Hot on the heels of imposing the most aggressive attack on the right to keep and bear arms in Canadian history, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is racing towards another set of ghastly goals.
Given the leftist bent of the Canadian House of Commons and Senate, a bill that claims for the central government the power to control information online – to the extent of censoring personal user content on social media -- creeps closer to passage, as Trudeau openly and enthusiastically has anticipated.
The bill is called C-11, and, coming on the heels of Canada’s 2017 imposition of Bill C-16 -- which punishes anyone in a “regulated business” (meaning, virtually, all) for not using the pronouns a visitor demands – C-11 will syphon virtually all publicly accessible information through the government filter, eliminating the choice and market control that ought to be the purview of viewers, readers, listeners, and those who post.
As Ramneet Bhullar reports for OpenMedia.org, C-11 also follows 2021’s C-10, which claimed for the Canadian Radio-television Communications Commission (CRTC) the power to tell video-hosting platforms to remove within 24 hours anything the government deems “harmful.”
Key facets of the new legislation directly attack the right to freedom of speech on blogs, on social media, on individually owned sites, on private business sites, and freedom of the press:
“Like Bill C-10, Bill C-11 gives the CRTC unprecedented regulatory authority to monitor all online audiovisual content. This power extends to penalizing content creators and platforms and through them, content creators that fail to comply.”
As Bhullar notes, C-11 lets the bureaucrats control web posts if the “content generates revenue for someone, indirectly or directly,” if “…any part of the content has been broadcast on a more traditional broadcasting platform,” and if “…the content has been assigned a ‘unique identifier’ under any international standards system.”
And she correctly observes:
“Guess what? Most content on the Internet generates revenue for someone, somewhere - and has unique identifiers tagged to content. As a result, most online audiovisual content is still at risk of being regulated and taxed by the CRTC. The government is promising to apply further limitations to this power via a policy direction from Cabinet after C-11 passes. But a policy direction can be amended or replaced by a new direction at any time. This is not a binding defence of our content like restrictions within C-11 would be. This government or a future government could decide to use the CRTC’s new powers to start regulating or limiting user online posts, and it would all be entirely legal.”
All of which stands in direct opposition to the 1988 (revised) Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which explicitly states:
“Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
- (a) freedom of conscience and religion;
- (b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
- (c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
- (d) freedom of association.”
Of course, given what the Trudeau government and many of its sycophants in each Province did to attack business owners, travelers, pastors and churchgoers under their goon-like government “lockdown” paradigm, we all can see that Trudeau and anyone who backed any of those so-called “pandemic” measures views the Charter as nothing better than garbage.
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And, in card-dealer terminology, C-11 follows suit, targeting pro-freedom critics of the Trudeau tyranny such as Rebel News and the popular attorney, Rumble video creator, and commentator, David Freiheit, better known as Viva Frei.
But Americans are not immune from this kind of attack.
Despite the clear wording of the First Amendment, the US government established in the 1920s the Federal Radio Commission (FRC), which “licensed” and manhandled radio station owners and threatened stifled speech on radio until the FRC (holding up the release of television four long years after TV tech actually was ready to go) was EXPANDED into the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and it threw its bureaucratic licensing and speech “regulation” claims over TV, then, later, the web.
When politicians do this kind of thing to newspapers, people correctly revile such tyrannical behavior…
And now, in the US, we see revelation after revelation of what appears to be federal and state collusion with left-leaning corporations to stifle conservatives, libertarians, and anti-war advocates.
As I noted this week for MRCTV, Monday, Ken Klippenstein and Lee Fang reported for The Intercept that Facebook’s demigods literally had built into their so-called “social media” platform a backdoor to allow government forces such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to log in, cite posts (regarding “disinformation” and “misinformation” as characterized by the DHS), and have FB purge them.
We also can remember Facebook’s 2018 purge of approximately 800 conservative, libertarian, and anti-war pages and users and then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s 2021 admission that the Bidenistas were “working with” FB and other “social media” to remove content she, her boss, and their political allies didn’t like.
MRCTV’s Nick Kangadis reported Wednesday that YouTube suspended popular conservative commentator Steven Crowder – just in time for the elections.
I reported October 31 that many leftist celebs, so-called “journalists,” and even big-government-favored General Motors began freaking out over the possibility that new Twitter CEO Elon Musk might REVERSE Twitter’s previous hostility towards conservatives, libertarians, people backing medical freedom, and anti-war activists.
That’s right, just like Trudeau’s mindset seems to show us, these comfy leftists are upset that Twitter might NOT silence, shadow-ban, and purge those with whom they disagree.
And in Canada, C-11 not only will grant the central authorities the power to block entire websites and social media posts, it will see the government control the “up or down” push of things residents might see in their searches. Writes Bhullar:
“According to the government, Bill C-11 will ‘increase visibility’ for some officially recognized Canadian content creators– but their tool for doing this is manipulating our playlists, feeds, and algorithmic recommendations.”
This works in tandem with the second punch Trudeau is throwing, Bill C-18, which would force web “platforms” to promote government-preferred media outlets. Indeed, as it was under the “lockdowns,” the politicians will decide what is “essential and non-essential,” and place special designations on the favored media.
This will effect search results all over the world, not just in Canada, as the government manipulation (similar to the Google Blacklist that included MRCTV, CNS News, NewsBusters, and many of our kindred spirits in pro-liberty media outlets) will influence results, seeing more clicks on those results that are pushed higher, which, in turn, will perpetuate the corruption of the searches.
Bhullar notes that these government moves not only appear to be part of a push to control speech, but also to help dinosaur leftist news and media creators.
The US has something similar, as I have noted for MRCTV, it’s called the Portman-Murphy Countering Foreign Propaganda Act (dropped in 2018, revived in the “American Rescue Plan”), lets the feds fund dinosaur media that create pro-Administration narratives, and completely short-circuits the First Amendment.
C-18 is not as close to passage as C-11, but the very presence of the government itself poses the key threat that always will exist.
Just as it does in the U.S.
Related: Psaki Reveals: White House Working With FB, Social Media To Censor You | MRCTV