Will Liberals Turn C-254 Into a Speech-Crime Bill?

Before turning a private member’s bill into government criminal law, Carney’s cabinet owes Canadians the boundary line.

The Carney government is being asked to make a serious criminal-law choice: whether to take Leah Gazan’s private member’s bill, C-254, and turn it into government legislation. That is not a symbolic debate. It is a direct question about how far Ottawa is prepared to push criminal speech law.

Gazan’s September 8 letter to the Indigenous Liberal Caucus asks governing-party MPs to table her bill as a government bill. Her stated purpose is to combat residential school denialism and protect survivors from hate. That concern deserves to be treated seriously. The residential school system was real, state-run and devastating. But serious history does not give cabinet a blank cheque to write vague criminal offences.

Bill C-254 is no longer a rumour or a slogan. Parliament’s own LEGISinfo page lists it as a private member’s bill sponsored by Gazan, outside the Order of Precedence after first reading on October 31, 2025. The bill text says it would amend Criminal Code section 319 to create an offence for wilfully promoting hatred against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, downplaying, justifying, or misrepresenting facts relating to the Indian residential school system in statements made outside private conversation.

That language should make every civil libertarian stop and read slowly. “Wilfully promotes hatred” is a high bar. But words such as “downplaying,” “misrepresenting” and “facts relating to” invite hard questions about journalism, academic debate, public spending scrutiny, police complaints, archival disputes and citizens challenging official claims. The bill includes defences for truth, public-interest discussion, good-faith religious opinion and efforts to remove hatred. It also requires Attorney General consent before prosecutions. Those safeguards matter. They do not erase the need for a bright public line.

The Liberal record makes that line even more important. Bill C-9, the government’s Combatting Hate Act, received royal assent on June 18, 2026. Parliament says it amended the Criminal Code on hate propaganda, hate crime and access to religious or cultural places. Now Gazan is publicly urging Liberals to go further. In the House on September 24, she again implored the Liberal government to take on her bill and criminalize residential school denialism as incitement of hate.

Meanwhile, a Canadian Press report published September 28 said Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty would not commit to criminalizing residential school denialism when asked after a reported denialist demonstration near Kamloops. That non-commitment is not enough. Canadians need a cabinet answer.

Here is the accountability test: before the Liberals adopt C-254, publish a Speech-Crime Ledger. Define exactly what conduct would be prosecuted, what journalism and research are protected, who decides when Attorney General consent is sought, how wrongful complaints will be screened, and why existing hate-propaganda law is insufficient.

Conservatives should oppose hate and defend truth. They should also defend the principle that criminal law must be precise, restrained and impossible to weaponize against lawful questioning. If Carney’s Liberals want another speech bill, they should first show Canadians the guardrails.