HANNAFORD： Ottawa’s six stealth attacks on your freedom of speech
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Toxicity
2
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Hate speech
1
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Summary
The government of Canada has passed six new laws, and every one of them promises something good. But of course they won t tell you that, because they don t want you to know what they are up to. These people are clever, they appear as angels of light, but they are also duplicitous bastards.
Transcript
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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Nigel Hannaford for the Western Standard.
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Hope you're having a good stampede. Ladies and gentlemen, you may not have noticed it,
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but the government of Canada has planned passing new laws to do away with your freedom to say what
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you believe out loud. You need to hear this, and today you will. There are in fact six new laws,
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and every one of these bills promises something good, then everyone contains something you should
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never see in a democracy. But of course they won't tell you that, because they don't want you to know
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what they're up to. These people are clever, they appear as angels of light, but they are also
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duplicitous bastards so let's take a look at what the government of been canada has been doing to
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you first three years ago the trudeau liberals passed the online streaming act much discussed
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at the time as bill c11 it was sold as modernizing broadcasting rules for the streaming era with u.s
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companies like netflix scooping up the canadian pay-to-view market it was bound to happen
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Apart from plain greed, the streamers were contributing nothing to the production of
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Canadian content. Granted, not many people give Canadian content that much attention.
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But that's not the point. It's about the money. It's about control. It's about nudging public
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opinion in the direction the government wants it to go. So they did this as well. Slipped into the
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legislation was authority for the CRTC to also impose discoverability requirements on platforms.
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Now, what is discoverability? In plain English, it's what comes up first when you do a Google
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search. And for governments, it means a way to promote approved content and make it harder for
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you to find what you want to see if they don't want you to see it not a bad way of pushing public
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opinion when so many people go with the first thing a search engine throws up under bill c11
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that's how the crt's job came to be to push the button so that if you search for syrup you get
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government approved maple syrup meanwhile c11's companion piece the online news act bill c18
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was presented as ensuring fair compensation for canadian journalism who could argue with that
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not me on a canadian journalist however its immediate consequence was that murder began
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blocking news links in canada reducing incidental public access to news reporting while increasing
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media dependence on mechanisms ruled by the government by through the crtc cabinet regulations
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and political priorities that wasn't a free speech win was it think about that for a moment when
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covid was a thing do you think you are really getting the whole truth you were certainly
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getting what the government wanted you to think they even had people in the privy council office
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telling everybody that vaccines were safe and effective.
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It's officially called the Impact and Innovation Unit.
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It's referred to as the Nudge Unit because, as behavioral scientists,
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So, the government really cares what you think.
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The Nudge Unit, two bills, two hits on freedom of information.
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Other bills follow a similar logic, but in the name of national security,
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provisions originally embedded in border security,
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bill c22 the lawful access act lower thresholds for government access to subscriber data and
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require electronic service providers to build technical capabilities to make it easier for
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government to have access to your communications in plain english again this is what they have done
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they have made it with those two bills they have made it easy for themselves to read your email
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if they want to now of course if you're afraid of terrorists or drug lords you might want the
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government to have all these powers and more however just know that it comes at the cost of
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your rights to privacy and free speech with the passage in june of bill c22 and its companion bill
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c8 an act respecting cyber security your internet service provider must now do two things a they
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have to keep your emails and web searches for six months and b they have to tell the government
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you're their customer if the government asks and c they must let the government have a look at your
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files so does jimmy smith have an account with you why yes well here's our warrant we want to
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know what he looks at when he goes online and what he says to his cousin let me say that slowly
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if they want to read your email they now can now some service providers to their credit have
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ideological issues with that and have threatened to stop providing service to canada if the bills
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passed well now the bills are passed so we'll see what the providers do meanwhile if the government
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really doesn't like you and deems you a threat to national security or critical infrastructure
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maybe your friends drive trucks section 15-2 of bill c8 lets them do this this is over the top
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under that section they can order your telecommunications service provider people
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like rogers bell tell us etc to suspend service to you or as we say in the office kick you off
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the internet they don't have to even tell you that they're doing it it just happens now they may not
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do so for now they're still getting all the pieces in places but if they want to they can it's quite
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clever really first each measure is justified by a legitimate concern fentanyl trafficking
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critical infrastructure protection yet each of these bills also expands the infrastructure
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through which the state can monitor or shape digital flows and permit internet access second
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the government does not typically act on this legislation as soon as it is passed
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it's just there on the shelf until such time as they want to send a message let's see that's four
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new laws now we come to the last two bill c34 not passed yet the digital safety act it's the worst
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of the lot a masterpiece of bait and switch introduced last month the government of canada
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says it is to prevent children under 16 from accessing harmful content on the internet well
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how can anybody be against that? Not many people, certainly not me. But at what cost?
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As lawyer Michael Geist says, and we turn to Michael Geist a lot for a clear steer on
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legislation of this kind, Mr. Geist says Bill C-34's most consequential element may be the
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creation and powers of the government agency the bill establishes to oversee the entire system is
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going to be called the digital safety commission of canada and it will be a super regulator of
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the internet with greater influence over the daily lives of canadians than perhaps any other
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regulator in the country end of quote well that would be your daily life we're talking about here
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Yet there are no details whatsoever about the Digital Safety Commission in the legislation.
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Everything is to be determined by the government after the bill is passed. It won't be debated,
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therefore, by your Members of Parliament. In other words, the government is asking for a blank check
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to determine how this astonishingly powerful agency will operate. Indeed, it falls to the
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Digital Safety Commission to set the very rules by which all of us will prove we are over 16
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to log on to social media services. Now, this is going on in other parts of the world. And what
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they're finding in Australia, for example, resourceful Australian teens have already shown
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that anything less than facial technology recognition or submitting personal information,
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you know bank card that sort of thing is unlikely to work so you can see where this takes you
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the government also gets to define hate speech this is the other line mine in c34
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now you may think you know what hate speech is virulent anti-jewish propaganda perhaps or
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somebody advocating violence against a marginalized minority and you'd be right that is hate speech
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speech but bill c34 gives them the power to administratively declare anything they don't
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like to be hate speech to favor a constituency perhaps or just a ministerial whim there are
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people in government now who would like to make it illegal to question the narrative
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that priests and nuns murdered indigenous children at residential schools
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Would that be hate? So far, no proof of that narrative has been established and no bodies
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have been found. But should the Digital Safety Commissioner declare it to be hateful, the topic
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is moved off the internet, beyond discussion, and whatever the truth of it, there becomes something
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you just don't talk about. Same for anything. Bill C-34 may be marketed as keeping kids away
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from internet porn. However, it gives a government that can look at your emails and fiddle with your
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internet searches and has a department in the Privy Council office explicitly dedicated to
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moving public opinion can even throw you off the internet. That government is going to get
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the discretion to put a lot of things beyond discussion. And to that point, let's not forget
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forget bill c9 that just passed which makes it dangerous for pastors to preach the bible
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there you go six bills six squeezes on your free speech rights many canadians want to trust the
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government that's good but we want a government that we can trust the concern lies in the recurring
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design choices embedded in expensive regulatory powers inside bills whose primary beneficial
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purpose masks their secondary damaging effects on freedom or perhaps it was always intended to be
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the primary effect who knows definitions and operational rules are frequently left for later
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executive action the onus is shifted onto private actors the companies providing internet access
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who have every incentive to anticipate and accommodate government preferences
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rather than test the boundaries of expression. The cumulative results is not a dramatic overnight
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seizure of the public square. It is a steady narrowing of the space in which dissenting
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inconvenient or simply unfashionable information and opinion can circulate freely. Canadians still
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possess formal charter protections for freedom of expression what is being constructed bill by bill
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is a practical environment in which exercising those protections carries increasing friction
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and risk not primarily from the state directly but from the platforms that have been made
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responsible for policing the categories the state has defined you know perhaps we should
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count our blessings somewhat this is not new for most of history most of humanity
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has not enjoyed the luxury of guaranteed constitutional free expression kings and
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emperors have seldom tolerated dissent in the bible they routinely killed the prophets the
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Roman orator Cicero paid with his head for his relentless criticism of Mark Antony.
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So did Nero's tutor Seneca, no surprise there, and so down the ages into our own times. Smart
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people didn't point out the errors of communism to Stalin either, nor of national socialism to
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Hitler. Democracies were no better. It was the democratic state of Athens that couldn't stand
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the criticisms of Socrates, so they made him commit suicide. But in Canada, we have not lived
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this way. We have been co-inheritors of the Anglo-American free speech tradition, and we
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have built a country where even poor men can have the same right to their opinions as the rich and
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the powerful. We are then something of an island in history and geography, and we like to keep it
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that way. To torture that island metaphor a little, the waters are rising around us. Obviously,
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Canada is nothing like ancient Rome or present-day Iran or North Korea, but it is still getting
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harder than ever to pretend that our Liberal government doesn't have a plan to manage our
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opinions for its own benefit. I could be wrong, of course, but there is the evidence from six
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Acts of Parliament over the last three years. You be the judge.