Although section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms specifies the fundamental freedoms of ‘thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication’, only freedom of expression has been developed by the courts. These forgotten freedoms include freedom of thought. This chapter demonstrates how Canada’s own constitutional text and history supports a new recognition of freedom of thought that would overcome a recent history of forgetting this constitutional freedom. Canada’s own constitutional case law, read creatively, contains the seeds of a framework for freedom of thought, with upcoming potential to put arguments before the courts in cases where significant litigation efforts will be made. This chapter sets how the Canadian Charter protects specific elements of the right which are mental privacy, mental liberty and mental autonomy. The contemporary debate within the present international discussion generates an intellectual atmosphere and comparative case law that can support a remembering of the forgotten freedom of thought.

Conventional medical ethics, medical law and human rights protect us against the technological manipulation of our bodies, in part through recognising and enforcing a right to bodily integrity. In this chapter, we will explore the possibility of that we might also protect ourselves against the technological manipulation of our minds through recognising an analogous right to mental integrity. In the first part of the chapter, we describe some of the recent developments in the areas of persuasive and monitoring technologies, and how they are currently being used, e.g., in criminal justice and on the internet. In the second part we survey existing and proposed novel human rights law relevant to mental integrity. In the third part we argue that, though the right to mental integrity has thus far particularly been debated regarding neurointerventions, it would also apply to at least some persuasive and monitoring technologies. Finally, fourth, we consider how existing (i) law and (ii) philosophical scholarship might help to resolve the thony question of which persuasive and monitoring technologies would infringe the right to mental integrity.