N.A.A. from the Archives: Lisa Bildy on Justice, Gender and Speech in Canada

This episode is a reckoning.

In a raw, unflinching conversation, the ladies of North American Angst sit down with Lisa Bildy, a Canadian constitutional lawyer and Executive Director of the Free Speech Union Canada, to confront the slow erosion of free expression across professional life in Canada. What begins as her personal story — a trial lawyer turned homeschooling mother turned reluctant dissident — unfolds into a chilling map of how ideological enforcement has crept into law societies, professional regulators, universities, healthcare, education, and beyond.

Lisa walks us through the landmark battles she’s fought: from helping dismantle compelled DEI oaths within the legal profession, to defending nurse and women’s rights advocate Amy Hamm against a 22-day tribunal for gender-critical speech expressed entirely outside her workplace. Again and again, we hear the same pattern: regulators asserting authority over private speech, conscience, and belief — backed by human rights frameworks that now punish dissent rather than protect liberty.

This episode is not despair — it’s a warning and a call to arms. A reminder that history moves in cycles, that silence is never neutral, and that freedom only survives when ordinary people are willing to stand visibly, imperfectly, and together.

Lisa is not a commentator. She is a front-line defender.

She has:

• Successfully helped dismantle compelled ideological pledges within Canada’s legal profession

• Defended professionals targeted by regulators for lawful, off-duty speech

• Fought precedent-setting cases involving gender-critical beliefs, free expression, and conscience rights

• Helped launch Free Speech Union Canada, part of an international network pushing back against global speech suppression

Her authority comes not from theory, but from consequence. She knows what it costs — professionally, socially, emotionally — to refuse ideological compliance. And she shows up anyway.

When Lisa says, “The debate didn’t end — it never began,” she isn’t speculating. She’s describing the machinery she’s seen from the inside.

This episode makes one thing unmistakably clear:

Freedom does not disappear overnight.
It disappears case by case, silence by silence, professional by professional.

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