Juno News - Liberals hide behind “child safety” to push censorship bill

00:00:00.000 One of the most insidious aspects of this bill has been that the government is pushing all of

00:00:14.540 this very controversial, very contentious stuff. And they're doing this while also claiming that

00:00:22.800 this bill is really about protecting children. They're doing some tremendous gaslighting here.

00:00:27.960 They're saying that this is all just to protect children from online exploitation. Yes,

00:00:32.260 there are sections of the bill that does that. Those would be uncontroversial if they were passed

00:00:36.280 on their own, I believe. This is a point that was raised by Peter Menzies in the Epoch Times. He is,

00:00:42.160 well, he's been on the show before. You know who he is. He's a legend. But he is also a former vice

00:00:46.160 chair with the CRTC. Peter, it's good to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming back on today.

00:00:52.860 Oh, thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure.

00:00:54.820 Do you think the government is trying to just do this all in one fell swoop because they think

00:01:01.500 that these things belong together? Or do you think that the child exploitation stuff is really the

00:01:06.120 political cover for the online censorship provisions? I have no insight into their thinking.

00:01:13.980 I wish I did and I could answer that that way. It appears that they have bundled a whole bunch of

00:01:20.060 things into something because they couldn't do them the way they originally wanted to do them,

00:01:26.000 which was all going to be through the Digital Safety Commissioner, the digital czar, if they

00:01:33.420 wanted to call it that, the digital version of the CRTC for oversight. That got so much pushback

00:01:39.180 from the public and various platforms that described it at various times as similar to

00:01:46.720 what is used in Iran or North Korea or China. And those statements, I don't think were hyperbolic

00:01:53.600 because they actually were. So I think what they did was they tried to divide it up into certain,

00:02:00.080 into these different portions, these sort of three areas. And then, of course, as you were just

00:02:05.780 discussing, get the Human Rights Commission to do what they figured out that they couldn't legally do

00:02:14.900 through the creation of the Office of a Digital Safety Commissioner.

00:02:20.220 And explain that part to people, because I haven't covered that as extensively on the show,

00:02:25.200 what that Digital Safety Commissioner is supposed to be as the government envisions it with C-63.

00:02:30.740 Well, the simplest way to put it is that it's an oversight body that looks over how the platforms

00:02:40.140 conduct their business. Now, having co-authored a paper that called for something not dissimilar from

00:02:46.720 that, and what it does is it imposes a duty of care. It, in fact, imposes three duties of care,

00:02:52.400 but we don't need to get into those specifically, on the platforms to make sure that they perform

00:02:59.760 responsibly, essentially. That everything, each of the harms that it points to are already things that

00:03:07.320 are illegal, for the most part. And they're designed to protect children from being exploited,

00:03:13.340 from people being embarrassed, from people being victims of extortion,

00:03:16.700 through other things like recruitment for terrorism, child pornography, child sexual exploitation,

00:03:24.720 a number of things that are already illegal. And that for the most part, in fact, entirely,

00:03:30.380 as far as I know, the platforms have been working for years to make sure don't get posted on their

00:03:35.840 websites at all. So it's kind of double coverage. I don't mind the duty of care thing at all,

00:03:42.860 because, I mean, after all, these are very powerful, almost monopolistic platforms,

00:03:48.240 and somebody's got to have some oversight somewhere, making sure that they aren't being

00:03:52.680 run by bond villains. You know, that Mark Zuckerberg is, and this is where I was disappointed. I thought

00:03:58.580 there should have been a duty of care to ensure free speech in an unbiased fashion, right? Some people

00:04:04.400 suspect Mark Zuckerberg of being a closet leftist who's suppressing right-wing views. Currently,

00:04:11.480 the same view was held, or previously the same view was held over Twitter. Now the left seems to think

00:04:17.980 that Elon Musk has let extremists of all kinds run amok on X slash Twitter. There needs to be somebody

00:04:26.840 overlooking that to make sure, like I said, essentially bond villains is the best description

00:04:31.100 of it, that people are behaving responsibly and using and not abusing their power. But the other areas

00:04:39.680 are a real problem. Yeah, and it gets away from C63 somewhat, but I don't think hugely. We've already

00:04:45.280 seen through C18, which was the Online News Act, how Facebook chooses to respond to what it believes

00:04:51.820 as excessive regulation from the government. In this case, the government was saying that they would

00:04:56.700 have to compensate news companies in Canada, and Facebook decides, all right, we'll just ban news in

00:05:01.180 Canada. Now, I don't know if Meta, the parent company of Facebook, would, in response to C63,

00:05:07.880 say this isn't worth it, and just pull the plug and say Canadians can't use Facebook at all.

00:05:11.940 That does seem extreme, but it's possible. They may just say, like, we just don't want to even deal

00:05:16.860 with this. Yeah, they could, but I really don't think they will, because basically, I think they're

00:05:23.400 probably pretty happy. There've been no statements from them yet that I'm aware of, but I think the

00:05:27.680 problem, the platforms are probably reasonably happy. They've been kind of looking for some kind

00:05:33.160 of consistent global regulation to help them get their affairs in order, so they know exactly what

00:05:39.800 the rules are. And like I said, they're all, just about everything they're being asked to do,

00:05:44.540 they're already doing. So I don't, I mean, they're on the child stuff or on the hate speech stuff,

00:05:50.840 because I wouldn't say they're doing it on the hate stuff, because their threshold is much different

00:05:54.420 than I think the government's is going to be. Well, that's where we're going to get into,

00:05:58.420 you know, when you get into the meat of the matter and the regulations. So, I mean, I think it'll be

00:06:03.180 very important to look, to have a look at what these regulations are once that part of the bill gets

00:06:07.980 passed. I mean, hopefully the government will step away from the Human Rights Commission one, which is

00:06:13.760 the one that's going to be used to basically harass people online and cost some money and

00:06:20.260 suppress free speech. I mean, one of the, one of the, you're right, in the sense that one of the

00:06:28.380 factors that could come into play is that the platforms will, rather than, you know, stay close

00:06:34.700 to the line, step away back from the line and start self-censoring in a more enthusiastic fashion,

00:06:42.500 I guess you'd call it. But as far as Facebook is concerned, for the most part, they're quite happy

00:06:46.680 without news. There is, everything I've heard indicates that because there's less fighting

00:06:52.900 people. There's fewer, they get fewer complaints and, and from people, there's, there's less, less

00:06:58.900 bullying. It's a happier space, people sharing pictures of grandchildren and children and, you know,

00:07:06.480 weddings and funerals, et cetera, moments of their life, which I think they, they're more comfortable

00:07:12.360 with. But the others, who's to know? You mentioned regulations, and I think that's

00:07:18.340 always the danger of bills that establish a framework, is that you kind of pass it and

00:07:21.780 don't entirely know how it's going to be used. And I just wanted to ask with your experience with the

00:07:26.120 CRGC, like the CRGC obviously has the authority to, you know, govern, you know, for example, what you

00:07:31.640 can play before and after the watershed hour and, and things like that. So there is a kind of a moral,

00:07:36.760 not, not moral standards, but there's a, there's an obscenity standard that, that has been set by

00:07:42.520 these regulations. How, how good are they at doing that and, and how kind of much latitude do they

00:07:48.400 have to determine these things? Well, the watershed hour, I go, that, that, that one always lights me

00:07:54.240 up because it only actually applies on Eastern time zones. Oh, really? Yeah. Something that's

00:07:59.500 inappropriate to put on the air at, at, at nine, 9 PM Eastern is just fine at 6 PM Pacific.

00:08:06.760 Right. I didn't know that. That's actually an interesting bit of trivia there.

00:08:09.960 They don't apply. They don't apply.

00:08:11.000 These BC kids have just been subject to just horrendous, horrendous things.

00:08:14.520 Exactly. They just ignore it, but they keep it in place. And the kids in BC seem to be growing up.

00:08:20.360 Okay. Anyway, with their parents controlling what they watch. But that's been the case. That's been

00:08:25.240 the case for years. One of the things that concerns me greatly about the digital safety commissioner,

00:08:31.160 like I said, I don't have any problem with the duties of harm, but the powers given to the new digital

00:08:35.640 safety commission. And there's, there is also going to be a digital safe, a digital ombudsman

00:08:41.640 to deal with appeals, et cetera. And that's a whole other story, but that seems relatively

00:08:48.280 harmless at the moment. But with the digital safety commissioner, the powers are extensive

00:08:53.240 and the opportunity for the digital safety commissioner's office to expand its turf going

00:08:59.480 forward is appears endless. And that's really, really worrying because all of these organs,

00:09:07.320 I mean, it's human nature in almost any business for people to seek to expand their turf and their

00:09:14.040 power and their influence and their importance. And there are a number of cool conferences they get

00:09:20.360 invited to and speeches they get invited to make. It's just human nature. So giving them that much power,

00:09:25.960 that worries me because there should be, there should be a firm fence around how much power,

00:09:30.520 how much power they have. And like I said, with the, you know, the, the watershed hour,

00:09:36.200 how good are they at it? Well, not that good. All right. Well, fair enough. Peter Menzies,

00:09:41.240 former vice chair of the CRTC and also fantastic contributor to a number of places, the McDonnell-Laurie

00:09:48.200 Institute. You have a great piece in the Epoch Times on this as well. So thank you very much,

00:09:52.280 Peter. Always good to talk to you. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Lawton Show.

00:09:55.960 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - March 17, 2024

Liberals hide behind “child safety” to push censorship bill

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