Juno News - April 30, 2021


Liberals say opponents of their internet regulation bill are ＂extremist＂

Hosted by
Andrew Lawton
Mentioned
Bill C-63 Speaker Steven Guilbeault Justin Trudeau Rachel Harder Googles Gilboa
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Episode Stats


Length

4 minutes

Words per minute

174.23

Word count

732

Sentence count

40

Harmful content

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Justin Trudeau s Liberals continue to move forward Bill C-10, a bill that would monumentally transform the internet by putting virtually every aspect of online content under government regulation. Concerns about this have been raised by civil liberties advocates, by privacy experts, by professors, and by people across the spectrum. Yet the Liberals insist there's no problem. And just this week, a Conservative member of Parliament, Rachel Harder, raised concerns directly to Heritage Minister Stephen Gilbeau. She asked how the government can do this when this is exactly what would happen in a totalitarian country?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Justin Trudeau's Liberals continue to move forward Bill C-10,
00:00:10.260 a bill that would monumentally transform the internet
00:00:12.960 by putting virtually every aspect of online content under government regulation.
00:00:19.460 Concerns about this have been raised by civil liberties advocates,
00:00:22.780 by privacy experts, by professors, by people across the spectrum.
00:00:27.280 Yet the Liberals insist there's no problem at all.
00:00:31.100 And just this week, as a matter of fact, a Conservative member of Parliament,
00:00:34.260 Rachel Harder, raised these concerns directly to Heritage Minister Stephen Gilbeau.
00:00:39.060 She asked how the government can do this when this is exactly what would happen
00:00:42.740 in a totalitarian country, government regulation of speech on the internet.
00:00:47.680 Here's that exchange.
00:00:48.540 We are seeing this government mimic behavior that is consistent with a basic dictatorship.
00:00:53.420 It's wrong.
00:00:54.040 With their transformational edit that they just made to Bill C-10,
00:00:57.500 the Liberals are trying to give themselves the power to control what Canadians can read online,
00:01:02.160 what they post on social media, and the videos that they watch on YouTube.
00:01:05.640 Again, it's wrong.
00:01:07.560 Why is the government doing this?
00:01:11.260 The Honourable Minister.
00:01:14.200 Well, Mr. Speaker, that press release was issued yesterday.
00:01:17.160 I think what we're seeing now is, you know, these are big, powerful, in fact,
00:01:22.000 some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet.
00:01:25.020 And clearly, the member opposite and her party are just afraid to stand up to them.
00:01:31.000 And again, it seems that the Conservative Party is listening to the most extremist element of their party,
00:01:36.160 as they have on very important issues, such as climate change or women's rights to choose, Mr. Speaker.
00:01:41.920 When faced with a very realistic criticism, the Liberals have only one response.
00:01:47.240 To accuse their critics of being extremists.
00:01:50.140 That's what he did there.
00:01:51.120 No substantive answer to the question. 0.89
00:01:53.120 Just an accusation that the Conservatives are being big, old, mean, scary extremists,
00:01:57.380 just like they are when it comes to abortion or climate change.
00:02:00.140 Those are the only two issues the Liberals are capable of pivoting to,
00:02:03.380 rather than accept that they are putting forward a policy that will send a chilling effect
00:02:07.780 directly on free speech around the country.
00:02:10.900 And the other part of this is incredibly disingenuous.
00:02:14.120 Minister Gilboa said this is just about regulating some of the richest and most powerful corporations in the world.
00:02:19.540 The Googles, the Apples, the Amazons, and so on.
00:02:22.660 And while those companies will, of course, be regulated,
00:02:25.600 the whole nature of platforms is that they have to be platforms for something.
00:02:30.000 In this case, they are platforms for content
00:02:32.600 that is published by companies large and small and by individuals in Canada.
00:02:37.740 And remember, it was the Liberals on the Heritage Committee
00:02:41.080 that pushed an amendment on Bill C-10 that would ensure it encompassed user-generated content.
00:02:47.680 That means this very video that you're watching now.
00:02:50.240 It means anything that you post as an individual will all of a sudden be regulated by government,
00:02:55.400 which means the government will have,
00:02:57.080 as Minister Gilboa has previously admitted,
00:02:59.480 the ability to strike things from the internet,
00:03:02.740 the kill switch, so to speak.
00:03:04.300 This is not just an egregious bill that violates the very fundamental freedoms
00:03:09.240 we all enjoy in our lives and our ability to use the internet,
00:03:12.260 but it's also egregious that the Liberals' defense of this bill
00:03:15.060 involves just calling anyone who criticizes it an extremist.
00:03:18.800 There should be more political opposition to this,
00:03:21.520 and it's a shame that so far the only real opposition
00:03:23.880 is coming from just one party, and the Conservatives.
00:03:26.640 The whole point of what the Liberals are trying to do here
00:03:29.220 is to put government in the driver's seat on what acceptable online speech is.
00:03:34.180 This doesn't just mean what you can tweet or post to Facebook,
00:03:37.400 but also what news is available.
00:03:39.700 Remember, True North did a roundup just last week
00:03:42.080 of 10 different occasions on which the Liberals have accused things
00:03:45.600 that were true of being disinformation or conspiracy theories.
00:03:49.780 The Liberals have a very self-serving view of what valid content is,
00:03:54.520 so no one should ever trust this Liberal government
00:03:57.560 to be the arbiters of what is allowed to be said online,
00:04:00.860 because they've already shown their hand.
00:04:02.500 They have already revealed that they don't think anything critical of them
00:04:05.920 is true at all, and this is just one further example of that.
00:04:10.400 For True North, I'm Andrew Lawton.