Juno News - Trudeau’s war on free speech will cost hundreds of millions

00:00:00.000 so really what we're seeing here is the liberal government sticking us with a massive massive bill

00:00:16.020 for the privilege of censoring and regulating what we do online now there's a little bit of

00:00:23.360 good news here in the sense that the online harms act has not yet passed the online harms act is

00:00:28.040 still in the house of commons it has to go through a committee process has to go through the senate

00:00:33.160 there's a possibility that an election comes between now and when this bill passes and we can

00:00:38.400 get rid of it once and for all but if this goes ahead 200 million dollars for an office of bureaucrats

00:00:43.200 to regulate what you say and do online i learned about this from conservative mp michelle rempel

00:00:49.660 garners substack she did a great job of diving into what these numbers mean and she joins us now

00:00:55.600 michelle good to have you back on the show thanks for coming on today thanks for having me

00:00:59.720 so it's great we have these two contrasting points today on what the government is spending money on

00:01:04.640 we have minion tweets from cra and then we have the 200 million dollars for what we can say online

00:01:11.340 which might even just be minion tweets by the end of it depending on how overzealous this is but

00:01:15.620 like this is what is this office going to do in your view what's the scenario that you envision from

00:01:20.920 it's a completely unnecessary bureaucracy uh that will do little to protect canadians in fact i don't

00:01:26.460 think it's going to do anything to protect canadians from online harassment um and i'm not talking about

00:01:32.360 mean tweets when i talk about online harassment i'm talking about the stuff that escalates into physical

00:01:37.340 violence this bill does none of that and you know for them to spend 200 million dollars to hire

00:01:45.100 over 300 new bureaucrats when we know that agencies like the rcmp are severely under resourced

00:01:51.200 it just you know like that minion tweet it just shows that nobody's in charge nobody's making

00:01:56.600 common sense decisions and it's something that you know canadians should be deeply concerned about

00:02:02.460 when we see this like there are two aspects of this there's obviously the cost but but even if the

00:02:09.240 cost were one dollar the cost were negligible i i still think the function of the office is in and of

00:02:14.200 itself fraught but we also know that the liberals have a terrible track record at predicting the cost

00:02:18.700 of things like the long gun registry is one notable example of you know it's supposed to just be pocket

00:02:23.140 change then ends up it ends up being a billion dollar boondoggle i have no doubt that something

00:02:27.880 like this would be the same because they realize that from day one oh there's so much more to do we

00:02:33.120 need more people and then you also as i understand it have other aspects that would increase costs like

00:02:38.760 the canadian human rights commission which also is tasked with enforcing parts of this

00:02:43.480 not under this office and they could find themselves needing a whole new annex to house

00:02:48.420 all the new investigators they need to hire and that could be further millions couldn't it

00:02:52.520 well i think your point is super valid which is regardless of the cost this is an unnecessary

00:02:57.660 bureaucracy the pbo analysis today you know sort of use a crude analogy but it's the cherry on a

00:03:04.180 crap sandwich right like it's it's really bad um but to your point the bill doesn't protect

00:03:10.720 canadians from online harassment it doesn't amend the criminal code to do common sense things like 0.97

00:03:15.940 include deep fake pornography as part of canada's intimate image laws it doesn't like it doesn't do

00:03:22.720 the things that victims rights groups have been asking for to protect canadians from crime but the

00:03:29.820 fact that they're spending all this money on it it to essentially and i mean this bill has been called

00:03:35.060 orwellian um an extreme attack on freedom canadians freedom of speech by by people like margaret atwood

00:03:43.180 by magazines like the atlantic yeah not hardcore right wingers here exactly these are not bastions

00:03:49.520 of conservative thought and they everybody's raising the alarm bells on this and the fact that the

00:03:54.200 government is so dogmatically attached to this to your point it just it shows nobody's in charge and

00:04:00.680 nobody cares about protecting canadians and that's where you know i i'm really proud of our party's

00:04:05.820 platform our leaders at pier poliev talking about how we need to fix the crime with common sense

00:04:11.700 solutions that don't cost canadians hundreds of billions of dollars in new bureaucracy there at one

00:04:17.940 point that you had in your sub stack on this that i found interesting is that the government has not

00:04:22.620 really provided any estimate of how many complaints it thinks the canadian human rights commission is going

00:04:28.000 to field on this so they don't even know how big a bureaucratic backlog this is going to cause and

00:04:34.100 on one hand you may say okay they can't predict the future they i mean this government can't even

00:04:37.840 accurately assess the present but it also means that by their own admission they've not given the pbo

00:04:42.540 the information to really get a sense of how big this number could get again another great point

00:04:48.320 um there's been a lot of articles that have been written and experts talking about how

00:04:52.740 re-establishing section essentially section 13 of the canadian human rights act

00:04:57.480 in an age where you know you've got cancel culture online platforms there will be

00:05:05.140 a deluge of vexatious complaints to try and get people to be silenced i mean again the toronto star

00:05:12.660 again not a bastion of conservative thought over 10 years ago said that this particular part of

00:05:19.920 canadian legislation needed to be cancelled which is what the previous conservative government did

00:05:24.720 the liberal government want to re-establish it now there's nothing in the legislation to prevent

00:05:29.880 vexatious complaints so so again what we're have what we have here with the pbo report is evidence

00:05:35.140 that the liberal government is willing to make canadians pay hundreds of millions of dollars

00:05:40.560 for thought police instead of keeping canadians safe with common sense measures uh that we've been

00:05:48.120 proposing from the conservative party for for for months now you know i think about my colleague tim uppel

00:05:53.700 he had a really common sense bill to prevent extortion uh the liberals voted against that and

00:05:58.780 so you know it's just so frustrating and canadians should be outraged when they see the cost of these

00:06:03.280 things and also see the results of the lack of commitment from the federal level government to

00:06:08.140 protecting their safety it's it's just i was shocked and it takes a lot to shock me andrew as you are

00:06:14.340 well aware when i saw those numbers i was like you have to be kidding me i i can't believe it

00:06:19.280 the bill itself yeah the bill itself and you you alluded to this earlier michelle it lumps in

00:06:23.580 things that few people would take issue with cracking down on like child sexual exploitation

00:06:28.260 terror content with things that are a lot more contentious and a lot more fraught such as hate

00:06:33.140 speech where there's not a universal definition of what that is that people can go alongside have

00:06:38.220 you gotten any of the sense from your colleagues in the house of commons that they'd be willing to

00:06:43.040 separate these out when you get to the committee stage so in fact this was asked in the first

00:06:48.340 round of debate and the minister said no not absolutely not no go it's right on the record

00:06:52.500 of the house of commons i think overall the bill's approach is flawed like everything that you talked

00:06:57.700 about there um some of the duty of care aspects that social media platforms should have like to protect

00:07:03.180 minors from exposure to really harmful types of content you know like pornographic images or

00:07:09.260 um you know types of material that could induce self-harm the social media companies do have a

00:07:15.280 duty of care to do that but what this bill does is it relegates that responsibility to this new

00:07:20.900 bureaucracy that won't be done for years into the future whereas you know why doesn't it do something

00:07:27.020 like actually legislate that duty of care right into the bill like if they're so concerned about this

00:07:32.140 why aren't they doing that and it's because you know they have an obese government to use the words 1.00

00:07:38.260 of pierre right like that's that's really what they're focused on here they're not thinking about

00:07:42.100 protecting canadians and uh you know it takes away the responsibility from accountable legislators

00:07:49.340 and put it puts it in a back room behind closed doors where social media companies big tech companies

00:07:54.960 can lobby whatever they want and that's not how we should be proceeding here it's just ridiculous i i know

00:08:01.960 that the conservatives have obviously come out against bill c63 for the reasons you've mentioned but if

00:08:07.180 this bill does pass before the the next election and the conservatives foreign government would this

00:08:11.840 digital safety commission be gone would you scrap absolutely we would absolutely scrap this and

00:08:16.060 replace it with common sense legislation that actually protects canadians you know without impinging

00:08:22.700 canadians rights and freedoms we don't believe as conservatives that canadians should have to give up

00:08:27.540 their rights and freedoms to things like speech in order to be protected from you know legitimate

00:08:33.380 online harassment or legitimate online harm and um you know like why why the liberal government thinks

00:08:41.320 that they have to do this well i know why they do because this is their agenda right they have a

00:08:45.020 radical agenda to police speech to control speech it's why you have bill c11 bill c18 why you have

00:08:51.100 news bans in canada so of course of course this is something the conservatives would not support we

00:08:55.640 will block this bill at every step of the way while proposing common sense alternatives that will

00:08:59.880 actually keep canadians safe is your view that existing government agencies and departments can

00:09:05.760 deal with these challenges and that like there's no need for any any additional department at all

00:09:10.740 absolutely 100 absolutely like the fact that the government didn't start from that premise of

00:09:17.380 how do we use existing agencies how do we use the criminal code how do we resource things adequately

00:09:24.600 um it is preposterous like like that's you should be thinking about that that's just basic management

00:09:31.400 it's something that anybody who owns a small business would be thinking about right um and not

00:09:37.480 just for cost but also for ease of use for simplicity um so so so these are the things that government

00:09:43.820 should be thinking about it's what we will be encourage continuing to encourage them to do

00:09:48.180 um but also developing our own plans and announcing those in in due in due course and uh if you get

00:09:54.740 into government any more minion tweets from cra you know when i just have a like five second rant on this

00:10:00.900 yeah go for it it's all yours constituents like one of the top pieces of casework i get in my office is

00:10:06.920 people not being able to get through to the cra um you know that the rules are so crazy and then to

00:10:13.560 see that like i i just like my caseworker just she she saw this and she was like you have got to be

00:10:20.480 kidding me and rightly so you know the government can't afford to be cute right now they have to get 0.90

00:10:24.900 their jobs done and uh you know this is just you know some people be like oh you know it's cute it no

00:10:29.440 it's indicative of uh a government with nobody in charge and i cannot wait to see the communications

00:10:35.000 decision chain on who approved that i'm sure it was approved by 400 bureaucrats over three weeks

00:10:40.620 yeah i i was about to respond to your tweet but i had to go on air i i'm filing an a tip right after

00:10:45.780 the show i am too okay well we'll see who gets the response back more quickly but anytime i a tip a

00:10:51.580 tweet like the stupidest tweet will have like a chain of 12 people on it different departments they

00:10:56.560 you know third party consultations for like one tweet it's insane this one i know will be in that 0.99

00:11:01.180 category oh all right giddy up all right stampede conservative mb michelle remble garner enjoy the uh

00:11:08.780 the calgary stampede i think it's coming up you should have a good time there take care thanks

00:11:13.240 for listening to the andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news

Juno News - July 07, 2024

Trudeau’s war on free speech will cost hundreds of millions

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