Juno News - Liberals crack down on misinformation, after spreading misinformation

00:00:00.000 Hey, did you hear the news that the federal government is thinking of jailing Dr. Teresa

00:00:10.080 Tam and Health Minister Patty Hadju for spreading lies about the coronavirus? Really, Fury? Okay,

00:00:17.540 well, not really. Maybe not. Probably not. But I gotta say that possibility entered my mind when

00:00:23.400 I heard the news that the feds are indeed thinking of introducing legislation to tackle

00:00:27.900 misinformation, disinformation, and fake news about the coronavirus. Because, of course,

00:00:33.540 there are things that Tam and Patty Hadju said a few months ago that they have now done a total

00:00:37.600 180 on. Were they peddlers of misinformation at the time when they said that? And they have now

00:00:42.880 done a switcheroo. Should people be punished for saying now what they said back then? Certainly

00:00:48.300 begs a lot of questions. Now, to be fair, the federal government has said that this is a pretty

00:00:52.840 low priority on their order paper. It's not one of the top things they're going to be dealing with.

00:00:56.980 Well, I should hope so. In fact, I wonder why this even entered their headspace in the first place

00:01:02.080 when they are dealing with so many other issues of shoring up the healthcare system,

00:01:06.280 getting personal protective equipment, and all of these international issues that have surfaced,

00:01:10.600 particularly dealing with China and the World Health Organization. Why are they always so seized

00:01:16.480 on this misinformation matter? You'll remember they tried to do a similar thing back during the last

00:01:21.240 federal election, and it left a lot of people wondering, are they actually just going to punish

00:01:24.800 people who are kind of saying things they don't like? Look, there is a lot of stuff going out there

00:01:29.620 online, people talking about the virus. Inevitably, that's going to happen. Regular folks are going to

00:01:34.760 want to have their say on a whole array of different issues. Bioweapons, conspiracy theory, this and that.

00:01:40.380 Does this drug work? Does that drug not work? Some of these are actually legitimate avenues of

00:01:44.720 inquiry. I mean, some of them are going to be incorrect here and there, but people are allowed to

00:01:48.980 talk it out. When it comes to the patently wrong stuff, the people who are sending out emails doing

00:01:54.160 clear fraud, trying to sell you a miracle cure, trying to scam you, you know, there's already laws

00:01:59.080 in the books about all of that stuff. That is already illegal. So I wonder what is the government

00:02:04.240 doing, particularly now, when their information they have put out there, well, that is not being

00:02:09.680 considered trustworthy recently because of the flip-flops that we have seen from the various officials.

00:02:14.420 So of all the things for the feds to do right now, this tackling misinformation thing, it

00:02:20.100 just isn't one of them.

Juno News - April 15, 2020