Juno News - December 21, 2019Yes, Trudeau still plans on regulating the internet
Episode Stats
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
00:00:00.000
regulating and restricting speech on social media in Canada is that still a thing are we still going
00:00:12.400
through with that I mean I thought the whole thing was a bit of a dance a bit of a game from
00:00:17.040
Justin Trudeau and the liberals in the lead-up to this election you'll remember they chastised
00:00:21.000
Facebook and other social media giants and said clean up your act get hate speech as in speech
00:00:26.520
that the liberals hate off of your forums right now before the election gotta happen right before
00:00:33.000
the election and you kind of thought all right we all agree that these very incendiary things that
00:00:38.080
people are saying are no good but you feel like they're gonna slip it in that you know things that
00:00:42.020
are just a little too critical of the liberals somehow will also be dragnetted and all of that
00:00:46.080
and maybe they just will have the effect of doing a chill beforehand because they never did bring in
00:00:50.260
any regulations they just talked about it a lot Michael Wernick said people are gonna get shot
00:00:55.060
because of what's going on online and so forth and that was sort of the general atmosphere before
00:00:59.720
the election and then the election happened and Justin Trudeau well he had bigger things to worry
00:01:05.000
about than dealing with people saying mean things about him online he had things to worry about like
00:01:10.120
his own blackface photos surfacing and and so much more but he actually survived and well he's still
00:01:16.340
prime minister at least with the minority government so is it still happening yes it's happening with a
00:01:21.620
vengeance and now they actually seem to be a bit serious about it Stephen Guilbault is a new entry
00:01:26.660
into the liberal cabinet now I had been told watch out because when it comes to climate this guy is
00:01:32.160
such a true believer he makes Catherine McKenna look like a climate change denier this guy's hardcore
00:01:37.960
and watch for him to play a prominent role in cabinet and I thought uh-oh if he gets in to be climate
00:01:43.100
change minister we're going to see the carbon tax go up triple almost immediately well that didn't happen
00:01:48.180
but he was put into cabinet instead he's the heritage minister which generally means the person who
00:01:55.020
presides over things like the Canada Council for the Arts and arts funding and the different rules
00:02:00.220
around all of that so that okay well this guy can't do too much harm there hold on a second
00:02:05.380
his mandate letter calls for clamping down on social media further in Canada and of course they talk a lot
00:02:13.300
about you know hate speech and intolerance and extremism and being able to recruit people and so
00:02:18.180
forth and reasonable human beings we hear all those phrases and we go oh yeah I'm against all of that I
00:02:23.120
mean who isn't against these amorphous terms like hate speech and misinformation and so forth where
00:02:28.600
there's a timeout where there's a couple timeouts is first of all how do you define that what do you
00:02:33.200
actually mean by that I don't mean how do you define it in terms of us just you know sitting around
00:02:37.080
and shooting the breeze at Tim Hortons I mean how do you define it legally how do you determine that
00:02:42.440
you're going to boot someone off the social media platform or you're even going to call in the law
00:02:47.300
on them to deal with things that they have posted that's where it gets really murky really wishy-washy
00:02:52.680
and open to political abuse we've seen in recent years phrases like misinformation being told that
00:03:00.660
we're being told those things are going to be policed and they're going to be codified in law
00:03:04.100
but then we see people like Jerry Butts bandy them about in clearly partisan ways so they're taking these
00:03:10.060
technical words that should have robust legal definitions and meanings and they're already
00:03:15.160
playing games with them so how do we know they're not going to play games with this sort of stuff
00:03:19.000
part two when it comes to enforcement Canada already has some robust laws against against libel
00:03:25.660
against defamation against threats I mean if you say on social media or you call someone up and you
00:03:32.060
say I'm going to come and you know do these bad things to you well those are called making threats
00:03:36.280
and that's against the criminal code incitement to violence all these things are in there so when
00:03:41.380
we watch Stephen Gobeau take his marching orders and go out and try and do more in restricting social
00:03:46.660
media I think we should all pause and ask them to have a bit of a time out themselves and say
00:03:50.920
what exactly do you mean here because definitions really matter and well if they're going to do this and
00:03:57.980
I'm not so sure they should the public at least better demand that these things are airtight and the
00:04:04.260
definitions are not open to abuse that's going to be a big big issue coming up in 2020 a big fight
00:04:10.080
out there as the Canadian public learns more about plans to yes restrict and clamp down on some things