George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four nearly 80 years ago as a warning about totalitarianism. The novel’s true horror isn’t censorship — it’s compelled speech. In the book’s climax, the rebellious Winston Smith is sent to the Ministry of Love, where torture is used to force him to agree that an obvious falsehood is the truth. Asked how many fingers his tormentor is holding up, the correct answer isn’t four or five — it’s whatever the party says it is.
Nineteen Eighty-Four was fiction. But in 2026, examples of compelled speech in Canada are not hard to find.
Take the claim that a mass grave of Indigenous children sits at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. — a claim unsupported by any forensic evidence to date. Simply asking questions about it, or declining to wear an orange shirt on September 30, is enough to be branded a denier and an enemy of reconciliation. Merely questioning the official Kamloops narrative could one day be treated as a criminal matter.
Then there’s gender identity, where a person born with a penis is a man and a person born with a vagina is a woman — a statement now considered controversial enough to invite official sanction. A U.S. Supreme Court justice, asked to define the word “woman,” could not do it. And in Canadian institutions, a man who says he identifies as a woman is now entitled to compete against women in sports, shower in women’s changerooms, and be housed in women’s prisons. Object, and expect to be labelled a hater, a bigot, and a transphobe.
Canada has no Ministry of Love, and no torture chambers. But there is more than one way to enforce conformity, and a case headed to the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal on September 14 shows how it’s done.
Westlock, Alberta, resident Benita Pedersen — a DJ, children’s entertainer, and event coordinator — is facing a human rights complaint over a flyer she handed out three years ago opposing a proposed rainbow crosswalk incorporating the colours of the transgender pride flag. According to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom, Pedersen’s flyer stated facts, including the potential for infertility following gender transition, and encouraged residents to contact their elected representatives if they shared her concerns.
On June 19, 2023, local resident Laurie Hodge filed a complaint against Pedersen under the Alberta Human Rights Act, alleging the flyer constituted discrimination based on gender, gender expression, and gender identity. Hodge was not on Westlock town council at the time. Both women ran in a January 2024 by-election; Pedersen finished second, Hodge third — though Hodge was later elected to council in a subsequent vote. Whether the complaint was ever really about a crosswalk, or about eliminating a political rival, is a fair question.
The Director of the Alberta Human Rights Commission has since taken carriage of the complaint on Hodge’s behalf and referred it to the Tribunal under Section 3 of the Act, which bars publications likely to expose people to hatred based on protected characteristics. The Director is expected to call an expert witness to testify that failing to paint the crosswalk could cause physical and mental harm to transgender and marginalized youth. Pedersen, in turn, must rely on evidence from an endocrinologist and a psychiatrist specializing in gender dysphoria simply to defend a flyer about a paint scheme. In May, the Director moved to exclude most of Pedersen’s witnesses as irrelevant; the Tribunal denied that motion in July.
“Albertans should be free to express their opinions on controversial topics without being accused of hatred and discrimination,” said constitutional lawyer Allison Pejovic of the Justice Centre.
Pedersen’s case is not isolated. The Supreme Court of British Columbia has granted four organizations intervenor status in nurse Amy Hamm’s appeal of a March 2025 disciplinary ruling by the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives, which found her guilty of unprofessional conduct over online statements she made about sex, gender, and sex-based rights between 2018 and 2021. In a decision released September 8, Justice J. Hughes granted standing to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of B.C., West Coast LEAF, Egale Canada, and the Association for Reformed Political Action Canada (ARPA), while dismissing an application from the Vancouver Lesbian Collective. ARPA is expected to argue that criticizing gender identity theory does not amount to discrimination or hatred. Hamm’s appeal is scheduled to be heard in Vancouver this November.
The reach of compelled speech isn’t limited to tribunals and regulators. In 2024, David was covering a story on Ash Davis, a biological male competing on the Fergus Highlanders women’s rugby team, when Ontario Provincial Police officers threatened him with arrest simply for asking questions on a public sports field. Later that same day, while conducting consensual interviews with spectators in the stands — not on the field, not interfering with play — police made good on the threat and arrested him.
All of this unfolds while southern Ontario endures a record crime wave, raising the obvious question of what, exactly, police resources are being prioritized for.
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