Juno News - December 21, 2019Yes, Trudeau still plans on regulating the internet
Episode Stats
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203.08623
Summary
In the lead-up to the election, Justin Trudeau promised to clamp down on hate speech on social media, but did he actually deliver on that promise? Now, with a Liberal government in power, Stephen Gobeau is the Prime Minister and his mandate letter calls for a clampdown on social media further in Canada. But what will that actually mean and how will it be enforced?
Transcript
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regulating and restricting speech on social media in Canada is that still a thing are we still going
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through with that I mean I thought the whole thing was a bit of a dance a bit of a game from
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Justin Trudeau and the liberals in the lead-up to this election you'll remember they chastised
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Facebook and other social media giants and said clean up your act get hate speech as in speech
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that the liberals hate off of your forums right now before the election gotta happen right before
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the election and you kind of thought all right we all agree that these very incendiary things that
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people are saying are no good but you feel like they're gonna slip it in that you know things that
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are just a little too critical of the liberals somehow will also be dragnetted and all of that
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and maybe they just will have the effect of doing a chill beforehand because they never did bring in
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any regulations they just talked about it a lot Michael Wernick said people are gonna get shot
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because of what's going on online and so forth and that was sort of the general atmosphere before
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the election and then the election happened and Justin Trudeau well he had bigger things to worry
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about than dealing with people saying mean things about him online he had things to worry about like
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his own blackface photos surfacing and and so much more but he actually survived and well he's still
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prime minister at least with the minority government so is it still happening yes it's happening with a
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vengeance and now they actually seem to be a bit serious about it Stephen Guilbault is a new entry
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into the liberal cabinet now I had been told watch out because when it comes to climate this guy is
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such a true believer he makes Catherine McKenna look like a climate change denier this guy's hardcore
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and watch for him to play a prominent role in cabinet and I thought uh-oh if he gets in to be climate
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change minister we're going to see the carbon tax go up triple almost immediately well that didn't happen
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but he was put into cabinet instead he's the heritage minister which generally means the person who
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presides over things like the Canada Council for the Arts and arts funding and the different rules
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around all of that so that okay well this guy can't do too much harm there hold on a second
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his mandate letter calls for clamping down on social media further in Canada and of course they talk a lot
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about you know hate speech and intolerance and extremism and being able to recruit people and so
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forth and reasonable human beings we hear all those phrases and we go oh yeah I'm against all of that I
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mean who isn't against these amorphous terms like hate speech and misinformation and so forth where
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there's a timeout where there's a couple timeouts is first of all how do you define that what do you
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actually mean by that I don't mean how do you define it in terms of us just you know sitting around
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and shooting the breeze at Tim Hortons I mean how do you define it legally how do you determine that
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you're going to boot someone off the social media platform or you're even going to call in the law
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on them to deal with things that they have posted that's where it gets really murky really wishy-washy
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and open to political abuse we've seen in recent years phrases like misinformation being told that
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we're being told those things are going to be policed and they're going to be codified in law
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but then we see people like Jerry Butts bandy them about in clearly partisan ways so they're taking these
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technical words that should have robust legal definitions and meanings and they're already
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playing games with them so how do we know they're not going to play games with this sort of stuff
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part two when it comes to enforcement Canada already has some robust laws against against libel
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against defamation against threats I mean if you say on social media or you call someone up and you
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say I'm going to come and you know do these bad things to you well those are called making threats
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and that's against the criminal code incitement to violence all these things are in there so when
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we watch Stephen Gobeau take his marching orders and go out and try and do more in restricting social
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media I think we should all pause and ask them to have a bit of a time out themselves and say
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what exactly do you mean here because definitions really matter and well if they're going to do this and
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I'm not so sure they should the public at least better demand that these things are airtight and the
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definitions are not open to abuse that's going to be a big big issue coming up in 2020 a big fight
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out there as the Canadian public learns more about plans to yes restrict and clamp down on some things