My look back at 2025 concludes with a review of my most popular Substacks of the year. Much like my top ten blog posts, lawful access, privacy and digital policy were the most popular issues, though Substack also included a focus on Quebec’s Internet streaming legislation and multiple posts on the digital services tax.
News
The Year in Review: Top Ten Law Bytes Podcast Episodes
The final Law Bytes podcast of 2025 released last week took a look back at the year in digital policy. With the podcast on a holiday break, this post looks back at the ten most popular episodes of the year. Topping the charts this year was a discussion with Sukesh Kamra on law firm adoption of artificial intelligence and innovative technologies. The episode is part of the Law Bytes Professionalism Pack that enables Ontario lawyers to obtain accredited CLE professionalism hours. Other top episodes focused on digital policy under the Carney government, episodes on privacy law developments and a trio of episodes on Bill C-2, the government’s lawful access bill.
The Year in Review: Top Ten Posts
This week’s Law Bytes podcast featured a look at the year in review in digital law and policy. Before wrapping up for the year, the next three posts over the holidays will highlight my most popular posts, podcast episodes, and Substacks of the past year. Today’s post starts with the top posts, in which two issues dominated: lawful access and antisemitism. While most of the top ten involves those two issues, the top post of the year featured an analysis of the government’s approach to the digital services tax, which ultimately resulted in an embarrassing climbdown by the government.
Confronting Antisemitism in Canada: If Leaders Won’t Call It Out Without Qualifiers, They Can’t Address It
The devastating consequences of the rise of antisemitism is in the spotlight this week in the wake of the horrific Chanukah Massacre in Australia over the weekend. In addition to my post on the issue, I appeared yesterday on CBC Radio’s syndication, conducting 14 interviews in rapid succession with stations from coast to coast [clip here]. Most of the interviews followed a similar script, focusing on the rise of antisemitism in Canada as documented by Statistics Canada, lamented the troubling range of violent antisemitic incidents (including the Ottawa grocery store stabbing and the Toronto intimidation marches in Jewish neighbourhoods), and described life as Jew in Canada in 2025, which invariably necessitates a police presence at schools and synagogues alongside measures to hide Jewish symbols and identity in public.
“Shock” and the Bondi Beach Chanukah Massacre
The political response to terrorist attacks – particularly those involving antisemitism – now follow a fairly standard formula relying on a word salad of expressing sadness, assurances that the government stands with the Jewish community, and affirmations that antisemitism has no place in [insert country/province/city here]. While those comments often ring hollow, it is the frequent claims of “shock” that I find most disingenuous. In the aftermath of this weekend’s horrific Chanukah Massacre in Bondi Beach, Australia that left 15 dead including a Chabad rabbi, a holocaust survivor, ten-year old child and many others, you simply cannot claim to be shocked that such an incident would occur. Yet there is the Guardian reporting “communities express shock”, while EU President Ursula von der Leyen, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Lydon, and Norway Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere all say they were shocked by the attack.
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The Year in Review: Top Ten Michael Geist Substacks 
The Year in Review: Top Ten Law Bytes Podcast Episodes 
The Year in Review: Top Ten Posts 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 254: Looking Back at the Year in Canadian Digital Law and Policy 
Confronting Antisemitism in Canada: If Leaders Won’t Call It Out Without Qualifiers, They Can’t Address It
