HANNAFORD： Ottawa's eternal quest to shape what Canadians say and think
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Summary
Peter Menzies has been a long-time member of the Conservative Party of Canada's House of Commons committee on the Commons heritage committee. He's been with the party for a long time, and has been on the committee for a lot longer than that. In this episode, he talks about the role of the Heritage Committee, and how Liberals have tried to exert control over Canadian media and the internet.
Transcript
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Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show.
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It is Thursday, August the 7th. One of the big differences between Canada's political
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parties is that when in power, conservatives tend to leave hard-working Canadians alone
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to do their thing and set government up so that they can follow their dreams. Not so the
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liberals, on the other hand. They try to set up government so that Canadians will follow
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what the liberals think would be a better dream. Some people call it social engineering
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or wokeness. Whatever you call it, the liberals just can't leave well enough alone, and it
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means they're always looking for more control. With me today is Peter Menzies, who has been
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patrolling this constituency for a couple of decades. Welcome, Peter.
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Peter Menzies Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
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Peter, you had a long career in print media. You were a publisher of the Calgary Herald.
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You actually were my old boss for several years, and then you were a CRTC commissioner. So
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you know print and you know electronic media. And of course, as the liberals started pushing
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into the internet, you saw firsthand what was going on. So when I say they want to use newspaper
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subsidies to control what Canadians read, and the CRTC to control what they say on the internet and read
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Peter Menzies I don't think you are. I think the difference between, one of the fundamental
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differences between conservatives and liberals is that liberals have a great deal of faith in government
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as a force for good, and believe that when they do something, because they did it, it must be good.
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Whereas conservatives have a more, what I would call, Jeffersonian approach, that government should
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only do what only government can do, and it should focus on doing that well. And generally have a more
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laissez-faire approach to the world. They will regulate things, of course. You know, age restrictions for
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things like pornography and that sort of stuff, they're in favor of. But they do not get into the
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realm of what you may say and what you may not say, to the extent that the liberals instincts lead them there.
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So, there was a suite of bills that the liberals brought in to control the internet, control what
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Canadians can do and say and read on the internet. There's Bill 11, Bill 18, and Bill C-63. The 63 didn't
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go through, but Peter, can you explain to us how the liberals used those three bills, or intended to
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use them, in order to control the internet? Sure. Well, I mean, part of the instinct goes back,
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I can remember a few years ago, Hedy Frye, who was head of the Heritage Committee in Parliament,
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but she said a few years ago, have you seen the internet? Oh my god, people can say anything on
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there. Right? And so it sort of goes, holy, people can say anything. Well, I mean...
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Isn't that what we were, isn't that what our democracy is supposed to be about?
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Exactly. The whole foundation. Hedy Frye was an NDP, a Liberal Cabinet Minister.
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Yeah. You know, she's been for years, she's in her 80s now, but she has, you know,
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I think she's most famous for talking about how, as we speak, they are burning crosses in Prince George.
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Oh, I remember that. And overstatements like that. But to me, that sort of expressed...
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Well, that was kind of very free speech, wasn't it? It was, it was, it was. But to me,
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that sort of expresses the instinct, good heavens, people are saying anything they want. And I think
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they probably had a view before that if something happened that they didn't like, they could have
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lunch with the local publisher, or something like that, and that they could count on their gatekeeping
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powers to ensure this. But they started with the, the Online Streaming Act was really where they
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started. And that was about giving the CRTC control over all audio and video on the internet.
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No, no, no. The CRTC was set up to do over the air radio and television, which I mean,
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which has to do with Spectrum, which is a crown asset in which, so they have a legitimate
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crown purpose in regulating that. But they've always had rules about what you could say and
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couldn't say that go along with getting your television or radio license. But the internet,
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of course, is not a finite resource like Spectrum. So, but they just decided that the internet was
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broadcasting. They basically just made that up because the internet isn't broadcasting and gave
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the CRTC control over it. So far it has excluded podcasts, but it'll get into that eventually just
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because that's the way regulatory creep works. But that sort of set the sign for the stage for
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managing how you consume content on the internet. It gets very complicated, so I won't go into all that.
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And then the Online News Act was about setting up a regime that would fund, provide either through
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the government's actions or through its own resources, funding for media. And that involved
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media then being approved by a government appointed committee. And then the last one was Bill C-63,
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which died on the order paper when Justin Trudeau left. And that was called the Online Harms Act. And
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the most dangerous part about that was adding new powers or reinstating old powers to the Canadian Human
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Rights Commission so that you and I could complain about each other anytime we wanted.
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Well, yes, that was an incredible intrusion into free speech rights. The idea, as I recall the
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legislation that was dropped, was that an individual who didn't like what I was saying, or didn't like
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what you were saying, could say, you know, on the basis of what Mr. Menzies has said in the past,
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I think he's likely to say something hateful in the future. Yes. And therefore, he should be,
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what was supposed to happen after that? Well, I think you could go to court and get,
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the police could go to court and get an order to restrict you to your premises.
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Take away your computer. Prior to an event. I'm not sure about taking away the computer, but I'm
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sure that probably denying access to the internet or some kind of... It went down that road. I don't
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want to say that it did or that it didn't because I don't have the stuff in front of me, but...
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So this is the world of minority report. We think you might be about to do something,
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so we're therefore going to limit your freedom. You're under house arrest.
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Well, yeah. No, it's exactly, it's one thing because our hate speech legislation came in to stop
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people from standing up on a podium with a megaphone or any other electronic means of communication.
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And saying, tonight, I think people should pick up baseball bats and attack Presbyterians or any
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other specific group that they wanted to. That that was hate speech that was likely, that was intended
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to provoke violence against an identifiable group. And we're a long way from that when we get into,
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I think you might say something that might hurt somebody's feelings.
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And therefore, we will make sure you don't have access to any public forum.
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Well, now, for the sake of the anxious viewer, let's just re-emphasize that legislation did not go
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through. It died on the order paper when the parliament was brought to go for the last election.
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So that is not law today. But it's the same government, almost man for man, woman for woman.
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Well, I think it'll come back, certainly in some shape or form, because some of the groups pushing
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for it originally, the original online harm scrap, the
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factors within the Jewish community were pushing for protection from things that could be said
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It should have been a little harder, Peter, by the sound of things.
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Well, and the Islamic factor within the Muslim community were pushing for it too,
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because Islam was being criticized online and they were opposed to that. And I think as we've seen with
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the government's decision to, even without consulting parliament, recognize the state of Palestine,
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that is a significant voting bloc that's being catered to and shifting Western political dynamics in,
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I want to say, unforeseen ways, but they were foreseen but ignored.
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Peter Robinson So what we have is a government that, unlike the one that preceded it,
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which tended to just leave people to, you know, keep the law, but think what they want, read what
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they want, talk what they want. You've got now a government, and we've had a government for 10 years,
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that cares very deeply that you think the way they think you should think.
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Justin Trudeau expressed it very well when he referred to people with unacceptable views.
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So I think that might include you from time to time too, but heaven forbid, but this whole idea
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of getting into the approved and disapproved, the state, I mean, these are things that churches did,
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right? That, you know, no, that is apostate, that is blasphemy, that is this, you know, those sorts
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of controls. These were not things that liberal democracies engaged in, and yet they just keep going
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that way. And I, it's, it's actually very frightening to see, because you realize how authoritarianism
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grows, right? When people who seem like nice people, who say they're doing this to keep us safe,
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it's always about safety, right? It's always about your safety, your emotional safety. And one thing
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about physical safety, that's an entirely different thing, but if it's about your emotional safety,
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so you might say something that just, you know, triggers me or makes me go, oh my God, oh my God,
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I mean, I don't, I don't feel safe, you know, in this. And that's what happened with the, with the
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evangelical singer last week. People were saying, well, I don't know that people going to his concert,
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I know that what sort of people would be going to his concert that could be walking by my house,
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I don't feel safe. And people react to that rather than saying, you know, pull yourself together,
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right? Do you, you know, find counseling, you know, see a priest do something?
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Well, actually, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you, we're talking about showing foot,
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or however you, however you pronounce that German name carefully, I think, yes,
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under your breath, behind your hands. You know, I'd never heard of this guy. Oh,
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until about 10 days ago. Um, um, the, the knock on him is apparently that, um, he has a suite of
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opinions that 20 years ago would have been pretty unremarkable. Like I don't, he's not a fan of gay
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marriage. He thinks the whole LBGT thing is, uh, is immoral. Um, he is, uh, avowedly, openly Christian,
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wants to worship God with raised hands and, and so forth, which is, you know, some people,
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that's how some people do worship and they've been free to do that for a couple thousand years.
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Yes. Uh, he has also spoken up for, for, uh, Donald Trump in, in the United States,
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which is not surprising that there is a certain, um, uh, there's certainly a, quite a, uh, faction
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among Trump's followers who are, would identify as born again Christians and he would, he sings
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their music. Yep. So yes, he's a, he's a Trumper. And that I think was what got him kicked off a
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Parks Canada site in New Brunswick, which is where this particular line of news began. And the reason
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they kicked him off was that it didn't align with Parks Canada values. Yes. Which were to promote
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inclusion and safe spaces. Right. Now, when a couple of questions fall out of that, first of all,
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when did government agencies start having values that, uh, you know, like take the, collect the money
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as you go into the park and stick it in the box. Yes. And feed your grass cut. Yes. Those are values.
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And don't litter. That, that, that should be about the end of it. But that is a perfect example of how
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something that sounds harmless, right. Because it's going to be inclusive. We have, we have,
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this is what we value. Now you can value that within your employment ecosystem. You can, you can do,
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you can do that if you want, but you don't invent values like that, that, that could be violated
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peacefully by any citizen or any visitor or any, or any visitor. They do. And, and, and that's the
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sort of, you know, if you point to something like that, when it first occurs, people will say,
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well, that's a little kooky. Aren't you being a little paranoid? You know, there's a, but there's a
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long bit of evidence you can go back and say, well, this is what it leads to, because what appears to
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be harmless has suddenly been used. It's been weaponized. Values have been weaponized to use.
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Some people will agree with, obviously, following social media, lots of people agreed with it. There
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were, there was a, a rush of people agreeing with it. Many of us disagreed with it because
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we are hung up on this old fashioned idea that you have, you are going to be offended in life,
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right? There were, as mom used to say, sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never
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hurt you, the sort of thing that you got to suck it up buttercup and, and get through life. And that's,
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that is true tolerance is, I'm, I'm sure this singer and I could sit down and talk for quite a while.
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And I would leave in disagreement with him, or there could be others, others that, that do. But he has a
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right to hold views that some people find offensive, provided he's not calling for harm to be done to
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anybody. And there, but the, this liberal definition seems to be that holding the view is itself harmful,
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right? Just if you hold a view that is unfashionable or old fashioned or, or not liberal,
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or not within their, their very narrow, I think that's called the Overton window of acceptable views.
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And that's what you see the CBC generally present like, and, and that window is getting narrower and
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narrower and narrower. So people who hold views that even five, six, 10 years ago were perfectly mainstream
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are now out of the mainstream, right? And that applies social pressure and eventually
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legislative and regulatory pressure on your behavior.
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Yeah. So this is starting to sound a lot like the kind of society that the Soviet Union
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established for its own citizens back in, well, I guess they got 1917, but they got control around by 1921.
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And that's what they started doing. And you see that with every authoritarian regime that we've seen
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in the last hundred years. And probably if you were a historian and you wanted to go further back, you
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would see it with the French revolution and those, and the English revolution, the, you know, the round
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heads that were not particularly tolerant of dissenting religious views. But this is what we're talking
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about is a, is a secular religion that this government holds to and is trying to force fit upon an entire
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Pretty much. I mean, I used to think it was just used for their political opponents, right? The,
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the old practice of demonizing your political opponents. So which, which both parties try to,
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have always historically tried to use, but it's spilled out of parliament and into the streets so that
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we are now pointing at each other or given the power to, you mentioned the opponents. I mean,
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as you know, I've, I worked for Harper for six years. Well, I don't recall us in that period of
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time, having these kinds of mind control programs. In fact, they would have been anathema to, to Mr.
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Harper, but you know, there, there, there wasn't even anything being quietly done by the sneaky operatives.
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What's the difference between the conservative way of thinking and the liberal way of thinking?
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Well, I think the difference, I mean, I'll use one case to sort of illustrate a point. There was a,
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the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. This was when I was at the CRTC, which is the sort of proxy for
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the CRTC content control, you know, like swear words and, and that sort of stuff that you're not supposed to
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say. And they banned the, uh, based on the complaint of one woman in Newfoundland, the, uh, dire straight
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song money for nothing, um, was banned because it uses a, an old fashioned reference to gay men. That,
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was the same word English, the English used to use to refer to a cigarette. Um, and this was, this caused
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this woman offense. So the playing of that song was banned. Um, so what happened in that case was,
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uh, with some encouragement, the CRTC suggested that the Broadcast Standards Council review its decision,
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that this was sort of an extreme, an extreme move to do that. Now, I think dire straights themselves
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re-recorded the song to use a different word or something like that. But, but that was,
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that to me illustrated the instincts of that government, which was like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
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whoa, whoa, whoa. Right. Like, you know, sure people shouldn't gratuitously offend each other. Like we,
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I think everybody agrees with that, that you shouldn't, but you are free to do it.
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Good. Um, the state will not intervene and, and, uh, and ban you or ban your music or, or that sort
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of stuff. And that's, like I said, it is entirely different. Whereas the liberals assume that state
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intervention is always useful. I think, I think that's my take on it anyway. There may be occasions
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when they don't, but they think that if they do it, it must be good. Um, and it doesn't really matter how
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extreme it is because, well, we wouldn't do anything extreme, would we? We're liberals.
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We don't do that, but they're, they do it more and more and more.
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So, I mean, it's easy for you and I with our backgrounds and our experience in the industry
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to sit here and damn the darkness, but for, from the perspective of the viewer, the person in the,
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in the, in the living room, the person on the street, how do you push back against this? I mean,
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do you, do you just make yourself a martyr and by martyring yourself illustrate the,
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you know, the, the darkness that is descended upon us, or is there a better way of doing it?
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Well, it's, it's, it's really challenging. I guess one of the things you can do is retire and just
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become a, and, and then, and then you're free to say whatever you want, but there's social.
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Well, no, I'm not, but I'm more free than I am within the sort of social con.
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You don't have an employer to cut you off in the past, but if, if I were to just pull you out a
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little more, Peter, and you say what you really think, we could probably get a humanized
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I'm just saying it. But the, but, but, but, you know, there's, there's corporate pressure because
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a lot of companies have this sort of stuff and people will turn somebody in.
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Right. People will, will say, I mean, you, you, you, people get pushed out, the HR departments
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have also moved into the realm of values and, and feelings, not actions.
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Yeah. You want the foreman's job. You know how to get it.
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Yes. Yes. And then there's social pressures. Like you go to parties and barbecues and that
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sort of stuff. And you look around and, and you say something and then you don't get invited to
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any more parties. And this, this sort of casual social pressure is, I mean, I'm pretty convinced
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that most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about some of these big questions and,
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and big policies, particularly socially. They just kind of look around and see what the popular
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Because they want to, because we're human beings and we want to be accepted socially and,
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and have status within, uh, at least our peer groups. Now there's other types of peer groups,
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like the Western standard peer group, where you could say something like, I don't know,
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I don't think all regulation is bad and I might not get invited to a party. Right. If depending
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how many libertarians are around me. Right. No, but you might get taken down to the Fox and have
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things explained to you. That's a, which is Art's more gentle way of dealing with, uh, dealing with
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social deviation. No, but I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a problem. All right. For, for people
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who, uh, and I mean, I thought you were going to say something like we, you develop communities that are
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safe. You know, you find the people who agree with you and you know, you, you just look after each
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other. Well, you said that much better than I do. Starting with social deviation. Yeah. Um, look,
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we're almost out of time here, Peter. I hate to say it, but, uh, there's one thing that, that, uh, you,
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you wrote just a couple of days ago that really intrigued me. And you, you've been, uh, a frequent
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critic of the federal program that permits, uh, that, that gives money to newspapers to keep them
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from going bust. Yeah. And we've shared that. We don't take that. Yeah. That's something to hear
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the Western standard, um, uh, to our cost, I might add. However, you then came out and said, never mind
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all that. There's going to be AI that takes down the newspapers. It could be, uh, how does that work?
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Well, AI scrapes information from the internet, right? So it, it needs dependable information.
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So on the one hand, it could actually rescue newspapers, but if you can get an appropriate
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commercial agreement between say, you know, if AI wants to use Western standards content,
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that's, that's to my, in my mind, that doesn't count as fair use under the copyright act because
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you're using it to build a, a global commercial, commercial platform. So Western standard would have
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to be compensated in, in, in that example. That's if they do that, right. Or if they are encouraged to
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it, or if they are legislated to do it, which is sort of one thing, that's what the online harms act
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missed. It went with links when, when people could see AI coming on the other hand, um, if you are a
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newspaper reporter or a reporter of any kind, a platform reporter, news reporter, and all you do
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is rewrite press releases and maybe throw in a quote, you're cooked because AI can do that. You
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can just, and, and for smaller publishers that can actually be quite useful, right? You can just feed
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the news releases into your system and you'll get a quick rewrite of it. You don't have to hire that
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reports, have your reporter spending time doing that. You can actually then take your journalism
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resources and apply them to getting what we used to call enterprise news, which is news you find
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through your own digging and that sort of stuff, which is exclusive to you. So it, it could be a
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savior, but it could just kill the whole thing. Um, by, because the big impact it's had so far as
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people don't go to links anymore, the way they used to, right? Already there's like a 20% decline
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and people going to links and platforms need people to go to links to see the advertising,
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to, to buy subscriptions. That's their source of revenue is, is, is through links. And if that
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continues to decline, then media will be in real trouble unless their salvation could also be
00:25:03.220
people subscribing. So I would encourage people watching this to subscribe to Westerns.
00:25:10.740
It's less than going to the movies for a month of, uh, absolutely of, uh, of hot news and you might
00:25:16.100
save democracy while you're doing it. Well, let's do it then. Yeah. Get your subscriptions while they're
00:25:22.340
hot. Uh, Peter, it's great to see you again. It was a great pleasure tonight. We need, we need to do more
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of this, but, uh, thanks to Peter Menzies, former Calgary Herald publisher, former CRTC commissioner,
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and friend of the Western standard. And, uh, just take a look in the background and you see report,
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real reporters, not artificial intelligence, real reporters doing news for the Western standard.
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Ladies and gentlemen, good night for the Western standard. I'm Nigel Hannaford.