The Critical Compass Podcast - ＂It's Time to Abolish the CRTC＂｜ John Carpay

00:00:00.000 Back in 1997, the CRTC gave a license to Playboy Channel so that you could watch pornography.

00:00:07.660 But they said no to Christian religious stations that wanted to have radio and TV stations.

00:00:15.460 You know, like does a rural, like Montana hunting show, is that an American content that, you know, diverts away from Canadiana, so to speak,

00:00:26.220 in a way that's significantly more egregious

00:00:28.980 than a, say, a drag queen story hour show

00:00:33.140 based in Ottawa?

00:00:34.120 Like, is that Canadian by virtue

00:00:36.000 of just being based in Canada?

00:00:38.860 But we don't need a new CRTC.

00:00:41.020 We don't need somebody to tell us

00:00:42.920 what's Canadian or not Canadian

00:00:44.320 and to manipulate algorithms.

00:00:56.220 Hi, guys. Welcome back to the Critical Compass. My name is Mike and we're with James and we are

00:01:07.360 very pleased to be joined again by returning guest. He just happens to like us, I guess,

00:01:12.120 because he keeps showing up Mr. John Carpe of the JCCF. Mr. Carpe, thank you again for

00:01:18.000 joining us. We're here primarily to discuss today a new report that was just released on the JCCF

00:01:24.080 site uh mission creep is it time to abolish the crtc and the subtitle here how a federal regulator

00:01:30.800 controls what canadians share discover and consume online uh this is a great document it looks like um

00:01:37.280 primary author nigel hannaford uh did a great job here we we read through it the other day and and

00:01:42.880 we have questions for you and i'm sure you have lots of things you want to discuss about it so

00:01:46.880 please sir the floor is yours well glad to be with you guys again with your viewers and listeners

00:01:54.080 It's a bit of a radical. I'm not aware of other groups or organizations that have called for the abolition of the CRTC, but we think it's long overdue. It started out in 1968 as a regulator of radio and television, and the purpose was to minimize how much Canadians got exposed to American television and American radio.

00:02:22.060 So they said, well, if you want to have a radio or TV station, you need to have a license.

00:02:25.780 But if you want to have a license, you have to agree to our conditions.

00:02:28.280 And conditions were things that, you know, in prime time, say between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., whatever prime time was, you had to have, you know, 70 percent Canadian content.

00:02:40.160 And there have been arguments over the years, what is Canadian content anyway, because maybe somebody in downtown Toronto would have a very different perspective over what it means to be Canadian compared to somebody in rural Saskatchewan or somebody in Nova Scotia might have a different idea of Canadian than somebody in Montreal.

00:03:05.260 all. Anyway, they had these Canadian content rules where they're in charge of that. And the

00:03:12.020 purpose was to keep the, to minimize exposure to American radio and television. Now with the

00:03:20.220 internet, that's changed things a lot. In 2023, two and a half years ago, we got the Online Streaming

00:03:29.560 Act, which actually gave the CRTC, so Canadian Radio,

00:03:33.880 Television and Telecommunications Commission, right?

00:03:37.560 So it's a government body, uh, quasi independent from the federal government.

00:03:42.760 So it's not directly controlled by say the prime minister and the cabinet

00:03:46.240 ministers, but they do appoint the people to it.

00:03:48.700 So they're going to appoint people that agree with them and, you know,

00:03:53.180 do what they want, but there's no direct control.

00:03:55.100 So the CRTC with Bill C11 in 2023 got legal authority over the internet and what they've been doing the last two and a half years is manipulating algorithms to push to the forefront that which they deem to be Canadian and it's not outright censorship but it's certainly kind of, you know, I'm giving the microphone to you but not to you and it gives increased exposure to what they deem to be Canadian.

00:04:25.100 Which, by the way, one of the debates back in 1997, the CRTC gave a license to Playboy Channel so that you could watch pornography, which I guess was somehow very Canadian, and a golf channel.

00:04:41.020 But they said no to Christian religious stations that wanted to simply have radio and TV stations, right?

00:04:49.840 Which nobody would be forced, if they had received the licenses, nobody's forced to listen to that.

00:04:54.440 If you're not interested, you turn it off or you don't tune into it in the first place.

00:04:58.840 Anyway, there is an example, right?

00:05:00.560 This is what happens when you give a government body the power to decide what is Canadian.

00:05:06.220 They say yes to Playboy and they say no to Christian broadcasting. 0.84

00:05:11.020 So is that partially, like it's ridiculous and it's in practice, you're seeing where this falls or like where it falls apart under its own logic. Is that partially because of how it classifies different types of media, which then there's arbitrary rules because now faith-based channels are under a different subset than like the adult entertainment.

00:05:37.220 And I know some of this can get into a tricky place because some of these underlying principles are that we want all groups to be represented.

00:05:47.980 We want to be nice to everybody.

00:05:50.140 We want to make sure that we don't have Christians more represented than other faiths. 1.00

00:05:56.380 So I can see how they would, with that underlying ideology that informs many of the people in these positions, do you think there's an ideological component informing this decision-making?

00:06:16.240 Oh, absolutely.

00:06:17.280 I mean, the CRTC, like most government bodies, like most universities, pursues equity, diversity, inclusion, which means the LGBTQ rainbow agenda to, you know, continue to, whatever, that's a whole ideology that is kind of the opposite of, say, Orthodox Judaism or conservative Christianity or Islam.

00:06:42.920 kind of a sexual libertine agenda. That's part of the ideology. They promote the idea that 0.98

00:06:52.300 our legal rights should depend in part on our race or ancestry. So you got special legal rights

00:06:59.540 for aboriginals that the other 95% of Canadians are not entitled to. You've got equity, diversity,

00:07:06.720 inclusion. You've got the so-called anti-racism. You've got, this is their whole ideological bent

00:07:15.160 that we are seeing all around us, which is why the less power that government bodies have to

00:07:22.240 enforce that ideology, the better. It should swim or sink. It should rise or fall on its own

00:07:30.980 on its own merits, right?

00:07:33.160 And not have that government support.

00:07:36.760 And we're in an internet age

00:07:38.720 where you've got millions,

00:07:41.440 if not billions of different websites.

00:07:45.660 Everybody could start up

00:07:46.900 their own YouTube channel

00:07:48.860 or podcast without the CRTC,

00:07:51.680 which is why their long-term goal,

00:07:54.420 of course, they'd like to see,

00:07:56.360 and they have this on the books, actually.

00:07:58.660 if the CRTC wanted to regulate this, the critical compass, they could do it. They just haven't

00:08:05.420 exercised their power yet. But they have that power under Bill C11, the Online Streaming Act.

00:08:10.540 They could get you to fill out paperwork and report annually on how much Canadian content you have.

00:08:19.920 And they could do all kinds of things. They couldn't outright censor you, but they could

00:08:24.560 get you to jump through a whole bunch of different hoops. And if you did not jump through those

00:08:28.800 hoops, then they would say, okay, well, we're taking your license away, which is why I would

00:08:33.280 encourage you to never register, just remain unregistered. I mean, the moment you register

00:08:38.760 yourself with the CRTC, you're asking to be dominated and subjugated and put in your place.

00:08:46.380 Yeah, interesting. That's, you know, right before we got on here, James and I were talking,

00:08:51.700 and james i'm just gonna straight up steal your example because it was so good do it uh he we were

00:08:56.520 we were uh musing on the on the thought like what exactly does it mean to be canadian content you

00:09:02.680 know like does a does a um a rural uh like montana hunting show for example from the u.s that

00:09:10.320 you know you've got hunters uh on the same land essentially that's in alberta and saskatchewan

00:09:15.580 hunting the same animals that are in alberta and saskatchewan is that is that an american content

00:09:21.580 that uh you know diverts away from canadiana so to speak in a way that's significantly more

00:09:27.900 egregious than a uh say a a drag queen story hour show based in ottawa like what is that canadian 0.92

00:09:34.900 by virtue of just being based in in canada like what what do these terms really mean mr carpe

00:09:40.860 please define them well you got this like downtown toronto ndp liberal lgbtq equity

00:09:51.560 diversity inclusion mindset. It's gotten worse in recent years. That's always been their definition

00:10:01.500 of Canadian. You're not going to get much in the way of, you know, firearms owners that are

00:10:09.720 hunting deer, you know, or conservative Christians that are, you know, worshiping at church. I mean,

00:10:20.740 And it's really, it's got kind of the left-wing downtown Toronto slant to it.

00:10:27.240 And there's almost Canadian.

00:10:31.060 We've talked a little bit about this over the last year,

00:10:34.300 just partially because we've been having so many conversations about what Canada used to be and what Canada is now.

00:10:42.760 And I feel like that's the difference, is that there are many people who are somewhat nostalgic for the,

00:10:50.740 The culture and the things that Canada and the way that Canada used to function.

00:10:56.360 And in a way, now, this Canadian spirit is a surface level.

00:11:02.080 I've used the term like a maple syrup branded Canadian identity where it's superficial.

00:11:09.520 Essentially, what you have with some of these, with the programming that they're prioritizing is you have something that looks like it could take place in Los Angeles just from the stories being told or just the ideological framework, except it's just filmed in Ottawa or Toronto.

00:11:30.540 So, and it just has a Canadian backdrop with the most surface level, like identifying things that makes, maybe there's a bit of snow, maybe there's that little bit of an accent.

00:11:43.040 But other than that, the framework behind it is no different than like New York or Los Angeles from what it's drawing upon from a cultural standpoint.

00:11:54.160 And I would ask the question, like, why do we need a government body to, you know, help us out, so to speak, when we can listen to the, you know, watch a TV show, just decide for ourselves what TV shows we want to watch, what radio stations we want to listen to, without somebody that, you know, we're paying millions of dollars to the, what, nearly 700 employees that they have.

00:12:23.760 And why are we doing this in the first place?

00:12:26.640 Why do we need that supervision, that regulation in the first place? 1.00

00:12:36.260 Does it imply that Canadians are too stupid to be able to choose what they want to watch? 1.00

00:12:42.360 Or we're too fragile that if not for this benevolent organization, we would be harmed? 1.00

00:12:52.760 automatically harmed by consuming too much American content or American.

00:12:58.300 Well, that seems to be the underlying premise, right?

00:13:02.020 This is why, again, we've had this around now for 57 years, the CRTC.

00:13:06.820 Before the CRTC was created, even going back to the 1930s, we had a radio broadcasting act,

00:13:14.160 which was federal legislation.

00:13:16.120 And then in the 30s, we got Replacement Broadcasting Act and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC was created, was probably, I would make an assumption, it was probably more mainstream at that time and hadn't been taken over by Marxist, woke ideologues.

00:13:40.860 I'm making an assumption. I haven't looked at what the CBC was producing in the 30s, 40s, 50s and so on. But definitely there's this idea that, yeah, Canadians are fragile. We need to be protected from American content. Otherwise, we're somehow going to lose our identity.

00:13:59.680 And I think there's a kernel of truth in that. If you would, you might remember the late Ted Byfield, who died within the past four or five years and ran Alberta Report magazine.

00:14:17.920 And he was 70 years old in 1993, I forget his exact age, but he was born, I think, in 1920-ish.

00:14:32.320 And he said in his youth, and until Pierre Elliott Trudeau took over, took power in 1968,

00:14:40.960 eight, uh, until pure Elliot Trudeau became prime minister, Canada's identity was British.

00:14:48.940 We were British North America, according to Ted Byfield. And we had the Royal mail and the Royal

00:14:54.600 this and the Royal that and the Royal everything. And, uh, at movie theaters, people sang God save

00:15:01.600 the queen, uh, long before old Canada became popular as back in the day, you just, uh, apparently

00:15:08.620 the, you know, when people gathered in a movie theater, it was kind of like a public meeting.

00:15:13.040 So people would sing the national anthem, which was God Save the Queen. And so everybody was very,

00:15:20.040 very, very British. The country had a British feel to it. We drove on the left side of the road at

00:15:27.660 one point in history, although I think it was quite a long time ago that we switched to the right.

00:15:31.320 Uh, but so we were, we were this British North America is what Canada was and

00:15:37.680 Pierre Elliott Trudeau didn't like that.

00:15:39.960 And so he successfully repudiated that British heritage and came up with ideas 0.99

00:15:47.100 of biculturalism, you know, French, English, and then multiculturalism.

00:15:52.680 And then his son, Justin Trudeau told us, you know, Canada's a post national

00:15:57.520 state that we don't really, I think he might be.

00:16:01.320 Correct, or at least partially correct, right?

00:16:04.560 Like when you repudiate the, the, the, the old British heritage and you don't really

00:16:11.640 have anything too definitive to replace it with, you're down into this post national

00:16:16.620 state and then all you have left is sort of this knee jerk anti-Americanism.

00:16:20.400 Well, what is a Canadian?

00:16:21.340 Well, we're not American.

00:16:22.880 Okay.

00:16:23.140 But what is a Canadian?

00:16:23.980 Well, we're not American.

00:16:26.080 So that's, that's where we're at today.

00:16:27.940 We're not American.

00:16:29.480 Yeah.

00:16:29.740 Well, that's, that's, that's.

00:16:31.320 Kind of the heart of the matter, isn't it? I mean, how are you supposed to, how are you supposed to have anything resembling an objective definition of what Canadiana or Canadian content means? If you, if your prime minister deems the country to be a post-national state, like you say, I mean, it's not, you're not, this is a, this has been a concern that a lot of our guests have, have talked about.

00:16:54.360 And we've talked about as well in that Canadians, at least in the modern conception and, you know, say in the last 10, 15 years, it's become very overt, this negative definition of what a Canadian means.

00:17:09.820 Like you say, it's not American. That's what a Canadian is. We live sort of in the same area and we speak the same language and we're sort of the same demographics for the most part, but we're not them. We're just not. 0.58

00:17:24.360 Well, yeah, if you're not making a positive claim on what you actually are, how are you meant to defend that as some sort of cultural institution?

00:17:34.280 And essentially, we're just in this shared economic zone, which, again, all this sets—

00:17:41.940 Not so much shared as much these days, but yeah, I agree with you.

00:17:45.460 That's what Canada is turning into, is a shared economic zone for people to immigrate to.

00:17:53.020 So part of this, like the withering down of the identity has opened the doors to a type of immigration that doesn't have the cultural glue where you look at where immigration started from.

00:18:09.060 there is a high bar of assimilation and the the amount of assimilation that somebody would have

00:18:18.800 to go through is much higher and you'd see people integrate in a way that is not happening in the

00:18:25.160 last 10 years to the same degree and I think that goes hand in hand with the more surface level a

00:18:33.280 national identity becomes, the less assimilation you're expecting. You've essentially lowered the

00:18:41.320 bar that all it takes is to just walk on this magic soil for a certain amount of time, and then

00:18:48.300 you get a piece of paper, and then you are that thing. I can't disagree with you. It's a change

00:18:58.140 an identity as well. Ted Byfield would have said, and I think this is historically accurate,

00:19:05.360 that Canada was not known as this peace-loving, anti-war nation. There's this notion of, well,

00:19:16.640 Canada, Americans are a bunch of warmongers. They're always going to war. But we Canadians,

00:19:23.000 we're more sophisticated. We're more enlightened. We just really love peace.

00:19:26.960 First of all, I don't know if that's necessarily true, but if it was true, it's a very recent thing.

00:19:35.120 Because in World War I, the tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, I don't have the numbers in front of me,

00:19:43.760 but Canadians volunteered en masse to go fight for king and country.

00:19:49.140 And they wanted to fight against the Germans in World War I.

00:19:55.040 Now in 2017, three quarters of the way through the war, conscription was made mandatory and they started forcing people, although even that fact too, right?

00:20:05.580 First you have waves of volunteers and then the government says, okay, now we're going to force other people who didn't volunteer, we're going to force them to go to Europe and to fight.

00:20:15.460 So we were very warlike in World War I. And that's maybe part and parcel being part of the British Empire. And so when England was under attack by Germany, I mean, indirectly, they were at war. The Germans were not invading England, but they were at war. And everybody felt like, we're going to go fight for king and country.

00:20:36.840 And then in World War II, Canada was one of the first in, I think it was just a few hours or a day or two after Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. And then Canada was very quick to also declare war on Nazi Germany.

00:20:53.280 We also declared war on Imperial Japan, even though it wasn't, you know, it was Pearl Harbor.

00:20:59.260 It was the Americans who got bombed on December the 7th, 1941, not Canada.

00:21:03.040 But we declared war on Japan.

00:21:04.460 We declared war on Germany. 0.54

00:21:05.660 And we fought, and we fought hard.

00:21:08.060 And so we were this very militaristic nation that was fighting battles.

00:21:15.960 We fought in Korea.

00:21:17.780 So this whole idea that we're, you know, kind of this anti-war, you know, peace lovers that won't fight, that's just fairly recent in Canadian history.

00:21:29.860 Yeah. And, and, you know, people forget too that the, um, for decades, you know, the PPCLI and the JTF2 have been considered like world-class forces. I think JTF2 is, is maybe only beyond, uh, maybe only behind, um, I can't think of the name right now of the, uh, the Israeli special forces, but they're, they're considered like even deadlier than the Navy SEALs.

00:21:52.920 I mean, it's a very, very, very highly advanced and lethal force.

00:21:57.120 So, yeah, no, Canadians, I remember reading a write-up

00:22:00.200 about how Canadians were actually volunteering

00:22:04.400 in pretty high numbers to take the place of Americans

00:22:07.960 who were draft dodging during the Vietnam War as well.

00:22:11.420 Like, that was even going up into the 60s and 70s.

00:22:13.800 You know, that's not that long ago.

00:22:19.220 Yeah, well, and we, yeah, I've,

00:22:22.920 I apologize. I don't know the specific nature of the Canadian government's, um, stance on, on Vietnam. We were not, uh, forcing people to go on and, uh, fight there. There was not a draft or, or conscription, but, um, yeah, now it's like anybody that comes here, you just, you, you be who you want to be, you do what you want to do. And we're all Canadians, you know, but let's not really, let's not please ask the hard questions of what that actually means.

00:22:50.860 yeah yeah it's uh well and and so a lot of this when i was reading the document it feels like

00:22:59.500 with the history of when the crtc started a lot of this was maybe invisible like it's kind of

00:23:07.220 running in the background where okay you don't you we know about the 30 canadian content but we

00:23:14.000 the average person doesn't really they don't really see the in and out of all the regulations

00:23:20.380 that shape the way that content's made or who gets access or how it's distributed.

00:23:26.460 They're not aware of all of that back end.

00:23:29.400 So for the most part, it's this layer that's running invisibly shaping the bubble that Canadians kind of exist in.

00:23:36.500 And then this is where you get kind of the average CBC viewer has a very curated view of the world.

00:23:43.160 You try to talk to them outside of issues that they've seen on CBC or some other mainstream news.

00:23:48.960 and it's like it never existed in the first place.

00:23:53.300 So these bubbles are partially crafted.

00:23:57.520 And I think the online streaming act

00:24:00.300 was maybe one of the first times

00:24:02.240 that it became a little bit more obvious

00:24:04.400 where people would go to something

00:24:06.220 and it would pop up on their phone

00:24:07.340 and they can't actually access it

00:24:09.040 because now they're noticing

00:24:11.340 that it's blocked in Canada

00:24:13.140 where before it was a little bit more invisible.

00:24:16.520 But do you think the awareness from the average person is high enough that they see the CRTC as a problem? Or is there more awareness and more of a cultural shift that needs to happen to change some minds?

00:24:32.880 Well, I think it's the latter. I would venture a guess that the overwhelming majority of Canadians, 60, 70, 80%, you know, might not even have heard of the CRTC or know what the CRTC does.

00:24:50.120 And in the big picture, you know, it's one federal body with 700 employees, so it's not as big of a fish as others.

00:25:03.140 You mentioned the CBC. You probably heard of our report two months ago on the rising euthanasia, where it's the fourth leading cause of death in Canada.

00:25:18.960 And it's gone from rough to like 16,500 people died by assisted suicide in Canada.

00:25:30.100 And I think if that assisted suicide program continues to expand the way it is,

00:25:37.000 in Alberta now, the government's introduced legislation to make it either illegal or more difficult

00:25:44.580 for the healthcare people to push for assisted suicide.

00:25:49.280 We've had so many reports where people are, you know,

00:25:54.580 they're going in for back surgery or something,

00:25:56.800 and it's, oh, by the way, do you want MAID?

00:25:58.940 You know, it's just presented as, 0.97

00:26:00.340 do you want to kill yourself?

00:26:01.580 It's just presented repeatedly as an option.

00:26:04.200 So provincial government stepping in saying,

00:26:06.220 you can't, you have to wait for the patient to bring it up,

00:26:08.740 which I think is a very wise measure.

00:26:11.260 Why did it go on to assisted suicide?

00:26:13.900 It's because the number of, if the, if the rates of assisted suicide keep on escalating the way that they are, there's not going to be too many CBC watchers left over in a few years.

00:26:25.660 And the CBC viewership is going to decline even further than what it has now.

00:26:29.980 But even with a little bit of viewership numbers going down, it's still, you're still going to get a billion dollars going to CBC every year.

00:26:37.420 Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. I mean, the CBC is a propaganda machine for a big government, anti-freedom, woke ideology. And if there was a CBC person joining us right now, they'd be pounding the table saying, we are strictly nonpartisan, to which I would say, yeah, you're strictly nonpartisan as between the liberals and the NDP.

00:27:00.940 But it's the philosophy that the CBC promotes that I think has a big influence to get people to vote for the Greens and the Bloc and the Liberals and the NDP.

00:27:16.460 The parties of the political left have got daily support from the CBC because its coverage is so slanted.

00:27:24.780 It's always, they always interview people.

00:27:26.640 when Charlie Kirk got assassinated, okay, the CBC did a smear job and said that he was a fascist

00:27:33.740 and he was far right. And just simply by who they interviewed, they would go and they interview

00:27:39.560 people who said, you know, Charlie Kirk's probably a racist. He's far right. He's fascist.

00:27:44.960 That's a smear job that they do because they only interview those people. They're not going 0.89

00:27:48.320 to interview somebody who says that Charlie Kirk was a great hero. They're not going to interview

00:27:54.220 somebody who understands the difference between conservatism and fascism. Sure, fascism has a lot

00:28:01.760 more in common with socialism than what it does with conservatism, but they're not going to

00:28:05.780 interview people that see it that way. But everything's kind of, you know, far-right,

00:28:10.480 neo-Nazi. If you don't agree with the CBC, you are far-right. And there's just no distinction

00:28:16.500 for them between conservatives and fascists. It's all kind of, you know, part of the same

00:28:21.460 evil grouping. So that's their daily ideology. So it's unfortunate, but yeah, they might still

00:28:30.040 get lots of money, but their viewership, as their viewership declines, they have less and less

00:28:34.920 influence, which is beautiful. I'm glad. Yeah. Oh man. Just to clarify a point I made earlier

00:28:42.800 before I asked you a different question, in case I misspoke, what I meant to say was the,

00:28:48.200 there were Canadians who volunteered to fight on behalf of American forces to compensate for the

00:28:54.840 American draft dodgers. So I just looked it up to verify. And apparently there was between 20 and

00:29:00.180 30,000 American draft dodgers who moved to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War. And they estimate up to

00:29:06.360 40,000 Canadians volunteered to fight for the U.S. Armed Forces in replacement. So that's just an

00:29:13.640 interesting tidbit of history but that's your elbows up history moment yeah but I couldn't help

00:29:20.440 but notice John when I was reading the report it seems to me like the thing that kept popping into

00:29:27.280 my head when I was reading this is that it feels to me like a similar thing that the CRTC does to

00:29:34.800 what we do in the dairy cartel in this country and it feels like under the guise of you know

00:29:43.060 protecting consumers and making sure that, you know, whatever flowery language you want to use,

00:29:47.720 it really actually is just simply a control mechanism to prop up an industry that would

00:29:53.140 otherwise fail because of, you know, whatever variables you want to say. Is that an oversimplification

00:29:59.680 of what the modern CRTC does, or is that kind of on point, you think?

00:30:03.760 well the difference is that the the dairy cartel keeps the prices high for canadian consumers and

00:30:14.840 and uh every every year they they pour millions of liters of milk down the drain that could be going

00:30:21.000 to poor people or food banks or whatever and and they keep the prices a lot higher than what they

00:30:26.640 would be. So yeah, and they restrict competition. If I wanted to, you know, start up a dairy

00:30:36.180 operation and buy a few cows and milk them and sell the milk, I wouldn't be allowed to do that

00:30:41.220 unless I, you know, first had to, you know, spend a lot of money to buy quota. So the CRTC is

00:30:50.360 is different in so far as it's not going to prevent me from starting a podcast or a videocast

00:30:57.080 or setting up a new website. So not, you know, it's not really blocking the entry.

00:31:08.340 It is costing us more money though, because as the paper describes, right, it reduces competition.

00:31:17.280 It's got all these rules in place that basically allow TELUS and Rogers and Bell to remain dominant because it's very hard for smaller companies to break in.

00:31:29.220 So in that sense, the CRTC is very similar to the dairy cartel in that they make it, the CRTC makes it very difficult for newcomers to come in there and compete effectively.

00:31:40.860 It's like, well, that's very hard to do.

00:31:42.920 So, yeah, with that element of both them controlling content and then you have the restriction side and then you have the grant side, which another government program where they're subsidizing certain types of content and not subsidizing.

00:32:00.920 When you add those two together, the suppression through selective distribution and then the amplification, that's quite a significant tilt.

00:32:15.180 And with those two in play, so you will always have people that are ideological.

00:32:23.140 But if a system is structured in a certain way, some systems enable corruption more than others, and it will enable people with ideology to take hold of that system.

00:32:37.520 So if we abolish the CRTC and put in something else, what essential roles would this new, like this new regulator, what should they do? And what is a structure that would help prevent any future corruption?

00:33:02.940 I would replace it with nothing. I think the only restrictions on the Internet should be when people are violating the criminal law. So if somebody is producing, creating, selling, distributing child pornography, the law enforcement, the authorities need to get in there and find out who is doing it and where they live.

00:33:27.260 And they should throw the book at those people and, you know, get the search warrants, get whatever they need to, you know, do surveillance on people.

00:33:38.020 If you have reasonable and probable grounds that somebody's breaking the law, the police can go to court.

00:33:42.320 They can get a court order to do surveillance.

00:33:44.720 So I don't believe in an absolute total free-for-all on the Internet insofar as I think we should stop the child pornography.

00:33:53.700 And if it was up to me, I'd place restrictions on other pornography as well, because I think it causes an awful lot of damage, although, you know, it's a bit of a tricky issue.

00:34:08.560 I believe in individual choice as well, so I have conflicted feelings about that whole issue.

00:34:14.780 But we don't need a new CRTC. We don't need somebody to tell us what's Canadian or not Canadian and to manipulate algorithms so that Canadians will more likely see more of some things and less of other things.

00:34:35.480 We just don't need that at all, in my view.

00:34:40.180 So I don't think we—we need to ensure that there's competition, okay?

00:34:43.900 So we've got the Competition Act federally, and this makes it illegal for parties, for large companies to collude with each other and keep the small guy out.

00:34:55.740 So we've got competition law.

00:34:57.080 That should be enforced.

00:34:59.880 So that's the role of government is you have a Competition Act.

00:35:03.800 You punish collusion. You make sure that there's no unfair barriers to new people trying to enter a market and crack down on crime.

00:35:17.120 And that's it. I don't think we need a federal body to be regulating these things.

00:35:24.140 Yeah, that pretty much aligns with where James and I stand a lot on, you know, just the general, more of a libertarian stance on those sort of things, I suppose, if you wanted to label it.

00:35:38.660 I wanted to ask you, there's a section in the report where it talks about the kind of the gradual expansion of what the CRTC controlled, starting off obviously just with radio and television expanding in the 80s, in the mid-70s, you know, to include telecommunications companies in the 80s with regard to cable TV services and channel offerings, things like this.

00:36:07.360 But when, uh, the internet, you know, became a thing and became quite, quite popular and obviously exploded in popularity, uh, the, they did take a, they initially took a much more, um, maybe a cautious approach, I guess you could say.

00:36:22.720 Um, there's a section here where it talks about how, um, Stephen Harper, uh, favored minimal internet intervention, believing that governments should adapt to the open free internet rather than regulate it.

00:36:35.000 I remember personally in in the 2015 federal election. Now, try not to hit quit on this interview, but I voted for the NDP during that election. And I specifically remember why I voted for them, because Tom Mulcair, as the leader of the NDP, was the only one of the major party leaders to come out very much in favor of net neutrality.

00:36:59.560 And he was very, he seemed at the time very committed to the principle of net neutrality. He thought that the negotiations surrounding the Trans-Pacific Partnership at the time were going to allow a backdoor for ISPs to regulate internet traffic unjustly and all sorts of things.

00:37:16.760 So I liked that at the time I was thinking about these sorts of things. Now, it seems to me that somebody on the left side of the political spectrum, a liberal or specifically an NDP voter, they seem to me to be the people who are most in favor of heavily regulating the Internet.

00:37:31.920 What, what do you make of this sort of cultural shift that we see now, where it seems like it's conservatives who are approaching this, you know, it's not new anymore, but it's ever expanding. Conservatives seem to be approaching this technology from a much more progressive and libertarian perspective.

00:37:48.900 Now, supporters of big government are typically extremely short-sighted, and it doesn't occur

00:38:00.060 to them that that same government machinery could be flipped around and used against them.

00:38:06.100 So right now, you'd find people on the political left would love the idea of giving the Canadian

00:38:14.560 Human Rights Commission the power to prosecute discriminatory speech. So this is not criminal

00:38:21.520 hate speech, but it's speech that's discriminatory. We had this provision in the Online Harms Act,

00:38:27.500 which fortunately died with the 2025 election. The federal government keeps on saying they're

00:38:33.520 going to bring the Online Harms Act back. And one of the provisions in there is to empower the

00:38:39.500 Canadian Human Rights Commission to prosecute discriminatory speech with penalties of up to

00:38:45.580 $50,000 paid to government, up to $20,000 paid to a complainant. And not to mention the tens of

00:38:54.560 thousands of dollars in legal bills, you're going to be out of pocket to defend yourself against

00:38:58.960 prosecution. And people on the left think this is great because then we can punish supposedly bad

00:39:06.960 people like Barry Neufeldt in British Columbia, who publicly speaks out against the transgender

00:39:13.800 ideology and says we shouldn't be harming children by teaching them that it's possible

00:39:20.740 to become a member of the opposite sex. And so the BC Human Rights Tribunal has ordered

00:39:28.060 Barry Neufeld to pay $750,000 to a small group of, uh, LGBT teachers in Chilliwack.

00:39:38.460 So it's just, um, you know, it's just, it's just crazy that way, but people favor this,

00:39:44.860 but it doesn't occur to them that if, if the government, uh, if the cultural tides change

00:39:51.620 And you get a, uh, maybe you get a Muslim dominated government that, uh, is going to punish, uh, Islamophobia and blaspheming the prophet Muhammad.

00:40:04.740 And they're going to, uh, crack down on LGBTQ speech. 0.88

00:40:09.300 And they're going to say that that's, it's a perversion and it's, uh, it's unnatural and it's sick and it's this and it's that.

00:40:16.340 Then what do you do then?

00:40:18.320 then you've got big government that can direct its guns against you.

00:40:22.880 But this is not what people think about.

00:40:24.320 It's just like, yeah, go, go, go.

00:40:25.920 You know, let's, let's have the hate speech restrictions.

00:40:28.480 Let's bring back the online harm act.

00:40:30.600 Uh, let's have the government deciding what's true and false, uh, by way of,

00:40:34.960 you know, promising to protect us from hate and disinformation, misinformation.

00:40:40.840 It's just short, short sightedness is a big part of it.

00:40:43.800 These people can't imagine that the machinery of the state would ever be

00:40:47.440 used against them doesn't occur to them.

00:40:50.440 Can I, can I admit a crime on this podcast right now?

00:40:53.520 Uh, this morning I, uh, I conducted a hate crime.

00:40:57.520 I had some bacon and well, like I joked, but that could be considered like under the

00:41:06.060 right, if the right people get in power, they could, that could be part of some, some, that

00:41:11.840 that could be a symbol of hate they could i could even imagine if people troll on the internet

00:41:17.660 enough and use the bacon like emoji in a hateful way i could see that kind of a meme being

00:41:26.160 treated as like a hate as a hate offense hate simply of like a hate symbol of you're you're

00:41:33.980 trying to make fun of somebody's religion and um since they can't eat bacon that is now a hateful

00:41:41.140 symbol and you can see how ridiculous these things get when taken to the logical extent of

00:41:49.860 just measuring it based on hurt feelings because an emoji could hurt feelings and they could

00:41:54.740 maybe they they want to ban an emoji because it's used by enough people that's how any word turns

00:42:02.200 into something hateful or a slur it's just it's common enough use that it comes ingrained culturally

00:42:09.860 And then at some point they said, like, well, now that's a bad word and you can't say it.

00:42:16.540 You know, the biggest threat or one of them, one of the biggest threats to free speech is just this notion that we, that people are entitled to not feel hurt or offended.

00:42:29.600 Now, I'd be the first to say that as a matter of civility, as a matter of politeness, as a matter of courtesy, we should try to get our points across as much as possible without being really awful, nasty, vicious towards people who disagree with us.

00:42:53.280 So, you know, we should focus on arguments and so on.

00:42:58.340 Having said that, invariably, all speech is going to offend at least somebody, okay? If an atheist says that religion is stupid and all religious followers are naive, gullible, credulous, misguided, anti-science, whatever, look, you know, I've got a thick skin. Most of us have a thick skin. We're not going to lose sleep over it. 0.99

00:43:27.100 but there will be people who are deeply hurt, you know, so why this atheist is calling religious 1.00

00:43:30.880 people stupid? Well, you know, people criticize Islam, people criticize Judaism, people criticize 0.99

00:43:37.440 Israel. You're always going to have people that feel hurt or offended by something, 0.62

00:43:49.740 whether it's a huge number or a small number, you're going to have people hurt.

00:43:53.260 And so what's disturbing is that you, a lot of Canadians will say, well, I support free speech as long as it's not offensive.

00:44:01.860 It's like, uh, everything, you know, certainly in the realm of religion and politics, uh, but I would say even in every realm, you know, you could have two, you could be running an interior design company and, and criticize a certain style of, of, uh, interior decorating or something.

00:44:22.940 can't, you know, somebody's going to be offended. So you can't have this, uh, I support free speech,

00:44:28.920 but, uh, as long as it's not offensive. No, free speech necessarily includes a right to offend.

00:44:37.480 Not that offending people is your goal. It's sort of a by-product, but it has to include that right

00:44:43.360 to offend. Because the moment you say that, that, you know, I have a right to not feel offended,

00:44:47.780 you have a right to not feel offended, you no longer have free speech.

00:44:52.060 That's so true.

00:44:53.560 You know, it's a, they say, you know, Jordan Peterson has said this, many, many, you know, various free speech warriors say, you don't need, you don't need provisions for freedom of speech for uncontroversial speech.

00:45:06.360 It's specifically only the controversial speech that is the purpose for why free speech laws exist.

00:45:11.980 And I think that maybe, uh, points to a, a grander problem right now in our, in our specifically Western culture in general, where, you know, they call this, um, I just, I just looked it up and I, I, apologies if I'm wrong.

00:45:29.000 I think this is right. There's an American writer named Rob Henderson who coined a term called luxury beliefs. And and this is a this sort of describes this, you know, this conflation of, you know, words are violence and insult is, you know, to be insulted is the same thing as to be physically harmed.

00:45:47.100 And these are things that only people with truly privileged existences can spend time thinking about and worrying about. And I think that, you know, I don't know if you've done much thinking or talking about, you know, this notion of a decadent culture sort of at the pinnacle of its influence, a culture in decline where they, you know, that starts to hyper focus inward on feelings as the walls crumble around them.

00:46:16.180 So this is maybe a broader philosophical topic, but do you, do you sense, do you get that sort of feeling you're in your, maybe in your personal, in your day-to-day life of, of that's the sort of culture we're living in, which leads to us having to have conversations about this?

00:46:32.560 Any culture that has the word microaggressions as part of its vocabulary is a pretty decadent culture, you know?

00:46:42.680 It is. We've become, well, frankly, we've become a bunch of sissies. I mean, you looked at the whole lockdown experience where, you know, previous generations have understood that death is part of life and it's normal for people to die. 0.99

00:47:03.460 and it's especially normal for older people to die and in prior years, yeah, and I'm not 0.99

00:47:11.260 trivializing it or making light of it. I mean, when my grandmother died when I was 21 years old,

00:47:18.420 I was devastated. It was horrific. She and I were extremely close. So I don't make light of

00:47:25.740 old people dying. I do say that it's a part of life that people generally die and

00:47:33.460 Most of the deaths are people in their 70s and 80s and 90s, more so than people in their 20s, 30s and 40s.

00:47:41.120 That's just a fact of life.

00:47:42.720 And so COVID comes along and all of a sudden we have this narrative that seems to be predicated on the idea that nobody ever dies.

00:47:50.960 And COVID's the first time in human history that people are dying and that this is somehow unacceptable.

00:47:57.660 And so you have, you know, elderly people who in prior years were dying of cancer and heart disease and stroke and emphysema and whatever, all these different causes and, you know, not featured on the six o'clock news and the five o'clock, four o'clock, three o'clock news, you know, not sort of an hourly reporting on death.

00:48:23.160 And then we get COVID and all of a sudden it's as if nobody has ever died before and old people have never died before. And now we're all shocked and terrified that there's people who are already old and have multiple health conditions that are in their last few months or their last year of life and they're dying.

00:48:44.940 and there's just this incredible fear of death that I don't think that they could have pulled

00:48:55.260 a stunt like this in the 1950s. In fact, we had more severe viruses. The Asian flu of 1957,

00:49:02.640 the Hong Kong flu of 1968 were more deadly than COVID and life went on. People said, well,

00:49:08.880 it's unfortunate, you know, we've got more flu deaths this year. These were global pandemics

00:49:13.480 and they were more deadly than COVID. And people, of course, they were sad when grandma and grandpa

00:49:20.220 died, but they didn't have, they kind of said, well, you know, life goes on, old people die,

00:49:28.840 and you didn't have lockdowns. And so we had a bunch of lockdowns, which there's no evidence

00:49:34.360 placed before courts by governments to demonstrate that lockdown saved any lives. But yeah. So it is,

00:49:41.520 There is sort of a heightened sensitivity that wasn't there in the past.

00:49:44.600 And it's especially a sick result of the absolute madness that took over the society,

00:49:53.120 Western societies in particular, but the whole planet really, that would simultaneously claim

00:49:59.200 that they were enacting these draconian policies to protect the elderly, while at the same time

00:50:07.600 letting them die alone in nursing homes with bags of hot water filled medical gloves to hold instead

00:50:15.100 of their loved ones hands you know like it's i'll never personally i'll never forgive them for that

00:50:20.740 i'll never get over it i don't think the way that that yeah so many people had to die alone and uh 0.95

00:50:29.500 yeah without their loved ones they're in some sort of a sick perverted twisted disgusting rhetoric

00:50:36.520 about how we've got to, yeah, you know, we have to protect these people from COVID.

00:50:42.740 Therefore, they all have to die alone because it was illegal to visit your loved ones in a nursing home. 0.81

00:50:47.760 It was disgusting.

00:50:49.560 And the lockdowns didn't prevent COVID from getting into the nursing homes.

00:50:52.980 I mean, this was the population.

00:50:54.680 The only, if you were under 70 and not in a nursing home and you're sort of, you know, average, reasonable health,

00:51:03.400 your risk of death or injury from driving in a motor vehicle,

00:51:08.920 either as a driver or passenger, either way,

00:51:10.640 your risk of death or injury from driving a car

00:51:15.020 was higher than your risk of death or injury from COVID.

00:51:19.440 And it was just, and everybody's driving their cars,

00:51:21.720 nobody's giving it a second thought, as it should be.

00:51:24.620 And yet, this COVID thing gets dressed up

00:51:30.040 as being far worse than what it is.

00:51:31.920 And the lockdowns didn't protect the elderly who were in the nursing homes.

00:51:38.920 They're the ones who took the brunt of COVID.

00:51:42.340 And lockdowns didn't stop COVID from getting into the nursing homes.

00:51:49.760 So it's just a lot of unnecessary suffering to have these seniors for weeks on end, months on end,

00:51:55.500 being confined alone to their rooms and illegal to see their loved ones.

00:51:59.940 What an evil thing to do.

00:52:02.980 And it's only possible with a media framework that essentially just defaults to a handful of experts with the same ideology.

00:52:13.660 You didn't have any fact checks of when Dina Hinshaw claimed that a youth died of COVID, but it was a terminally ill cancer.

00:52:24.740 um it was like stage four cancer teenager with stage four cancer who died with a positive test

00:52:34.100 and that fact check like the media if it was doing its role it would have fact checked that

00:52:41.520 and it would have dug deeper um so you're seeing the same kind of the lack of questions asked

00:52:49.700 and just rubber stamping these articles.

00:52:52.340 You're seeing that in COVID

00:52:54.100 and you're seeing that now

00:52:55.160 with a lot of the fears of the border,

00:52:59.180 like crossing the border,

00:53:00.360 this anti-American rhetoric

00:53:02.180 where they point to one case in Texas

00:53:05.240 about a wife and husband getting deported

00:53:09.840 after overstaying their visa,

00:53:12.580 but they fail to mention

00:53:14.240 that there's previous criminal charges

00:53:17.020 for assault on a minor.

00:53:19.120 And like all these other details that would shift them from just a random family that just happens to overstay a visa by a month to a high priority case where a lot of the times the surface level gut reaction is somebody reading a headline or they read quickly read a headline and another headline and they didn't die deep.

00:53:41.860 And the thoughts have already been planted there. The seeds have been planted. And even if a correction comes out, you don't undo those impressions that are trickled out over time.

00:53:55.160 So I feel like this is just another reason to abolish the CRTC, especially that it's now enabling overt censorship with these additional bills that are coming out.

00:54:09.240 Um, so it's, it's necessary that there's change and I'm glad that this article is published now, especially that it's more necessary than, than ever to, to have some of these tough conversations.

00:54:27.860 So.

00:54:29.280 Well, the good news is the, uh, the, the CBC viewership is, is decreasing.

00:54:36.300 Even other government-funded media, a while back, I was having coffee with one of the donors to the Justice Center, and he told me that his grandson has never heard of global news.

00:54:49.960 Good.

00:54:50.580 You know, his 20-year-old grandson, to be specific.

00:54:53.200 His 20-year-old grandson gets 100% of his media comes from X and TikTok, and he doesn't know what global news is.

00:55:01.020 He's never heard of it.

00:55:01.840 uh, you know, the, the, the younger people are so far removed from a generation where,

00:55:07.900 uh, and I remember I'm, I'm 58. I grew up in the seventies. And like, if you wanted to watch the

00:55:13.600 news, you'd make sure you got home by six o'clock to turn on the six o'clock news. Right. And then

00:55:19.060 there'd be another news at 10 and at 11. And, uh, that, that was the only way to get it. Right.

00:55:26.120 And, and it was, it was through the television and radio and newspapers as well. But now with

00:55:31.300 the internet and social media.

00:55:32.980 Um, so the good news is that these government funded media are slowly

00:55:37.060 dying a well-deserved death and, uh, every, every month, uh, I think, you

00:55:44.900 know, independent podcasters and video casters like yourselves, and we've got

00:55:50.520 independent media like the rebel and Juno news and the Epoch times and the

00:55:55.380 Western standard and a black locks, a reporter based in, in Ottawa, uh, all of

00:56:02.460 these are growing and it's wonderful.

00:56:06.180 And it actually makes it harder for totalitarian dictator to take power

00:56:12.320 because, you know, if you can't control, right, this is, if you can't centrally

00:56:20.280 control information, uh, you've got all these pockets of, of resistance.

00:56:25.380 it's harder to be a tyrant than what it would have been

00:56:30.060 in the 60s and 70s and 80s,

00:56:32.080 when if you controlled the TV stations,

00:56:35.040 the people would only be getting one thing at 6 p.m.

00:56:38.760 And that was what you wanted the people to hear.

00:56:41.260 There were no other television stations, right?

00:56:43.780 It was CBC, CTV, I think Global came later.

00:56:48.280 Anyway, so this is good.

00:56:50.540 It's very good.

00:56:51.220 And so James and I are both 36,

00:56:54.100 And I think being kind of smack dab in the middle of the of the millennial, maybe on the I think they define the millennial generation is from approximately 1980 to 1995.

00:57:05.180 I think we are probably the last generation that would have ever grown up with our primary news source, at least in our childhood, being on the TV and newspapers.

00:57:16.200 And Gen Z, Gen Alpha, I think, is a little bit too young still.

00:57:20.960 But Gen Z, having grown up with primarily Internet-based news and social media news, is by far the most conservative generation in 100 years, they say.

00:57:30.300 So I don't think that that's a coincidence that once you stop being propagandized directly by your government-funded media that that would happen.

00:57:39.880 So, Ms. John Carpe, do you have, just to be respectful of your time here, do you have any events coming up, any speaking engagements, anything you'd like to plug before we let you get on with your evening?

00:57:51.460 Well, the winner of the George Jonas Freedom Award for 2026 is Candice Malcolm, who heads up Juno News.

00:58:02.280 And so we are going to have an event in Toronto in July, Vancouver in August, and then Calgary will be September 24th to honor Candice Malcolm.

00:58:15.780 I am 90% sure that I will be in Edmonton.

00:58:21.240 We're looking at a public meeting on Thursday, April 30th in Edmonton.

00:58:27.220 I'll email you more information about that.

00:58:30.400 And for those who are interested, the Justice Centre, if you want to sign up for an email newsletter,

00:58:38.140 we send it out only twice a month, so you're not going to get inundated.

00:58:42.900 But if you go to our website, JCCF, Justice Centre Constitutional Freedoms, jccf.ca,

00:58:49.320 sign up for our newsletter and that will keep you posted as well if we do have events from time to

00:58:54.840 time we do geographical email blast to people in that in the area of the event so yeah we're

00:59:07.160 going to keep on fighting till we win you know times are dark things might get worse

00:59:10.560 but we just the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing

00:59:15.720 and so we press on

00:59:18.380 and we're going to keep on

00:59:20.500 speaking truth to power

00:59:21.580 and keep on fighting

00:59:24.300 until we win.

00:59:25.420 Well, we're very, very glad

00:59:27.020 that there are people

00:59:27.720 like you behind the movement.

00:59:28.860 We thank you for taking the time

00:59:30.860 to discuss these things

00:59:32.460 with just a couple of goose

00:59:34.180 from Edmonton

00:59:34.780 and always appreciate

00:59:36.900 having you on the show

00:59:38.240 and hopefully next time

00:59:40.040 you guys have a big report

00:59:41.020 you'll let us chat with you

00:59:43.040 about it again

00:59:43.620 and yeah, thank you, sir.

00:59:45.260 We'll look forward to that

00:59:46.500 Great to have you on

00:59:49.120 Have a great rest of the night

The Critical Compass Podcast - April 01, 2026

＂It's Time to Abolish the CRTC＂｜ John Carpay

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

The Critical Compass Podcast - April 01, 2026

＂It's Time to Abolish the CRTC＂ ｜ John Carpay

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript

＂It's Time to Abolish the CRTC＂｜ John Carpay