Internet Censorship Bill Re-Introduced
In 1964, Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.” He theorized that the technology we use to communicate a message can shape, control, and even distort that message. If one controls the technology, one theoretically controls the message itself.
Fast forward to 2022, and the Trudeau Liberals seem quite eager to exploit Mr. McLuhan’s principle to their own political advantage. With the recent re-introduction of their Internet Censorship Bill (Bill C-11), the government is poised to take unprecedented control of both the medium and the message of the Canadian World Wide Web.
It is frightening to consider what immense power the Liberals could wield over our society and culture once Canada’s internet is placed firmly in their grip. The internet has become ubiquitous, and most of us are “connected”, whether through our computers, tablets, smart phones, smart cars, or smart appliances.
The Liberals’ far-reaching bill places the entirety of the Canadian internet under the bureaucratic auspices of the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission). If passed, the CRTC bureaucracy will police the internet and dictate its content.
According to the bill, the CRTC will direct what we see online, prioritizing content representing “Canadians from racialized communities and Canadians of diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, socio-economic statuses, abilities and disabilities, sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and ages.” In other words, the CRTC will ensure we are force-fed more pro-LGBT and pro-abortion propaganda, while normative pro-family and pro-life voices are sidelined.
To give you a better sense of how the CRTC operates, consider their treatment of the world’s largest Catholic TV station, the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). In 1991, the CRTC rejected their application to be distributed in Canada while approving the Playboy Channel and other pornographic fare. It took ten years of fighting with the CRTC before EWTN was finally allowed to be broadcast in this country. It is this same CRTC that will be put in charge of policing the internet!
Bill C-11 aims to create an artificially-controlled online environment where the government sets the agenda, rations air-time, dictates content, and cancels any expression that goes against its leftist dogma.
Under Bill C-11, the days of a free, open, and accessible internet will be over in Canada. The free exchange of ideas and our cherished freedom of expression will no longer exist online. Those of us with pro-life, pro-family, pro-faith, and other “politically incorrect” views could easily be mislabelled by woke regulators as “hateful”. Our web sites, blogs, podcasts, posts, and other online content may be deemed “unacceptable” and censored or banned.
Mr. Ian Scott, chairman of the CRTC, recently admitted that the broadcasters under his purview do not enjoy true freedom of speech. He stated: “Freedom of speech and a range of perspectives are a necessary part of our democracy. However, it is a privilege and not a right to be broadcast in Canada.” Bill C-11 defines internet content providers as “broadcasters”, which means they will have no right to be online.
During the past two years, we got a foretaste of what this could mean as social media technocrats initiated a campaign of control and censorship to prop up the government’s narrative on COVID-19. The public was not allowed to hear from certain scientists and doctors who disagreed with public health measures. Bill C-11 would take a similar approach, but apply it to virtually everything we watch, read, say, and listen to on the internet!
Bill C-11 was first introduced in 2020 as Bill C-10 by Mr. Steven Guilbeault, a radical left-wing activist who was given the ironic title of Minister of Heritage. Mr. Guilbeault, who exhibits very little respect for Canada’s heritage of freedom, has stated that the intention of this Internet Censorship Bill is to monitor, restrict, and remove speech which his government considers “hateful”.
“There will be a new regulator,” Mr. Guilbeault promised, which “will implement the new rules and monitor hate speech.”
It is crucial that we reach out to our Members of Parliament and urge them to stop this Soviet-style Internet Censorship Bill before it becomes law!
If our parliamentarians wish to preserve a free Canadian society, they must vote against the muzzling of Canadians’ voices on the internet. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill: “A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.”
Mr. Peter Menzies, a former vice-chairman of the CRTC, recently expressed his concern over Bill C-11. He said of the Trudeau Liberals: “They’re giving the CRTC enormous powers — enormous powers — and it’s not in the DNA of any regulatory body to not continue to expand its turf... So that’s troubling.”
If Marshall McLuhan was right, and the “medium is the message”, then Bill C-11 is nothing less than an online revolution. It is a virtual coup d'état with Mr. Trudeau as cyber-dictator. By taking control of the online medium through which we receive our information, the Trudeau Liberals will be able to control that information for their own ideological and political ambitions.
It is an insidious proposal that needs to be stopped!
Please click here to send a message to your MP today. We have a number of pre-scripted suggestions that you can use, or simply write your own email.
May God keep our land glorious and free!
David Cooke
National Campaigns Manager
Campaign Life Coalition
P.S. You can write to your local MP to vote against Bill C-11 by folowing this link: https://www.votervoice.net/CALIFE/campaigns/83962/respond