Conservative MP Andrew Lawton says Liberal MPs who claim to care about civil liberties go quiet when it counts.

Lawton, who represents Elgin—St. Thomas—London South, sat down with Ezra on Parliament Hill during last night's episode of The Ezra Levant Show. One of the files he's working on, he said, is Bill C-34, the latest version of the Liberal government's online harms legislation.

“Look, there's some stuff in there about child protection I think a lot of people would agree with, but there's a lot in the bill that is very concerning,” Lawton said. He said it “goes back to fights that you were having 20 years ago on the way the government weaponized its so-called hate speech definitions against people online.”

The bill, introduced in June, would create a new Digital Safety Commission with the power to audit social media companies, issue compliance orders and penalize platforms. The government says it targets seven categories of harmful content, including child sexual abuse material, content that incites violence and terrorist content, and would set a minimum age of 16 for social media accounts.

Lawton said the commission would be used to force platforms to take down content classified as harmful. “And who gets to decide, right? Well, we'll figure that out later,” he said.

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Ezra asked whether any civil-liberties-minded Liberals were left, recalling that the party used to boast about being the party of the Charter of Rights. “If there are, they certainly don't have the confidence to speak up about it,” Lawton said.

Lawton led the Conservatives' fight against Bill C-9, the Liberals' Combatting Hate Act, which became law in June after the government agreed to repeal the Criminal Code defence for religious expression. Marc Miller, the minister of Canadian identity and culture, argued that religion shouldn't be an exemption from hate speech law. Lawton put it more bluntly, saying Miller's position meant people could be charged for quoting “scripture verses he doesn't like.”

“You had all of these Liberal MPs that were saying, ‘Oh, this is ridiculous. I'm a person of faith. I would never support a bill that … is an incursion on religious freedom,’” Lawton said. “But when push comes to shove, they shut up, they fall in line and vote.”

“So the idea of, like, the pro-free speech Liberal crusader for civil liberties just does not exist now.”

He said the Bloc Québécois was “one of the reasons the bill was as bad as it was,” and called the NDP “a mixed bag.” “Ultimately my view is that when push comes to shove, only the Conservatives are the party of free speech,” he said.

Asked whether the courts might be a better place to defend freedom, Lawton pointed to the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling that a one-year mandatory minimum sentence for possessing child pornography is cruel and unusual punishment. “There are a lot of bad court rulings out there,” he said. “We need to make these cases in the courts, we need to make them in Parliament and we also need to make them in culture.” That, he said, is why independent media “plays such a vital role.”

Ezra also asked about the mood in the Conservative caucus after months of what he called bad-faith criticism of leader Pierre Poilievre, and floor crossings to the Liberals.

“I have such tremendous confidence in Pierre,” Lawton said. He noted that although the Conservatives lost the last election, they won a larger share of the vote than Stephen Harper did when he won his majority. He said Poilievre has been “a consistent fighter on the economy, on freedom” and on immigration, which he called one of the defining issues, pointing to frustration over the job market, hospital wait times and the number of temporary residents still coming into Canada.

As for the critics, Lawton said many of them “do not like the Conservatives, who've never liked the Conservatives,” yet keep offering advice. “Generally speaking, never take advice from people who hate you is a good idea,” he said.