Your middle-of the-week place under the sun ...
By this time next month, no form of outside media will be allowed in Canada:
The Trudeau Liberals' heavily-criticized internet censorship legislation, Bill C-11, has passed in the House and will move on to the Senate following a vote on Tuesday.
The bill passed by the count of 208 Yeas to 117 Nays, with all parties but the Conservatives voting in favour of it.
More:
First, regulation of user content. When Heritage Minister Rodriguez introduced Bill C-11, he stated “we listened to concerns around social media and we fixed it.” With respect, many of the concerns remain intact. While the Section 4.1 exception for user content was reinstated, the addition of Section 4.1(2) and 4.2 – which together provide for the prospect of CRTC regulations on user content – were added. The bottom line is that user content is treated as a “program” and the CRTC is empowered to create regulations applicable to programs that are uploaded to social media services.
The mantra we often hear that “platforms are in and users are out” is misleading. It is true users are not regulated like broadcasters, but their content is subject to CRTC regulatory power. This is not – as some government MPs have taken to dangerously say – “misinformation.” More than 1/3 of the witnesses who appeared before the House committee raised this as a concern, representing the overwhelming majority of comments on this issue. That included digital first creators, experts, industry associations, and Internet platforms. Further, CRTC chair Ian Scott confirmed that “[Section] 4.2 allows the CRTC to prescribe by regulation user uploaded content subject to very explicit criteria.”
You may ask why any of this matters. Some may tell you that the CRTC doesn’t regulate user content and isn’t interested in doing so. Yet the CRTC also says that it makes decisions based not on its interests, but rather on a public record. There are groups that want this content regulated – it wouldn’t be in the bill if there weren’t – and leaving the door open to regulation is a real risk, not a hypothetical one.
I want to be clear that the risk isn’t that the government will restrict the ability for Canadians to speak, but rather that the bill could impact their ability to be heard. The bill permits the creation of regulations on the “presentation of programs to the public” and since it treats all audio-visual content anywhere in the world as a program, the potential regulatory scope is vast. Those regulations identify but are not limited to discoverability, which has rightly attracted attention since applying it to user content it is both unworkable as we do not have a mechanism to determine what qualifies and potentially harmful to Canadian creators who may find their works harder to find globally.
The solution is obvious. No other country in the world seeks to regulate user content in this way and it should be removed from the bill because it does not belong in the Broadcasting Act. In the alternative, remove all regulatory powers associated with user content, but leave in the potential for contributions by the user content platforms.
Second, a few comments on the over-breadth and uncertainty with this bill, which as currently structured covers any audio-visual content anywhere in the world. As a Canadian Heritage department memo on the issue noted with then Bill C-10, that includes video games, news sites, niche streaming services, and workout videos. The government says some will be excluded in a policy direction, but won’t release the direction until after royal assent. Further, last week, government MPs voted down multiple amendments that would have established thresholds, including one as low as $25 million in annual revenue in Canada.
Ergo, censorship.
And:
The latest federal attempt to regulate the internet must be revised to protect free expression, a former CRTC chair yesterday told the Senate communications committee. Cabinet since 2019 has introduced bill after bill to regulate web content. None have passed to date: “It is Canadian consumers who choose what we want to watch.”
Not anymore.
Also in "Canada is a totalitarian state" news:
It’s worth noting that the mandate is not set in stone, but the government is preparing for the possibility of introducing the measures in the Fall. Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos made the announcement during a press conference. The vaccine passport mandate for federal employees and other travelers might be over for now, but Duclos made it clear that it’s likely to return this fall.
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Many Canadians are aware of the Liberal government’s current push to censor the internet. To accomplish the goal, freedom of speech assassin Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has not one, but three bills tabled to censor the Canadian internet. Bill C-11 transfers power over the web to the CTRC, aligning control with mediums of television and radio. To pass all three is to constitute the creation of a Great Canadian Firewall.
“The Great Firewall of China 防火长城; is the combination of legislative actions and technologies enforced by the People’s Republic of China to regulate the internet domestically. Its role in internet censorship in China is to block access to selected foreign websites and to slow down cross-border internet traffic.”
Continuing in the technological realm, let us briefly consider a topical item– the freezing of citizen bank accounts during Canada’s equivalent of China’s Tiananmen Square riots, the Ottawa Truckers Convoy.
May 18th, 2022-– “Banks in China’s central Henan province have frozen $178 million in deposits, leaving firms unable to pay workers and individuals locked out of savings. The banks have not issued any communication on the matter since,” depositors told Reuters.
The process is rooted in a government policy referred to as “Social Credit.” The program judges individual citizens based on a person’s social credit score. Behave according to government ideology, and receive points. Participate in an equivalent to the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, and awaken the next morning to no access to your money.
Vaguely related - that's nice but you do know that the blackface-wearing moron loves China, right?:
Any future Conservative cabinet should formally recognize Taiwan, MP Scott Aitchison (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) said yesterday. The proposal by the candidate for the Party’s September 10 leadership vote follows a Commons health committee proposal endorsing Taiwan’s bid for membership in the World Health Organization: “Taiwan is an independent and sovereign country.”
I'll just leave this here:
When China donated medical supplies to help Canada in battling the coronavirus pandemic, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne turned to Twitter to thank the country directly.
But after the small island nation of Taiwan did the same, Champagne did not post about the donation on his Twitter account and when pressed to thank the nation directly on Thursday, would not say its name.
It was never about a virus and we damn well know it:
Superb investigative journalism as ever from @sonia_elijah.
— Dr Clare Craig (not one of her impersonators) (@ClareCraigPath) June 21, 2022
Half the mRNA was truncated such that no-one knows what proteins are being coded for.
Regulators expressed concerns and passed it anyway.
EMA changed goal posts to say injecting 50% unknown impurities is just fine. https://t.co/7JUflWHdmv
**
Now Justin might have to care:
Marie Soulier has spent four straight days standing in line outside the passport office at Montreal's Guy-Favreau complex, waiting to collect her passport. She arrives at 5:30 each morning and leaves when the office closes. She is still waiting, and her flight leaves for France tonight.
She is just one of hundreds of travellers clamouring for their passports.
This morning, frustrated, Soulier and some others in the same boat started handing out pieces of paper for people to put their names on, in the vain hope of organizing lines that appeared to go nowhere — some snaking through the vast lobby and even out of the building. Police were finally called in to take over crowd control.
Travellers, experts and now Canada’s transport minister are casting an increasingly wary eye on airlines’ role in the travel turbulence playing out at airports across the country, with many calling for carriers to take more ownership of the issue.
The federal government has been scrambling to respond to scenes of endless lines, flight delays and daily turmoil at airports — particularly Toronto’s Pearson airport — a problem the aviation industry has blamed on a shortage of federal security and customs officers.
“Airlines have a duty as well. We’re hearing some stories about luggage issues and flights cancelling. So cancellation — we want to make sure that the airlines as well do their part,” Transport Minister Omar Alghabra told reporters Tuesday in Ottawa.
Who kept those restrictions in place, moron?
The Gestapo is always well-protected:
Ontario’s police watchdog has cleared two Vancouver police officers who fired non-lethal rounds at two protesters in Ottawa during the 'Freedom Convoy’ protests.
The officers were part of the police operation that helped clear the downtown core of the occupation, which lasted for weeks and led the federal government to invoke the Emergencies Act.
“On my assessment of the evidence, there are no reasonable grounds to believe that either officer committed a criminal offence in connection with the use of their weapons,” Special Investigations Unit director Joseph Martino said in his ruling.
Also:
Unlike the official Freedom Convoy press strategy, which eschewed mainstream media, the Taking Back Our Freedoms press conference was open to anyone, including the reporters who had been publishing stories about the convoy’s supposed association with white supremacy, racism, and so on. Lich didn’t want to do it, but felt trapped because it had already been announced. She had only a few interviews under her belt, and no experience dealing with hostile media. To assuage her concerns, Taking Back Our Freedoms offered her some last-minute media training and arranged to have other people participating in the press conference to back her up. Even so, she felt it was minimal for what was expected of her at the press conference, which she thought was inadvertently setting her up to fail.
Taking Back Our Freedoms executive director Roy Beyer said he and his team, which included media consultants, had, in fact, discussed the press conference with the Freedom Corp board, including Lich. He said she never expressed any concerns about not being ready and that it wasn’t until after the press conference he learned she felt like she had been, in her words, “thrown to the wolves.”
Fortunately for Lich, Keith Wilson had just arrived. The Edmonton lawyer was a godsend so far as she was concerned. “I don’t know what I would have done,” she said. “I didn’t even know what to expect.”
When Wilson learned of the press conference, alarm bells went off in his mind. He took charge of the conference and introduced Lich to deliver a prepared statement, which was crafted by Lich with a lawyer and a doctor. Unfortunately, Wilson said, it sounded like it was written by a doctor and a lawyer, and required a hasty rewrite moments before the organizers had to leave for the press conference. Lich nervously read the statement, in which she pointed out how many countries around the world had removed all restrictions and reiterated the convoy’s call for provincial and federal governments to end all mandates and restrictions.
“We will continue our protest until we see a clear plan for their elimination,” she said. “Let me assure the people of Ottawa that we have no intent to stay one day longer than is necessary. Our departure will be based on the prime minister doing what is right—ending all mandates and restrictions on our freedoms.”
After Lich’s remarks, Quebec road captain Joanie Pelchat read a translated version in French and security lead Danny Bulford, the former RCMP officer, spoke about the peaceful nature of the protest and the open lines of communication between protesters and police. Wilson opened the floor to questions about the GoFundMe campaign. The first question, based on the premise that Ottawa residents were “terrified,” was a demand to know when the convoy would leave Ottawa (even though Lich had just addressed that in her statement). After answering the second question, which was about the funding, Wilson ended the press conference and led the organizers out. Reporters hounded Lich all the way to the stairwell but Wilson had warned her and the others beforehand to keep walking no matter what.
**
A document released by the inquiry into the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia shows RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki wanted details of the firearms used in the killing shared with the public to raise support for federal gun control legislation. Conservative MPs say the revelation shows attempts of interference with an investigation into the shooting.
During a conference call on April 28, 2020, shortly after the rampage that took the life of 22 people, Lucki criticized senior managers who refused to reveal the details of the guns used in the killings, according to notes submitted by Nova Scotia RCMP Superintendent Darren Campbell.
“At the meeting, Commr. Lucki expressed disappointment in the press briefings carried out by the Nova Scotia RCMP. In particular, Commr. Lucki felt that the Nova Scotia RCMP had disobeyed her instructions to include specific information on the firearms used by the perpetrator,” the document says, citing Campbell’s handwritten notes.
Campbell said he relayed that revealing information about the firearms could compromise RCMP’s investigation into the case.
Who did you vote for, Canada?:
The annual inflation rate skyrocketed to its highest level in nearly 40 years in May, fueled by soaring gas prices, Statistics Canada said Wednesday.
The agency said its consumer price index in May rose 7.7 per cent compared with a year ago, its largest increase since January 1983 when it gained 8.2 per cent, and up from a 6.8 per cent increase in April this year.
The gain came as energy prices rose 34.8 per cent compared with a year ago with gasoline prices up 48.0 per cent compared with a year ago.
**
But think of all that child-care taxpayers have to pay for:
The vast majority of Canadian households, especially those with kids, are worried about feeding their families amid decades-high inflation, according to a new survey.
The annual rate of inflation soared to 7.7 per cent in May, a nearly 40-year high, according to Statistics Canada data released Wednesday.
Polling from Ipsos conducted exclusively for Global News earlier this month shows that 72 per cent of families with kids are worried about putting food on the table. That compares with 57 per cent of households without children.
And as the Bank of Canada moves to hike interest rates to cool rampant inflation, 80 per cent of households with kids are worried they won’t be able to adapt fast enough to cover expenses.
They can go hungry in all of those baby-minding centres you wanted.
**
"No relief!" says the man whose wife owns a stock in a gas company:
The federal government has no immediate plans to cut prices at the pump by offering Canadians a temporary reprieve from the federal gas tax, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Tuesday.**
The Crown corporation in charge of Canada’s milk supply will raise prices for a second time this year after farmers called for more money to make up for a spike in the cost of everything from fuel to livestock feed.
Also - it's just money:
Governor General Mary Simon faces MPs’ scrutiny over the high cost of catering for an official visit she paid to Dubai in March. The Commons government operations committee yesterday voted unanimously to review expenses MPs called reckless: “We all find it excessive.”
**
Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s department spent more than $3 million on a tree planting campaign without planting any trees, records show. Staff salaries were a leading expense: “The department did not spend any funding to plant trees directly.”
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The annual report on our inglorious Canada Infrastructure Bank has been released. General operating costs for the Bank for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, which employs 95 people, were over $48.4 million. To my knowledge, no projects have been completed.
— The Real Andy Lee Show (@RealAndyLeeShow) June 19, 2022
The Bank was formed in 2017. pic.twitter.com/PUUhvmyzQq
**
The federal government-owned Trans Mountain Pipeline system is no longer a "profitable undertaking," according to a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) on Wednesday.
Ottawa purchased Canada's only oil pipeline system from Alberta to the West Coast for $4.4 billion in 2018 from Kinder Morgan Canada. At the time, the company threatened to halt expansion due to environmental opposition. The construction project, now roughly half complete, would essentially twin the existing pipeline, raising output to 890,000 barrels per day.
Canada's budgetary watchdog determined the project will result in a $600 million net loss, in its report on Wednesday. The PBO also examined scenarios where the expansion is stopped after June 2022 and cancelled indefinitely. That would require Ottawa to write off over $14 billion in assets, the report said.
"The net impact would result in a significant financial loss for the Government, and would lead to the Trans Mountain Corporation no longer being a going concern," the PBO wrote.
Marco Muzzo is a disgusting human being whose hedonism and irresponsibility destroyed an entire family.
That said, the system of unelected, unaccountable judicial activists who go through the motions, hand out token sentences and expect the peasants to be grateful that the pretense of justice has been mimed gave that man a sentence so absurd that it would be a cruel joke anywhere else.
One of the most appalling criminal cases in recent Canadian history assumed a whole new horror on Monday with news that Edward Lake, bereaved father of three children killed along with their grandfather by drunk-driving billionaire scion Marco Muzzo in 2015, had taken his own life.
“The eyes (Edward) shared with Harry are forever closed,” Lake’s grieving wife Jenn Neville-Lake wrote on Twitter. “Daniel’s curls will never shine in the sunlight again. I will never see Milly’s shy smile creep across his lips anymore.”
Harrison (Harry) was five when Muzzo sailed through a stop sign in his Jeep Grand Cherokee and smashed into a minivan driven by Neville-Lake’s mother (who survived, along with her grandmother). Daniel was nine. Milagros (Milly) was two. Their grandfather, Gary Neville, was 65. ...
Canadians were later reunited in disgust at Muzzo being granted full parole last year, not even six years after his crimes — despite completely botching his first attempt at parole two years earlier. That panel took just 20 minutes to decide the risk Muzzo posed to the public was not “manageable.” “You sabotaged your progress you may have otherwise made by underestimating your problem with substance misuse, if not abuse,” the panel told him.
This proved only a minor obstacle. He can apply to get his driver’s licence back in 10 years, which was also pretty harsh by Canadian standards: The Crown had asked for a suspension as brief as eight years.
Reading the news on Monday evening, I thought immediately of the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent unanimous decision quashing mass-murderer Alexandre Bissonnette’s sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole for 40 years. Twenty-five years had been the maximum until 2011, when the Conservative government allowed judges to begin “stacking” parole-ineligibility periods for multiple murderers.
“The impugned provision, taken to its extreme, authorizes a court to order an offender to serve an ineligibility period that exceeds the life expectancy of any human being, a sentence so absurd that it would bring the administration of justice into disrepute,” wrote Chief Justice Richard Wagner.
“A punishment that can never be carried out” — i.e., that’s longer than a human being can live — “is contrary to the fundamental values of Canadian society,” he averred.
“Although a (lifelong unconditional) punishment could well be popular, it is contrary to the fundamental values of Canadian society,” he observed.
Furthermore: “The imposition of excessive sentences that fulfil no function does nothing more than bring the administration of justice into disrepute and undermine public confidence in the rationality and fairness of the criminal justice system.”
I know that this guy could uphold actual values.
That is because Joe Biden is a creepy, skeevy, senile , child-sniffing, old fool:
Canadians are growing more confident in the United States as a trusted and reliable international ally, but losing faith in the man who’s currently running the country, a new poll suggests.
In the Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday, only 61 per cent of Canadian respondents said they have confidence in President Joe Biden to do the right thing on the world stage _ a steep decline from the 77 per cent who said the same thing in 2021.
That number is still too high.
The man soils himself in public.
People committed electoral fraud for this guy.
Also - scum:
The law enforcement response to the Uvalde school shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers was “an abject failure” in which a commander put the lives of officers over those of the children, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Steven McCraw said on Tuesday.
“There is compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we’ve learned,” McCraw said.
Police actions after the gunman entered Robb Elementary School and began shooting have come under close scrutiny, with many parents and relatives expressing deep anger over the response.
The Texas DPS, days after the shooting, said that as many as 19 officers waited over an hour in a hallway outside classrooms 111 and 112 before a U.S. Border Patrol-led tactical team finally made entry. McCraw reiterated that in the hearing on Tuesday.
The classroom door in the elementary school was not locked even as police waited for a key, and there was no evidence any law enforcement officer ever tried the classroom door to see if it was locked, McCraw said at a Texas Senate hearing into the May 24 mass shooting.
A powerful earthquake struck a rural, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday, killing 1,000 people and injuring 1,500 more in one of the deadliest quakes in decades, the state-run news agency reported. Officials warned that the already grim toll may still rise.
Why can't SebastianVettel be more like this guy?:
An IndyCar driver is using his personal experience to raise funds and awareness for premature babies at a Toronto-area hospital.
Devlin DeFrancesco was born 15 weeks premature at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
The 22-year-old driver and the hospital announced today a new initiative called Racing for the Tiniest Babies.
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