A Supreme Court of Canada ruling on Friday allows a prime minister with a majority government in Parliament to curtail the free speech of MPs and senators in narrow circumstances.
The 8-1 decision focused on a constitutional challenge launched eight years ago in the lower courts by a Lakehead University law professor.
How one law professor challenged the limits of a prime minister’s power at the Supreme Court
In 2017, the federal government created a special committee of Parliamentarians with top-secret clearance to review national security and intelligence operations. It reports to the prime minister. But it included a compromise: Committee members cannot reveal what they learned to their colleagues in Parliament unless they are authorized by the prime minister.
This was considered an abrogation of the centuries-old right of MPs and senators to speak freely in Parliament, without fear of any legal consequences. That right is a fundamental pillar of Canada’s democracy. But the security committee law meant that revealing secrets in Parliament – even those in the obvious public interest – could lead to the arrest and jailing of MPs or senators.
Prof. Ryan Alford at Lakehead in Thunder Bay, Ont., took the federal government to court in 2018. He argued there is an absolute right of free speech in Parliament imbued in the Constitution. He won at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in 2022 but lost in 2024 at the Ontario Court of Appeal.
Law professor Ryan Alford makes his case in a one-man constitutional challenge against the federal government at the Supreme Court of Canada, presenting arguments in Ottawa at a hearing on Nov. 5, 2025.Supreme Court of Canada
On Friday, Justice Malcolm Rowe, writing on behalf of the 8-1 majority that included Chief Justice Richard Wagner, stated that the Constitution allows Parliament and provincial legislatures to define their privileges. This includes imposing some limits on free speech in arenas such as the House of Commons.
The ruling means a prime minister with a majority government can set the rules. Legal experts say it also means a minority government with the support of opposition MPs can collectively curtail their right to speak freely in Parliament.
But Justice Rowe made clear that any limitations “cannot fundamentally alter or undermine Parliament’s role within Canada’s constitutional order.”
In the case at hand, the Supreme Court determined that the restriction on parliamentary free speech in 2017’s National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act was “a narrow limitation of parliamentary privilege.”
“It does not affect free speech in Parliament more broadly,” Justice Rowe wrote.
In 2017, the majority government under former Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau passed the security committee law. The Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Québécois voted against it.
On Friday, the federal government welcomed the Supreme Court ruling.
The security committee “has performed an important and necessary oversight function since it was created,” said David Taylor, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree, in an e-mail. “This decision means its work can continue uninterrupted.”
In a dissent at the Supreme Court, Justice Suzanne Côté said the limitations in the security committee law were too broad. She said the federal government overstepped its constitutional authority.
“This is not a carefully tailored limit on parliamentary free speech,” she wrote and declared: “It is unprecedented in Canadian history.”
Emmett Macfarlane, a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo, supported the Supreme Court majority. In a Substack post, he wrote: “Parliamentary privilege as a concept serves to protect the ability of the houses of Parliament to conduct their affairs as they wish.”
For Prof. Alford, it is a loss after eight years in court on a question of how the Constitution works. The case in part pivoted around Section 18 of the Constitution. The section includes details on how the privileges of the House and Senate might be adjusted.
In an interview Friday, Prof. Alford said he was glad to see the top court for the first time clarify that there are limits on what Section 18 means.
On a personal basis – the culmination of a legal odyssey, one law professor against the federal government – Prof. Alford felt good, even after losing. He called the journey “remarkably rewarding.”
“I was able to achieve something, and it’s not necessarily what I wanted to achieve, but all those things are worthwhile,” he said.
Prof. Alford’s books have focused on the recent and distant past of legal history, about limits on the powers of presidents and prime ministers, and the central importance of a country’s constitution as a limit on such powers.
It’s about law but in shaping the law he leaned into philosophy, thinking back to how he went to the local courthouse in Thunder Bay to launch a constitutional challenge against Ottawa.
“I’m really of a mind that if I was put in that kind of flat circle, Nietzschean eternal return paradigm, I would not be unhappy,” he said. “But I think Kierkegaard is a bit better on this point. He said life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards. And I live forwards, and I’m in a very felicitous position to look back and say I wouldn’t change a thing.”