Thomson Newspapers Co v Canada (AG)
freedom of expression case in Supreme Court of Canada

Thomson Newspapers Co v Canada (AG), [1998] 1 S.C.R. 877, is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on the right to freedom of expression in which the Supreme Court struck down a law that prohibited the publication, broadcast, or dissemination of opinion surveys within the last three days of a federal election campaign, as it violated section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The provision clearly restricted expression and was found to be too restrictive to be justified under section 1 of the Charter.
“Thomson Newspapers Co v Canada (AG)” enters the record as freedom of expression case in Supreme Court of Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Thomson, Newspapers and Canada can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7795888. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomson Newspapers Co v Canada (AG)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.