Juno News - February 06, 2023Bill C-11 is closer to becoming law — here’s what’s at stake
Episode Stats
Words per minute
191.67905
Summary
Bill C-11, which has been dubbed Justin Trudeau's online censorship bill, has received a lot of pushback. And when a piece of legislation gets this much pushback, it can often be scrapped. But not now, not this time. Justin Trudeau and the liberals are defiant, digging in their heels, determined to ram this through.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Bill C-11, which has been dubbed Justin Trudeau's online censorship bill, has received a lot of
00:00:05.880
pushback. And when a piece of legislation gets this much pushback, it can often be scrapped.
00:00:11.980
But not now, not this time. Justin Trudeau and the liberals, defiant, digging in their heels,
00:00:17.360
determined to ram this through. So the legislation, it's now been passed through the Senate.
00:00:22.900
Amendments have been proposed by senators, but Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez says,
00:00:27.120
well, I don't know if we're going to accept these amendments. We'll see what happens. And the bill
00:00:31.280
could be made law very soon. Now, there are a lot of people who are concerned about this bill.
00:00:36.940
Opposition politicians, sure. But people from different walks of life as well. You've got a
00:00:41.780
lot of academics who are experts in this field who say they have problems with the legislation.
00:00:46.700
Now, what Bill C-11 ostensibly is, is to modernize the Broadcasting Act. Because since the last time
00:00:52.640
they dealt with these bills and the Broadcasting Act, the landscape was very different in terms of
00:00:57.200
online streaming and different things that are happening in the realm that the CRTC governs.
00:01:02.360
But the critics say the devil is in the details. And while there may need to be some modernizing
00:01:06.840
going on, there's also stuff here that amounts to censorship in terms of the promotion of Canadian
00:01:11.940
content, determining what is and what isn't Canadian content, and how algorithms can basically be
00:01:18.460
prodded about by the government, by the CRTC, to determine what content is pushed forward and
00:01:24.220
advocated and encouraged to be viewed, and what is downplayed, what is shadow banned. Basically giving
00:01:29.680
the government potentially the power to determine what content you can and can't watch online. A lot
00:01:35.940
of people concerned about just how far these details could potentially go. Now, you've also got
00:01:41.780
YouTube content creators who've stepped forward appearing at House of Commons committees to sound the
00:01:46.300
alarm about it. YouTube itself, the corporation, they've had a big ad campaign. They bought ads
00:01:51.520
all around Toronto's Union Station, a really large place to say, watch out. This is a big problem. Keep
00:01:57.020
your hands off of YouTube. And you've had novelists getting in on the conversation. David Adams Richards is
00:02:03.040
one of Canada's most respected novelists, and he's won all of the top awards. He was also appointed to the
00:02:08.520
Senate in 2017, and he gave a big speech in the Senate where he was really criticizing this bill.
00:02:14.020
Margaret Atwood, she tweets this speech and says this needs a lesson, encouraging everyone
00:02:19.240
to check out that very speech. So you've got a whole lot of people, not just opposition politicians,
00:02:24.100
who say, we have a problem with this bill, shorthand known as Justin Trudeau's internet censorship bill.
00:02:30.340
Why the need to ram this through? What is going on? Why the obstinacy? Clearly, a lot of people are just
00:02:36.640
not okay with this, and they need to do more to signal to Canadians that, look, we are not going to move
00:02:42.900
forward on all of these controversial aspects. They really need to shelve the whole thing and
00:02:46.920
maybe just pick out the one or two things that are nothing to do with the algorithm, and maybe you do
00:02:51.540
need to modernize the broadcasting act. Fine, give it a totally different name. Just start from step one.
00:02:56.420
But no, they are insistent on saying it's our way or the highway. A lot of people concerned. Watch out,
00:03:02.480
folks. It's almost the last moments here where people can voice their opposition and concerns about