

You will no longer be free to share your legitimate concerns about abortion, euthanasia, sex-change surgeries, abortion-tainted vaccines, or radical LGBT school curricula, library books, and school policies within any “safe access zones”.

No protests. No signs. No conversations. No opposing viewpoints.

This is an incredibly repressive proposal, more reminiscent of Soviet Russia than the “true north strong and free”. It will eviscerate our freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, which are guaranteed in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Supporters of anti-free-speech bubble zones claim these measures are urgently needed to “protect” doctors, nurses, and patients, as well as teachers and students, from allegedly “aggressive” vaccine mandate protesters. Despite the media narrative that paints protesters as harassing, intimidating, and obstructing people, there is no evidence of this. There are no reports of any charges laid by police for such alleged incidents.

Section 264 of the Criminal Code already makes “harassment” a criminal offence, punishable by up to ten years in prison. Section 423 already makes “intimidation” a criminal offence, punishable by up to five years in prison. If these crimes were truly taking place, arrests would be made. Therefore this proposal from the Furey government serves no essential purpose other than to suppress the free speech rights of the pro-life, pro-family citizens of Newfoundland and Labrador!

In fact, one could argue that government officials are the ones harassing and intimidating citizens by threatening to take away our freedom of speech inside these bubble zones! This is nothing less than a shameless attempt to silence dissent and force everyone to uncritically accept questionable government policies on health care and children’s education.

However, I believe such draconian measures will always backfire in the end. The truth is a lion that doesn’t like to be caged – or banned from bubble zones!

Please join us in sending a strong message of opposition to bubble zones in Newfoundland by writing your local MHA using our Action Alert Email tool. We have prepared a number of pre-scripted emails that you can send in just a minute or two. Alternatively, you have the option of writing your own message.

If Premier Andrew Furey cares at all about the people of Newfoundland and their right to free speech, then he will withdraw this Orwellian proposal and remove all bubble zones from the province.

May the Lord use our efforts to change his heart and call him to respect the voices of the people he claims to represent.

Yours for Life, Family, and Freedom, 

David Cooke
National Campaigns Manager
Campaign Life Coalition

Send an Action Alert Email to your MHA here: https://www.votervoice.net/CALIFE/campaigns/91242/respond