(The Title of This Post Was Censored)

To be clear, Justin does not want dissent, facts, or to be pointed out what an incompetent buffoon he is.

That is the sole purpose of bills C-11 and 18.

Anything else is pretense:

Canada’s Liberals insist the point of Bill C-11 is simply to update the 1991 Broadcasting Act, which regulates broadcasting of telecommunications in the country. The goal of the bill, according to a Ministry of Canadian Heritage statement, is to bring “online broadcasters under similar rules and regulations as our traditional broadcasters.”

In other words, streaming services and social media, like traditional television and radio stations, would have to ensure that at least 35 percent of the content they publish is Canadian content—or, in Canadian government speak, “Cancon.”

The bill is inching toward a final vote in the Canadian Senate as soon as next month. It’s expected to pass. If it does, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said in an October blog post, the same creators the government says it wants to help will, in fact, be hurt.

Bill C-11, Mohan explained, would mean “that when viewers come to the YouTube homepage, they’re served content that a Canadian Government regulator has prioritized, rather than content they are interested in.”

That doesn’t bode well for creators, he said.

That’s because users often give a thumbs-down to content that the algorithm steers them toward and that they don’t want to watch—and that leads the Search and Discovery systems at YouTube to limit visibility of that content. “[G]lobally,” Mohan said in his post, “Canadian creators will have a harder time breaking through and connecting with the niche audiences who would actually love their content.” (According to Mohan, more than 90 percent of the “watch time” on content produced by Canadian YouTubers comes from outside Canada.)

**

The Bill C-11 debate continued for hours in the House of Commons yesterday with a dispiriting discussion featuring MPs from all sides ignoring or exaggerating the implications of the bill. The debate often seemed to gravitate to two polar opposites: either the bill is China or North Korea-style censorship or it has no implications for freedom of expression and the regulation of user content. Both are false. To the claims of censorship, Bill C-11 is not China, Russia or Nazi Germany. As I’ve stated many times, it does not limit the ability to speak, but could impact the ability to be heard. That raises important implications for freedom of expression but it does not turn Canada into China. To the claims that user content regulation is excluded from the bill, Section 4.‍1(2)‍(b) and 4.2.2 clearly scope such content into the bill, an interpretation that has been confirmed by dozens of experts and the former Chair of the CRTC. Liberal and NDP MP claims to the contrary should be regarded as disinformation, a deliberate attempt to spread false information. Indeed, the Senate proposed a fix. The government rejected it. That was supposed to be the focus of the debate, yet Liberal MPs such as Kevin Lamoureux falsely claimed that there is no there there.

**

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was ordered by the Commons Speaker to remove part of a video he put out on Twitter on Thursday accusing the Liberals of trying to close down debate on the online streaming bill.

After the Liberals tabled a “closure” motion to curb debate of the bill in the Commons, Mr. Poilievre hurriedly filmed a video, saying there was an “emergency here on Parliament Hill” as the Liberals were “shutting down debate” on Bill C-11.

The government introduced the motion so the bill could clear the Commons and be sent back to the Senate for its final stage before becoming law.

Liberal MPs said the bill had been closely scrutinized and considered in Parliament over many months, including a record number of hours in the Senate. They said members of Canada’s artistic community were eager to see it passed into law.

But in Question Period on Thursday, the Leader of the Opposition asked, “when will the Liberals realize that Orwell’s 1984 was not an instruction manual?”

“If the Prime Minister is not afraid of debate, why is he so determined to shut it down?” he asked.

**

Cabinet in a letter to MPs said it is “committed” to appointing an internet censor board called a Digital Safety Commission to police legal content, but set no deadline for legislation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier described uncensored speech as “destabilizing.”

**

The Privy Council yesterday in breach of federal law imposed an arbitrary 38-year seal on confidential files dating from the Mulroney era. No reason was given. “It’s easier to hide,” Information Commissioner Caroline Maynard earlier told MPs.

**

Multiple federal departments and agencies have interacted with social media companies to request online content be taken down, often to have impersonating accounts removed but also to purge posts they deemed offensive.

The Canadian government provided the information on March 27 in response to an Inquiry of Ministry submitted by Conservative MP Dean Allison.

Allison asked for an account from each governmental organization on requests to “take down, edit, ban, or change in any other way social media content, posts, or accounts, since January 1, 2020.”

The most serious case involved Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) employees sharing private taxpayer information in a Facebook Messenger chat group not approved for use by the agency. CRA requested the information be taken down but said it didn’t receive confirmation it had been.

Organizations in general didn’t provide the name of the accounts they were targeting, only giving generic information, but the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) did.

**

A number of Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) employees shared private taxpayer information last year in a Facebook Messenger chat group that was not approved for use by the agency, according to newly released federal records.

Cabinet in an Inquiry of Ministry tabled in the House of Commons on March 27 said the CRA employees used the chat group to have “a private conversation mentioning taxpayer information” between May and June 2022 before one of the group’s administrators deleted it on June 7.

“Affected taxpayers were notified and were offered credit protection services, as well as additional actions they could take to prevent fraud and contact the CRA if they found it to be necessary,” the agency said.

Details of the incident were tabled in response to an order paper question filed by Conservative MP Dean Allison, who asked in February how many requests the federal government has made to social media companies since 2020 to remove or edit online posts on respective platforms.

According to the Inquiry, the CRA requested that Facebook delete the conversation containing private taxpayer information from its servers, but could not confirm whether or not the social media giant complied with the request.

“CRA [was] not privy to Facebook resolution,” it said.

CRA did not disclose how many employees were involved, the number of taxpayers whose confidential information was compromised, nor what kind of information the employees were using the chat group to discuss.

The federal agency added that it disciplined all the employees involved in the incident using measures “up to, and including, termination of employment,” and also said that CRA employees were “retrained on Unauthorized Access and Social Media.