The prime minister's bill to control what Canadians can post to the Internet — Bill C-11 — has passed second reading in the Senate, with only 19 Senators opposing it. It is expected to have the Senate rubber stamp by November of this year..That’s bad news for us all. .Liberal governments in this country have long been obsessed with making sure we Canadians view, listen and read Canadian content in our books and newspapers and on our radios and televisions. You might say they have insisted Canadians view what they consider to be Canadian content or else — that’s what Bill C-11 is all about: It applies traditional Canadian content laws to social media and demands internet content be Canadianized.Media icon Pamela Wallin, now a Senator, was one who voted against Bill C-11. She is a member of the Senate Transport and Communications Committee, that's tasked with reviewing the bill. She told the Western Standard, "This is legislation that will impact every single Canadian The House of Commons silenced witnesses and cut off debate. It is our responsibility in the Senate to hear all views...including from the not-yet -named new chair of the CRTC who will have the job of interpreting what this bill really intends.".Pamela Wallin has also started a new podcast — "No Nonsense with Pamela Wallin" — available on Apple podcasts and YouTube, recently interviewed J.J. McCullough, a popular YouTuber and social media influencer, who has provided testimony against Bill C-11, saying it will work against Canadian independent content creators. McCullough says, "What this means is there are a lot of Canadian content providers who are worried their content won't pass the muster," of what the CRTC claims will be Canadian enough, "in this new algorithm that the federal government is going to mandate."Let me say why Canadian content laws — and for that matter the CBC — are utterly redundant in this millennium. Have you looked at your cable stations lately? Have you seen how much Canadian content is available without the Trudeau government putting a gun to someone’s head and and forcing them to produce it? There are dozens of stations devoted to Canadian food, Canadian history, Canadian riff-raff and Canadian weather. So Canadian content sorted itself out. And don’t you think Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doesn’t know that?There's no need to force people on the internet to produce Canadian content. It’s already out there. .So why the panic? .Well, as usual with the Trudeau government, Bill C-11 has less to do with Canadian content than it has to do with censorship. This is a government that revels in censorship and is completely obsessed with targeting misinformation wherever it may find it. And that’s just the thing: This bill is so arcanely worded it seems designed to catch a myriad of websites and a plethora of posts that won’t meet the marker of being Canadian enough, when what Trudeau really means is that they aren’t woke enough. .The beauty of the internet is it allows us to break free of government constraints. The state could not start telling us what we could post and what we could not post or if this comment had enough Canadian content or not. We were all quite sick of that approach with the traditional media. .So, do we really want the internet in Canada controlled by a nine person board of Trudeau-appointed experts who will decide what we should be viewing and what we shouldn’t be viewing? Like every kind of censorship, you know it won’t end with Canadian content and you know it’s not really about Canadian content. It’s about control of the internet. .Trudeau infamously said the country he most admired was China because it can “turn its economy around on a dime.” Well, China can also turn its freedom of speech around on a dime by restricting access to the internet. If China doesn’t want its citizens to know what is happening outside of its borders it merely shuts down the internet to all but Chinese sites. Trudeau could well decide that access to only Canadian sites would be a fair definition for Canadian content. .We don’t need further erosion of our freedom of speech in Canada. It is already precarious. Every time we open our mouths about gender pronouns we have to pause to consider whether we might be breaking a law. God knows, the Trudeau government is always looking to ban misinformation and hate speech — but it is the government itself that defines what exactly is misinformation and hate speech. .So beware of any internet laws. In Trudeau’s hands they could be lethal for your ability to communicate the truth.
The prime minister's bill to control what Canadians can post to the Internet — Bill C-11 — has passed second reading in the Senate, with only 19 Senators opposing it. It is expected to have the Senate rubber stamp by November of this year..That’s bad news for us all. .Liberal governments in this country have long been obsessed with making sure we Canadians view, listen and read Canadian content in our books and newspapers and on our radios and televisions. You might say they have insisted Canadians view what they consider to be Canadian content or else — that’s what Bill C-11 is all about: It applies traditional Canadian content laws to social media and demands internet content be Canadianized.Media icon Pamela Wallin, now a Senator, was one who voted against Bill C-11. She is a member of the Senate Transport and Communications Committee, that's tasked with reviewing the bill. She told the Western Standard, "This is legislation that will impact every single Canadian The House of Commons silenced witnesses and cut off debate. It is our responsibility in the Senate to hear all views...including from the not-yet -named new chair of the CRTC who will have the job of interpreting what this bill really intends.".Pamela Wallin has also started a new podcast — "No Nonsense with Pamela Wallin" — available on Apple podcasts and YouTube, recently interviewed J.J. McCullough, a popular YouTuber and social media influencer, who has provided testimony against Bill C-11, saying it will work against Canadian independent content creators. McCullough says, "What this means is there are a lot of Canadian content providers who are worried their content won't pass the muster," of what the CRTC claims will be Canadian enough, "in this new algorithm that the federal government is going to mandate."Let me say why Canadian content laws — and for that matter the CBC — are utterly redundant in this millennium. Have you looked at your cable stations lately? Have you seen how much Canadian content is available without the Trudeau government putting a gun to someone’s head and and forcing them to produce it? There are dozens of stations devoted to Canadian food, Canadian history, Canadian riff-raff and Canadian weather. So Canadian content sorted itself out. And don’t you think Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doesn’t know that?There's no need to force people on the internet to produce Canadian content. It’s already out there. .So why the panic? .Well, as usual with the Trudeau government, Bill C-11 has less to do with Canadian content than it has to do with censorship. This is a government that revels in censorship and is completely obsessed with targeting misinformation wherever it may find it. And that’s just the thing: This bill is so arcanely worded it seems designed to catch a myriad of websites and a plethora of posts that won’t meet the marker of being Canadian enough, when what Trudeau really means is that they aren’t woke enough. .The beauty of the internet is it allows us to break free of government constraints. The state could not start telling us what we could post and what we could not post or if this comment had enough Canadian content or not. We were all quite sick of that approach with the traditional media. .So, do we really want the internet in Canada controlled by a nine person board of Trudeau-appointed experts who will decide what we should be viewing and what we shouldn’t be viewing? Like every kind of censorship, you know it won’t end with Canadian content and you know it’s not really about Canadian content. It’s about control of the internet. .Trudeau infamously said the country he most admired was China because it can “turn its economy around on a dime.” Well, China can also turn its freedom of speech around on a dime by restricting access to the internet. If China doesn’t want its citizens to know what is happening outside of its borders it merely shuts down the internet to all but Chinese sites. Trudeau could well decide that access to only Canadian sites would be a fair definition for Canadian content. .We don’t need further erosion of our freedom of speech in Canada. It is already precarious. Every time we open our mouths about gender pronouns we have to pause to consider whether we might be breaking a law. God knows, the Trudeau government is always looking to ban misinformation and hate speech — but it is the government itself that defines what exactly is misinformation and hate speech. .So beware of any internet laws. In Trudeau’s hands they could be lethal for your ability to communicate the truth.
