Juno News - Canadian influencers speak out about Trudeau’s internet censorship bill

00:00:00.280 Justin Trudeau's internet censorship law, as Bill C-11 has been dubbed by detractors,

00:00:05.540 still very much a concern. It's currently in the Senate right now, where it's going through

00:00:10.580 committee hearings in the Senate. A sign that it's getting closer towards being legislation,

00:00:16.060 inching its way towards the final part, when legislation gets royal assent, when it becomes

00:00:22.140 law. And a lot of people still very concerned about what's going on in this law, things that

00:00:27.300 they think need to be removed from the legislation. Now I was walking through downtown Toronto's Union

00:00:32.920 Station, major transportation hub, many thousands of people passing by it every day, and YouTube has

00:00:38.420 taken out these really large video ads saying, watch out folks, C-11 is going to mess with your

00:00:43.820 YouTube, mess with people's content. You go, wow, that's quite something if a tech giant is making a

00:00:48.980 fight like this against this legislation. They're not the only ones, by the way, other tech giants,

00:00:52.920 and we got a problem here with this bill. But it's not just big corporations who have a problem

00:00:57.200 with it. You have individual YouTubers and content creators who have been speaking out.

00:01:01.580 Some have actually been appearing before the Senate committee recently. The other week you had JJ

00:01:06.160 McCullough talking about his concerns with it. Wyatt Sharp, he is a young boy who actually has his own

00:01:12.180 political commentary videos. He's based in Ontario. He made an appearance before the Senate. You had more

00:01:18.460 recently people such as Jennifer Valentine, who's a very popular morning show host over the years in

00:01:24.340 Toronto speaking about it. A guy who goes by the name Brittle Star, he was talking about his concerns

00:01:28.840 with it. And I think actually Jennifer Valentine made a very interesting point about messing with

00:01:34.400 the algorithm. So one thing that C-11 can do is actually empower the CRTC, a government agency,

00:01:41.200 to kind of direct YouTube's algorithms or other social media platforms algorithms about what you get

00:01:47.780 encouraged to see and what you're discouraged from seeing. Now, nominally it's in the name of

00:01:53.320 promoting Canadian content. And some of these content creators are worried that they won't be deemed

00:01:57.520 the acceptable Canadian content. It will be pushed in other directions. But you've also got to wonder,

00:02:02.280 even if you approved of the content they were pushing, do you want to set a precedent where the

00:02:07.120 government is able to mess with an online algorithm for social media platform? That is really

00:02:13.620 an alarming thing. Now, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, he kind of tried to deny that this

00:02:18.640 was a thing that the legislation empowered them to do. But hold on a second, you've got CRTC Chair

00:02:23.900 Ian Scott actually turning around and basically acknowledging upon further questioning that, well,

00:02:29.000 yeah, it will sort of kind of be a thing that can happen. So really worrisome issues. Bill C-11

00:02:34.620 still very much in play, still very much a big concern. And a lot of people saying you got to just take

00:02:41.520 so much out of this legislation, we've still got to press pause on it.

Juno News - October 23, 2022