September 1st, 2025 | Steven Parker

Opinions And Self-Defence Remain Illegal In A Broken Canada

Amy Hamm and an Ontario homeowner are the latest victims of a broken system.

Imagine waking up at three in the morning to find a burglar in your home. Imagine he's wielding a crossbow. Not an ideal way to start your week. Well, it happened to a 44-year-old man in Lindsay, Ontario. He was woken from sleep and he confronted this unwelcome guest in a split-second decision and used a knife to defend himself. The intruder ended up with serious, life-threatening injuries and was airlifted to hospital. The hero homeowner? Charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon. Absolutely absurd and yet entirely predictable for Canada.

Doug Ford, in what must’ve been a rare moment of lucidity, exclaimed that “something is broken” when you can’t “protect your family”.

Hear, hear. It is beyond the pale. Break-ins are terrifying, and your first instinct might include delivering a non-lethal boot to the trousers of the perp, yet here the law is waiting to prosecute you. The police chief was all genteel about it—saying, yes, there is the right to protect yourself, but the force must be “proportionate”. Proportionate? Is leaving an intruder in a hospital proportionate? I’d argue so, but apparently not in Canada.

Let’s just pause for a moment. Someone breaking into your residence is wanting to do you harm, so whatever you do in response is apparently a possible crime. A lawful intruder gets injured and you, the homeowner, get slapped with assault charges. It’s a one-sided game with absurd rules.

On the bright side, Canadians have been sympathetic. Online reactions included comments like: “Sorry, we should not be charging anyone for self-defense unless it's egregious. I know if someone breaks into my house, I'm going to use any force I possibly can to protect my family”.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

This incident raises a big, fat question: at what point does defending your hearth become a criminal misstep in the eyes of the law? If you can’t protect your own family without risking criminal charges, what can you do?

Shall we pivot to another gem? In British Columbia, a nurse named Amy Hamm was slapped with suspension and fines for posting opinions about transgender issues.

Apparently, she made comments that aligned with a certain famed author known for her "gender critical" views. The professional regulator didn’t just lightly rebuke her; it fined and suspended her with a whopping fine around $94,000, which she will need to pay if she ever wants her license back.

Let’s take stock. She wasn’t harassing anyone, she wasn’t threatening violence, she was merely expressing an opinion while still identifying as a nurse. That sparked professional sanctions. Redditors were swift to weigh in:

“It’s not what she said, it’s that she said it while representing herself as a nurse.”

Fascinating. So, in Canada, certain professions apparently come with mandated ideological purity tests in which you must affirm the correct narrative at all costs, or watch your career evaporate. Spray your disdain for political correctness as John Q. Citizen? Fine. But confuse these mandates with being a nurse, apparently, that’s verboten.

Perhaps her comments were provocative, but they were hardly violence. Yet the regulator interpreted "misconduct." And so the irony continues. It's more ideological policing under the veneer of professional ethics.

If you ask me, we need more nurses like Amy Hamm, who understand science and biology.

However, unfortunately, if you’re a nurse who is pondering and discussing the societal implications of gender identity laws—on your lunch break and on your personal watch—you may be committing a sin punishable in dollars. Free speech? More like free bleed (of your bank account and career).

Canada, I adore your maple syrup and your hockey, but your self-defence laws and gender policing regimes need a proper kick in the butt—or at least a proper democratic review.

Perhaps we should put our attention on building a better healthcare system by not suspending nurses over their personal views. While more people find themselves dying in emergency rooms and waiting for urgent treatment, now may not be the time to cut down the labour force in healthcare and administer penalties for wrong-think. Canada could use a lot more nurses, not less.

You see, we used to have a charming phrase: the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Now, it seems, the price of literal survival and a professional opinion is prison—or a crippling fine. And that, dear reader, is a bloody disgrace.