Western Standard - June 28, 2026


HANNAFORD： Bill C-34 is building Canada’s digital surveillance state


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Length

25 minutes

Words per minute

144.67

Word count

3,699

Sentence count

127


Summary

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

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Good evening Western Standard viewers and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show of the
00:00:20.900 Western Standard. It is Thursday, June the 25th. With me today is John Carpe, President of the
00:00:27.200 Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms. Welcome, John.
00:00:30.680 Glad to be with you and viewers and listeners.
00:00:33.100 Well, we have lots of those, especially for this topic. John, a few days ago, the Justice
00:00:39.580 Center went to war with the federal Bill C-34. It's another one of these repressive social media
00:00:48.760 acts that the federal government seems to love. And this bill is supposed to make it hard for
00:00:54.220 kids to access the internet anybody under 16 but of course if we're going to do that everybody's
00:00:59.620 affected what tell us about this bill well it's it's a building block of the surveillance state
00:01:06.160 uh as they did in 2024 with the online harms act we got to protect children from online arms
00:01:13.180 therefore we got to have this digital safety commission and and so on and so forth so bill
00:01:18.880 C-34 would create a digital safety commission with immense power to regulate the internet.
00:01:28.600 Most of those powers are not even defined. So if Bill C-34 in its current form, if it's passed
00:01:34.340 into law, there's a huge volume of issues which the digital safety commission will have the power
00:01:44.240 to decide what it wants to do what's the digital safety commission so it's a new federal body
00:01:52.560 analogous to the crtc the canadian radio television and telecommunications commission
00:01:58.320 so the crtc by way of legislation federal legislation has power to regulate used to be just
00:02:07.760 radio and television now they have some power over the internet as well the online streaming act
00:02:12.880 So the Digital Safety Commission would be a new body like the CRTC that would exercise real powers and it would have authority to control internet service providers and platforms and what they can and cannot say.
00:02:30.920 So what does the Act say that this Digital Safety Commission can do?
00:02:34.560 Well, a lot of it's undefined. For example, it will, we'll find if the bill passes, we would find out later after the bill's passed, which social media, which kinds of social media the law would apply to. Okay. Would it apply to Facebook? Would it apply to Twitter? Would it apply to, we don't know.
00:02:58.100 The Digital Safety Commission gets to make those decisions after the bill has passed.
00:03:04.080 So MPs are kind of being asked to vote for something that's behind a curtain that we find out later on.
00:03:10.560 Like a blank check, really?
00:03:11.760 It's a blank check.
00:03:13.040 Give us this legislation and don't worry, we'll take it from there.
00:03:16.860 Um, and cleverly sold as a way to, um, reduce or eliminate access to pornography, which
00:03:27.260 I think is for children for children.
00:03:29.380 Yeah.
00:03:29.800 Under 16.
00:03:30.560 Yeah.
00:03:30.960 Now Australia has tried this.
00:03:33.220 Uh, they've had, their law has been in power in place since, uh, 2025.
00:03:37.880 It has thus far proven to be totally ineffective.
00:03:41.800 Uh, the kids are still accessing social media through other sources.
00:03:46.860 And the danger this creates is the only way to really make it effective is to have a verification for everybody using the Internet, where you've got to provide, you know, facial recognition scan.
00:04:02.860 You have to provide perhaps banking details.
00:04:05.920 You have to prove who you are.
00:04:08.040 That's the only way that it could actually really work.
00:04:10.500 And if we go down that path, then we've got a totalitarian surveillance state where the government always knows whether you're online and what you're looking up and what you're searching.
00:04:20.980 Well, now, you've looked at this legislation quite closely, and I've looked at it a bit.
00:04:24.860 And it says, well, we only keep the information for, in fact, we make the service providers gather this information,
00:04:33.580 And they're only allowed to keep it for long enough to establish that, you know, you are who you say you are and you're over the age of 16.
00:04:41.640 After that, it gets done. No problem.
00:04:44.740 How would you or I or anybody else know if our private information was, in fact, deleted 24 hours later?
00:04:54.020 This is more of, you know, trust us. We're going to keep our promises.
00:04:58.840 Don't worry. We'll delete it after 24 hours.
00:05:00.940 okay, how could you possibly know whether I have kept my promise or not
00:05:05.600 if I promise to delete your personal information 24 hours after receiving it?
00:05:11.500 And I guess there's been some, this has been tried, I think, in Great Britain.
00:05:17.300 Did you say Australia as well?
00:05:19.960 Is that what they do?
00:05:22.040 Australia is the first country to pass this kind of law.
00:05:25.840 And in Britain, the prime minister announced a week or two or three ago that they would follow in Australia's footsteps.
00:05:34.620 And there's a lot of countries that have announced that they intend to follow Australia's model.
00:05:40.440 But Australia's model is not preventing kids from accessing social media or pornography.
00:05:47.200 It's not working.
00:05:47.960 the only way to really make it work is to have this uh you know verification of identity
00:05:55.600 and age for every for everybody like 100 of the people using the internet would have to verify
00:06:02.220 their that they are adults and and and typically you would do that by what a face facial scan would
00:06:11.140 be one thing. I've traveled recently and this seems to be the new thing, crossing different
00:06:18.240 borders. You put your passport down and then the camera scans your face to see that it aligns with
00:06:26.080 the passport. I'm assuming it's pretty easy to use technology. So that would be an example of what
00:06:32.220 they could use for the internet. I guess they could also ask for personal information. Yes,
00:06:37.160 because your banking information would confirm who you are
00:06:41.160 or maybe your social insurance number or your birth date.
00:06:45.280 And we've had, repeatedly, we've had problems with hackers.
00:06:51.460 This is not news.
00:06:53.380 I mean, you can find this easily where, you know,
00:06:56.020 70,000 people have their personal information,
00:07:00.160 maybe their driver's license, their address is posted on the internet
00:07:04.920 because some hacker decided to, you know, go on a power trip.
00:07:08.360 Okay, John, this is huge stuff, and it's not been much talked about.
00:07:12.620 I think people might be vaguely aware that they're trying to keep 16-year-olds from watching porn,
00:07:18.180 and I guess most people would say, well, I guess that's a good thing.
00:07:21.580 But, you know, for anybody who's just hearing this for the first time,
00:07:27.420 let me just read back to you what you have just said,
00:07:30.780 That the government of Canada has legislation through which, in order to keep 16-year-olds from watching porn, they would essentially have to gather information from everybody who intends to access the information to ascertain that they are who they say they are and that they are older than 16 years.
00:07:55.520 This could involve a face scan, but if it didn't involve that, it would have to be something equally determinative, such as your banking details.
00:08:05.700 Obviously, if you've been paying visa for 10 years, you're probably more than 16 years old, you know, that kind of information.
00:08:11.100 And yet, they promise to delete it as soon as they've cleared you, but you raise issues of trust.
00:08:17.540 And, of course, the issues of the hack, when somebody breaks in and gets 100,000 sets of personal details in one fell swoop.
00:08:33.420 There's more, but this is huge.
00:08:36.140 Have I accurately summarized what this bill is going to mean for everybody in Canada who wants to access the Internet?
00:08:43.000 it yes it is a road towards a digital surveillance state now that is a worst case scenario i mean
00:08:53.680 theoretically just to be fair-minded about this i mean theoretically we could pass this law and
00:09:00.080 the digital safety commission would be very reasonable and would not throw its weight around
00:09:06.260 but but you and i know and i think our viewers and listeners know that that power corrupts
00:09:10.820 and absolute power corrupts absolutely and people are basically incapable if they
00:09:18.260 if a human being has this much power they're going to exercise this much power they're not
00:09:22.340 going to they're not going to say well i'm going to be very reasonable and and so on and we don't
00:09:26.660 go there no i guess we do yes we do yes of course well then let's talk about where else they want to
00:09:31.860 go because there is a section of this bill which provides that um well first of all uh john just
00:09:39.140 talk about the this digital safety commission before we get to the hate speech part of this
00:09:44.420 um who is actually defining what it's going to do and what its powers will be
00:09:54.100 well the the core part of it is that it's it's a government body uh its board of directors will be
00:10:01.380 appointed by the government they're likely to be equity diversity inclusion woke you know
00:10:09.380 rainbow ideology types because that's the type of people that the government typically appoints
00:10:15.700 and then they're going to have their executive director and they're going to have their officers
00:10:19.780 and bureaucrats that monitor and regulate the internet and they're going to have the private
00:10:26.100 But companies do the dirty work for them insofar as they can establish fines and penalties that if an Internet service provider does not comply with their federal cabinet regulations, that there will be a price to pay.
00:10:42.720 Like, you know, 3% of your annual global revenues.
00:10:46.820 That could make Internet providers pretty skittish, I would think.
00:10:49.120 So they're going to comply much in the same way. During lockdowns, the government threatened restaurants with large fines if the restaurants didn't enforce a vaccine passport to, you know, treat as second class citizens, those who had not gotten injected.
00:11:05.120 So the private companies do the government's dirty work because they legitimately want to avoid a huge fine.
00:11:12.180 So they're going to be rather cautious. Something that might be acceptable, actually. So no, you can't say that.
00:11:16.780 Yeah, it'll be the private companies that will be censoring the speech because they don't want to get in trouble with the government. The other aspect is that this Bill C-34 is going to give vast new regulatory powers to the federal government to pass all kinds of regulations. And that's, again, it's, you know, trust us that we'll do well behind the closed curtain.
00:11:43.860 This is back to the blank check of a few minutes ago.
00:11:47.200 I read through this act, good gracious as a turgid prose,
00:11:51.240 but there were 50 places where they said this will be done by order in council,
00:11:57.520 which means that if you're not a long government subject,
00:12:00.580 somebody will decide to make this decision after this thing has passed.
00:12:04.480 So we have no idea what we're getting into with this, really, or how this is going to look.
00:12:09.400 Do we?
00:12:09.960 We don't.
00:12:10.780 and what is scary is that many politicians have spoken very publicly about protecting us from
00:12:18.940 misinformation right yeah protect you protect you from hate and protect you from misinformation
00:12:25.580 so this is another dark path you've got people agitating for uh criminalizing uh academic and
00:12:34.060 historical discussions about residential schools such that the only legal narrative that you can
00:12:39.820 say out loud or write about is that residential schools were cultural genocide you know decided
00:12:47.740 to to to uh destroy aboriginals or whatever that's the only thing you're allowed to say
00:12:52.860 and it'll be a criminal offense to say otherwise so when you look at this digital safety commission
00:12:58.060 in a context of politicians stating publicly we're going to protect you from hate protect
00:13:02.780 you from misinformation people advocating for criminalizing so-called residential school
00:13:08.220 denialism it's a pretty toxic so from what you said it sounds like they won't even get that far
00:13:15.180 because the the internet service provider is going to cut them off before they they've hit send but
00:13:21.340 if they do get past that so they get called in and said look you said this we think that
00:13:26.860 so you you fight it and you plead truth and you you know produce your evidence and so forth and
00:13:33.420 so on and and you win right it has a huge chilling effect because the people who are ready willing
00:13:41.660 and able to uh suffer that kind of persecution are pretty small in number well could you actually is
00:13:50.140 this like a human rights commission where truth doesn't matter it would depend on well sorry for
00:13:57.980 criminal charges okay if if residential school denialism becomes is made into a criminal code
00:14:03.500 offense the same way that currently holocaust denial minimization is criminal willful promotion
00:14:08.700 or hatred is criminal if residential school denialism is criminalized then a defense in a
00:14:14.940 criminal prosecution truth would be a defense but if it's a digital safety commission that is
00:14:23.260 uh enforcing regulations passed by federal cabinet that becomes a whole new ball game and then and
00:14:30.380 then no truth would not be a defense so it would be in a criminal prosecution but not if um you
00:14:36.780 know whoever hosts the western standards website decides that you guys are residential school
00:14:43.500 deniers you know are they going to pull your content uh off of the internet or
00:14:49.820 refuse to continue to provide you with your platform john this is uh this is a whole
00:14:56.860 no you spoke about this being part of the construction of a surveillance state
00:15:02.700 so uh you know in my mind i'm now picturing well we've got a bit over here and we've got a bit over
00:15:08.140 here and this particular this particular bit is actually about something else but they got one
00:15:13.500 line in there that actually has to do with uh oh what would be an example um in um bill c22 which
00:15:22.120 was i have not looked at bill c22 in in the past month so i i can't get into the details but that's
00:15:29.120 also uh one of the building blocks and then we've got bill c9 right the uh which is about something
00:15:34.520 Yes, but bans quoting the Bible. It could result in Catholic priests, Protestant pastors,
00:15:44.760 Orthodox Jewish rabbis getting prosecuted for saying what their sacred scriptures say
00:15:50.840 about homosexuality. So it opens that door. Can you just talk a little bit about these
00:15:59.400 pieces that you're speaking of? You mentioned Bill 9. You mentioned Bill 22. We had Bill 63.
00:16:09.320 This latest thing, 34, seems to be a reincarnation of Bill C-63. All of these bills, they say they're
00:16:17.000 about one thing, but there's a piece in there that seems to be intended to control what people are
00:16:23.400 actually allowed to say in the public square or am i being a little bit too you know am i over
00:16:29.720 reading 1984 no it's it's the legislation working together so you got bill c8 which empowers uh
00:16:37.480 federal cabinet ministers to kick canadians off the internet there's another example right you
00:16:42.920 could find yourself suddenly uh they could order whichever company is providing digital service to
00:16:48.360 you uh we've got the lowering of thresholds for uh information we've got requirements uh i think the
00:16:56.280 public pressure reduced it from 12 months to six months but that the um companies like like
00:17:03.560 like rogers bell and tell us need to keep your uh data on file for um for six months and you know
00:17:11.960 know making it easier for the police to access uh information and all these bills dealing with
00:17:19.040 technology and the internet are together as a package it's the building blocks of a surveillance
00:17:26.480 state like 1984 well that's incredible you know why don't we know about this
00:17:31.500 they're not they're clever after a law is passed you don't you don't feel a difference
00:17:41.000 the following day, the following week, the following month, right?
00:17:44.520 But you still have to look at the laws.
00:17:46.780 What's the foundation that's being laid in place
00:17:48.740 for what powers the government will have two years from now
00:17:53.160 to undermine our privacy and move us towards that surveillance state?
00:18:00.120 Now, this didn't start when Mr. Carney became prime minister about 16 months ago.
00:18:07.560 Did it even start with Mr. Trudeau?
00:18:10.480 Bill C63, Online Arms Act. Well, and okay, so Online News Act made it, the result was that Meta and Facebook would no longer be able to, people couldn't share news stories with each other.
00:18:29.520 So it's hurt. There's been decline in people watching the news. That was the the Online News Act. The Online Streaming Act gave the CRTC legal authority over the Internet, over online streaming. So they might not be throwing their weight around right now, but they have the legal authority to regulate the contents of what, you know, say the Western Standard or the Justice Center puts out in terms of a video.
00:18:58.180 Then you have C-63, the Online Harms Act, which also proposed a digital safety commission with an army of bureaucrats to enforce federal cabinet regulations.
00:19:09.020 So, yeah, this has been going on for years.
00:19:11.740 C-63 was particularly terrible, and it died before the 2005 election.
00:19:18.240 So, okay, it's been going on for years, and you sort of follow all the little rabbit trails back.
00:19:23.740 Where do you see the beginning of this?
00:19:28.180 Is it politicians or is it bureaucrats?
00:19:32.180 I think it's a combination of politicians, bureaucrats, academics.
00:19:39.180 You've got this political-cultural stream of neo-Marxist ideology which has taken root, taken hold,
00:19:47.180 and has now infiltrated the government and the bureaucracy and the universities.
00:19:53.180 And this is a narrative. It's a hateful narrative of group conflict. And the old Marxism was capitalism versus capitalists versus the workers, evil capitalists, good workers. We get our utopia when the good workers crush and defeat and destroy the evil capitalists.
00:20:15.000 So now fast forward to today's neo-Marxism is still group conflict, men versus women, gays versus straights, light-skinned versus dark-skinned. And how do you get the utopia? When the oppressed crushes the oppressor.
00:20:31.980 So that's the narrative. And that is a narrative that has completely infiltrated pretty much every university in Canada. It's infiltrated the media, the bureaucracy, the politicians. So that's the cultural stream that I think is pushing us towards this totalitarian surveillance state because the Marxists don't respect.
00:20:58.300 In fact, they hate our individual human dignity, right?
00:21:02.440 So I, as a human being, have certain God-given, not government-given, God-given rights to express myself, to practice my faith, to associate with other people.
00:21:12.660 And that's what the Marxism hates, is individual rights, including our legitimate privacy rights, that they're spheres of my life that are private, and they're not your business or the government's business.
00:21:25.160 you know that too they don't care for privacy rights the only thing here john is that you know
00:21:30.300 some of the people who are actually doing this today uh the minister government ministers
00:21:34.980 probably don't realize that they're marxists i mean i doubt very much whether mark miller or
00:21:40.120 sean fraser would you know i think you're right i think you're right they don't they don't know
00:21:44.780 that necessarily and and if if you challenge them with it they would probably deny it and say
00:21:50.100 Oh, no, you know, Stalin and Lenin, these are mass murderers that killed, you know, and I'm a really nice guy.
00:21:57.300 That's probably what they would say.
00:21:59.400 So this movement has been so successful that people who...
00:22:04.380 Take it as normal.
00:22:05.340 Like it's as if it's normal to have a rainbow colored crosswalk when we've previously understood that you don't do political slogans on public property as government action.
00:22:20.100 Well, you know, I remember the days when you could say, I've got a right to my own
00:22:24.600 opinion and say what I think, and people would just say, of course you do.
00:22:28.620 It certainly doesn't look that way now.
00:22:30.600 John, I mean, this is a pessimistic interview because there's lots to be pessimistic about,
00:22:35.520 but can you give us anything hopeful here, like what people can do, how they can resist
00:22:40.220 this, and certainly in respect of challenging the kind of legislation that the government
00:22:46.800 is putting forward?
00:22:47.800 any successes recently where we can say well actually they tried to do this but they ended up
00:22:52.360 not able to we've had partial successes one example was the bill c2 the strong borders act
00:22:59.480 which generated so much opposition from so many quarters on the left on the right in the middle
00:23:06.120 canadian civil liberties association justice center just dozens and dozens of of groups
00:23:12.440 came out against bill c2 so the government put it on the back burner and has not moved forward with
00:23:20.200 some of the more objectionable parts they carved out c12 which pertained specifically to borders
00:23:27.960 immigration refugees and that went through and i think it had the support of the conservative
00:23:32.600 opposition but there's a lot of bad stuff they left behind because of public opposition
00:23:37.600 Another success was in Bill C-9, the Combating Hate Act.
00:23:43.740 The initial bill had a provision that a hate speech prosecution would no longer require the approval of the justice minister, the attorney general.
00:23:56.140 And it would have shifted complete authority to local police to prosecute people for hate speech.
00:24:04.800 that got taken out of bill c9 so let me see nine could have been worse so bottom line people need
00:24:12.600 to contact their member of parliament uh whether he or she is liberal conservative mdp block green
00:24:18.240 and uh tell your mp oppose bill c34 or else i won't vote for you well bill c34 has just been
00:24:27.500 introduced like a week ago so do you know whatever it was um so there's actually a long way to go on
00:24:34.100 this we have time to we do to do some like that at least as hopeful john we're out of time i'm so
00:24:39.940 sorry this is a kind of discussion that could go on for a long time and should but uh anyway god
00:24:45.380 bless you for the work you're doing down there at the justice center and thanks for coming into the
00:24:49.100 studio for the western standard i'm nigel hannaford
00:25:04.100 Thank you.