Western Standard - July 10, 2026


Ottawa’s six stealth attacks on your freedom of speech

Topics
digital safety commission Canada
Hosted by
Nigel Hannaford
Mentioned
Bill C-63 Michael Geist Jimmy Smith Mark Antony Rogers Cicero Seneca Stalin Hitler Nero
From pipelines to submarines： Is Carney alienating his base？ Israeli ambassador on Israel’s declining support from the West

Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

132.98

Word count

2,030

Sentence count

101

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The government of Canada has been passing new laws to do away with your freedom to say what you believe out loud. In fact, there are in fact 6 new laws, and every one of them promises something good. Then everyone contains something you should never see in a democracy.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Nigel Hannaford for the Western Standard.
00:00:20.200 Hope you're having a good stampede. Ladies and gentlemen, you may not have noticed it,
00:00:25.240 But the government of Canada has been passing new laws to do away with your freedom to say
00:00:30.760 what you believe out loud. You need to hear this, and today you will. There are in fact
00:00:36.760 six new laws, and every one of these bills promises something good. Then everyone contains
00:00:43.660 something you should never see in a democracy. But of course they won't tell you that because
00:00:48.520 they don't want you to know what they're up to. These people are clever, they appear as angels
00:00:52.900 of light but they are also duplicitous bastards so let's take a look at what the government of 0.98
00:00:58.180 canada has been doing to you first three years ago the trudeau liberals passed the online streaming 0.97
00:01:06.180 act much discussed at the time as bill c11 it was sold as modernizing broadcasting rules for
00:01:13.060 the streaming era with u.s companies like netflix scooping up the canadian pay-to-view market it was
00:01:19.620 bound to happen apart from plain greed the streamers were contributing nothing to the
00:01:25.300 production of canadian content granted not many people give canadian content that much attention
00:01:31.380 but that's not the point it's about the money it's about control it's about nudging public
00:01:36.340 opinion in the direction the government wants to go so they did this as well slipped into the
00:01:42.580 legislation was authority for the crtc to also impose now this this is this is their language
00:01:51.620 to impose discoverability requirements on platforms now what is discoverability in plain
00:01:59.620 english it's what comes up first when you do a google search and for governments it means a way
00:02:07.220 to promote approved content and make it harder for you to find what you want to see if they don't
00:02:14.820 want you to see it not a bad way of pushing public opinion when so many people go with the first
00:02:22.100 thing a search engine throws up under bill c11 that's how the crt's job came to be to push the
00:02:32.100 buttons so that if you search for syrup you get government approved maple syrup meanwhile c11's
00:02:39.860 companion piece the online news act bill c18 was presented as ensuring fair compensation for
00:02:46.180 canadian journalism who could argue with that not me on a canadian journalist however its immediate
00:02:51.940 consequence was that matter began blocking news links in canada reducing incidental public access
00:02:59.460 to news reporting while increasing media dependence on mechanisms ruled by the government by through
00:03:06.740 the crtc cabinet regulations and political priorities that wasn't a free speech win was it
00:03:14.180 think about that for a moment when covet was a thing do you think you are really getting the
00:03:19.220 whole truth you were certainly getting what the government wanted you to think they even had
00:03:24.820 people in the privy council office telling everybody that vaccines were safe and effective
00:03:30.340 true story it's officially called the impact and innovation unit it's referred to as the nudge
00:03:36.020 unit because as behavioral scientists it's their job to nudge public opinion so the government
00:03:42.500 really cares what you think the nudge unit two bills two hits on freedom of information
00:03:48.100 other bills follow a similar logic but in the name of national security provisions originally
00:03:53.780 embedded in border security bill c22 the lawful access act lower thresholds for government access
00:04:02.180 to subscriber data and require electronic service providers to build technical capabilities to make
00:04:09.860 it easier for government to have access to your communications in plain english again this is what
00:04:18.420 they have done they have made it with those two bills they have made it easy for themselves to
00:04:25.140 read your email if they want to now of course if you're afraid of terrorists or drug lords you might
00:04:32.260 want the government to have all these powers and more however just know that it comes at the cost
00:04:38.180 of your rights to privacy and free speech with the passage in june of bill c22 and its companion bill
00:04:46.420 C8. An Act Respecting Cybersecurity. Your internet service provider must now do two things. A. They
00:04:56.160 have to keep your emails and web searches for six months. And B. They have to tell the government
00:05:02.680 you're their customer if the government asks. And C. They must let the government have a look at
00:05:09.080 your files. So, does Jimmy Smith have an account with you? Why, yes. Well, here's our warrant. We
00:05:15.200 want to know what he looks at when he goes online and what he says to his cousin. Let me say that
00:05:21.280 slowly. If they want to read your email, they now can. Now, some service providers, to their credit,
00:05:30.560 have ideological issues with that and have threatened to stop providing service to Canada
00:05:35.660 if the bill's passed. Well, now the bills are passed, so we'll see what the providers do.
00:05:42.440 Meanwhile, if the government really doesn't like you and deems you a threat to national security or critical infrastructure,
00:05:49.420 maybe your friends drive trucks, Section 15.2 of Bill C-8 lets them do this.
00:05:57.800 This is over the top.
00:06:00.880 Under that section, they can order your telecommunications service provider,
00:06:06.820 people like Rogers, Bell, TELUS, etc. to suspend service to you, or as we say in the office,
00:06:15.220 kick you off the internet. They don't have to even tell you that they're doing it.
00:06:20.760 It just happens. Now, they may not do so, for now. They're still getting all the pieces in places.
00:06:27.640 But if they want to, they can. It's quite clever, really. First, each measure is justified by a
00:06:34.600 legitimate concern, fentanyl trafficking, critical infrastructure protection. Yet each of these
00:06:41.280 bills also expands the infrastructure through which the state can monitor or shape digital
00:06:48.680 flows and permit internet access. Second, the government does not typically act on this
00:06:56.380 legislation as soon as it is passed. It's just there on the shelf until such time as they want
00:07:03.540 to send a message.
00:07:05.500 Let's see, that's four new laws.
00:07:07.800 Now we come to the last two.
00:07:09.660 Bill C-34, not passed yet.
00:07:12.220 The Digital Safety Act, it's the worst of the lot.
00:07:14.700 A masterpiece of bait and switch.
00:07:17.300 Introduced last month, the government of Canada
00:07:20.060 says it is to prevent children under 16
00:07:22.640 from accessing harmful content on the internet.
00:07:26.640 Well, how can anybody be against that?
00:07:28.820 Not many people, certainly not me.
00:07:31.540 But at what cost?
00:07:33.540 As lawyer Michael Geist says, and we turn to Michael Geist a lot for a clear steer on legislation of this kind, Mr. Geist says Bill C-34's most consequential element may be the creation and powers of the government agency the bill establishes to oversee the entire system.
00:07:58.180 It's going to be called the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, and it will be a super
00:08:04.060 regulator of the internet with greater influence over the daily lives of Canadians
00:08:09.220 than perhaps any other regulator in the country. End of quote.
00:08:16.140 Well, that would be your daily life we're talking about here. Yet there are no details
00:08:22.340 whatsoever about the Digital Safety Commission in the legislation. Everything is to be determined
00:08:28.680 by the government after the bill is passed. It won't be debated, therefore, by your members of
00:08:34.980 Parliament. In other words, the government is asking for a blank check to determine how
00:08:40.740 this astonishingly powerful agency will operate. Indeed, it falls to the Digital Safety Commission
00:08:49.400 to set the very rules by which all of us will prove we are over 16 to log onto social media
00:08:57.380 services. Now, this is going on in other parts of the world. And what they're finding in Australia,
00:09:03.740 for example, resourceful Australian teens have already shown that anything less than facial
00:09:09.920 technology recognition or submitting personal information, you know, bank card, that sort of
00:09:15.660 think is unlikely to work. So you can see where this takes you. The government also gets to
00:09:22.780 define hate speech. This is the other landmine in C-34. Now, you may think you know what hate speech
00:09:30.760 is. Virulent anti-Jewish propaganda, perhaps, or somebody advocating violence against a
00:09:37.740 marginalized minority. And you'd be right. That is hate speech. But Bill C-34 gives them the power 1.00
00:09:44.780 to administratively declare anything they don't like to be hate speech, to favor a constituency
00:09:50.460 perhaps, or just a ministerial whim. There are people in government now who would like to make
00:09:58.920 it illegal to question the narrative that priests and nuns murdered Indigenous children at residential
00:10:06.700 schools. Would that be hate? So far, no proof of that narrative has been established and no bodies
00:10:16.660 have been found. But should the Digital Safety Commissioner declare it to be hateful, the topic
00:10:23.580 is moved off the internet, beyond discussion, and whatever the truth of it, there becomes something
00:10:29.660 you just don't talk about. Same for anything. Bill C-34 may be marketed as keeping kids away
00:10:36.620 from internet porn. However, it gives a government that can look at your emails and fiddle with your
00:10:43.500 internet searches, and has a department in the Privy Council office explicitly dedicated to
00:10:49.480 moving public opinion, can even throw you off the internet, that government is going to get
00:10:55.740 the discretion to put a lot of things beyond discussion. And to that point, let's not forget
00:11:02.600 forget bill c9 that just passed which makes it dangerous for pastors to preach the bible
00:11:10.360 there you go six bills six squeezes on your free speech rights many canadians want to trust the
00:11:17.720 government that's good but we want a government that we can trust the concern lies in the recurring
00:11:24.600 design choices embedded in expensive regulatory powers inside bills whose primary beneficial
00:11:31.240 purpose masks their secondary damaging effects on freedom. Or perhaps it was always intended to be
00:11:39.160 the primary effect. Who knows? Definitions and operational rules are frequently left for later
00:11:45.100 executive action. The onus is shifted onto private actors, the companies providing internet access,
00:11:52.280 who have every incentive to anticipate and accommodate government preferences rather
00:11:58.200 than test the boundaries of expression. The cumulative results is not a dramatic overnight
00:12:06.000 seizure of the public square. It is a steady narrowing of the space in which dissenting,
00:12:13.060 inconvenient, or simply unfashionable information and opinion can circulate freely.
00:12:20.380 Canadians still possess formal charter protections for freedom of expression.
00:12:26.360 What is being constructed, bill by bill, is a practical environment in which exercising those protections carries increasing friction and risk, not primarily from the state directly, but from the platforms that have been made responsible for policing the categories the state has defined.
00:12:49.400 You know, perhaps we should count our blessings somewhat.
00:12:54.040 Now this is not new for most of history.
00:12:58.340 Most of humanity has not enjoyed the luxury of guaranteed constitutional free expression.
00:13:05.100 Kings and emperors have seldom tolerated dissent.
00:13:08.580 In the Bible, they routinely killed the prophets.
00:13:10.880 The Roman orator Cicero paid with his head for his relentless criticism of Mark Antony.
00:13:16.760 So did Nero's tutor Seneca.
00:13:18.760 No surprise there.
00:13:19.580 And so down the ages into our own times.
00:13:22.960 smart people didn't point out the errors of communism to Stalin either nor of national
00:13:28.180 socialism to Hitler democracies were no better it was the democratic state of Athens that couldn't
00:13:35.100 stand the criticisms of Socrates so they made him commit suicide but in Canada we have not lived
00:13:40.560 this way we have been co-inheritors of the Anglo-American free speech tradition and we
00:13:46.060 have built a country where even poor men can have the same right to their opinions as the rich and
00:13:51.960 the powerful. We are then something of an island in history and geography, and we like to keep it
00:13:57.900 that way. To torture that island metaphor a little, the waters are rising around us. Obviously,
00:14:03.400 Canada is nothing like ancient Rome or present-day Iran or North Korea, but it is still getting
00:14:09.540 harder than ever to pretend that our liberal government doesn't have a plan to manage our
00:14:15.920 opinions for its own benefit. I could be wrong, of course, but there is the evidence from six
00:14:22.400 acts of Parliament over the last three years. You be the judge.
00:14:29.160 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.
00:14:45.920 Thank you.