EDITORIAL: Federal Liberals in love with censorship
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The fact that a motion cruised through last week’s federal Liberal convention that, if ever enacted, would amount to state control of all media, speaks volumes about the mindset of the federal Liberals these days.
What other motive could there be for approving a motion without any serious debate calling for the Trudeau government to “explore options to hold on-line information services accountable for the veracity of material published on their platforms and to limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced”?
What political parties that propose this kind of censorship are really after is media coverage they agree with, with everything else censored as misinformation and disinformation.
As Sun Media’s Brian Lilley pointed out, while this idea came from the federal Liberals, all governments of all political stripes are among the greatest purveyors of misinformation and disinformation today.
The motion passed by the Liberal convention isn’t binding on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who said on Tuesday his government would never implement such a policy.
But his recently passed Bill C-11, where politicians and bureaucrats will decide what they think you want to watch on social media, reflects the same kind of thinking.
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As Peter Menzies, former vice-chair of the CRTC warned, C-11 will “open the door to state-controlled media” and when “internet regulation falls into political hands, Canadians will regret it for the rest of their lives.”
(The CRTC is currently considering whether Fox News should be banned from cable news packages in Canada following a complaint about Tucker Carlson, who no longer works there, promoting hatred.)
It’s the same mentality that led a Trudeau government bureaucrat writing to Twitter and Facebook asking them to “remove/unpublish” a Sept, 26, 2021 column by Sun Media’s Lorne Gunter — “Liberals to make immigration to Canada much easier”.
It was based on a confidential government document outlining government plans to massively expand the reasons refugee applicants could be admitted to Canada.
Twitter and Facebook refused the request but as University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, Canada research chair in internet and e-commerce law, noted on his website: “It is difficult to separate the government’s willingness to censor social media posts with its broader internet regulation agenda,” including C-11.
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