News

John Cleese.

Blog post by Augustin Hamilton (Quebec Life Coalition) — Translated by QLC — Photo: Paul Boxley/Flickr/Wikimedia Commons

The famous British Monty Python actor and comedian, John Cleese, has cancelled his visit to British Columbia, which was scheduled to take place as part of his Canadian tour in the autumn.

His reason? He is undoubtedly afraid of being sued for making jokes about gender ideology.

In response to the news of the British Columbia school board member convicted for criticising gender ideology, John Cleese wrote on X:

“What a pity !

I'm arranging a theatrical tour of Canada this Fall, and now I won't be able to risk doing any shows in British Columbia

I was really looking forward to coming.”

School board trustee Barry Neufeld was fined $750,000 by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for ‘hate speech’ targeting transgender people. The Tribunal found that at least 24 of Mr Neufeld’s posts on transgender issues were hateful and discriminatory. He was also found to have denied the reality of gender and incited hatred towards transgender people by denying that gender was a real thing.

In his role as a school board trustee, Mr Neufeld was striving to protect pupils from gender ideology, particularly as taught in the SOGI 123 programme.

The problem with this ruling is this: can we still criticise a group’s ideology if such criticism might expose its reprehensible aspects?

Meanwhile, Canada is not looking good when it comes to freedom of expression.