Canadian Politics Today

I agree in principle that the freedoms and democracy are not the same thing, in that free speech for example need to be valued and protected individually.  But... one of the reasons we protect free speech is to provide the feedback loop to governance.  Also, every single democracy puts some limit on lying so caterwauling on 'free speech' limits is tantamount to crying wolf.

I am talking about the culture of free speech - not the laws. If there is a culture of free speech then any laws that place limits  on the extremes will not undermine free speech. If that culture disappears then the laws will get more and more restrictive until we wake up one day and realize it is gone and we can't get it back. The culture of free speech is under threat because way too many people think it is acceptable to silence political opponents.

GMOs are safe to consume, and can be a boon to poor countries however misinformed people will propagate incorrect information about them.  At a certain point, ballot initiatives will be introduced and susceptible politicians will be coaxed into speaking about them.  How do we iterate our democracy to acknowledge that bad information is indeed a thing, and improve the quality of our publics ?

All politics is subject to people who peddle misinformation. It seems strange to single out GMOs. What about the inevitable reduction in jobs caused by raising minimum wages? What about he housing affordability crisis created by excessively high immigration rates? At some point all of these questions come down to values and cannot be addressed by quoting facts.