This article originally appeared in the Western Standard. A full-length version of the article also appeared in C2C Journal.
By Peter Menzies, April 15, 2024
Canada’s long march towards suppressing free expression on the internet is about to run headlong into the federal government’s other great nemesis — the People’s Republic of China (PRC). And the battleground is dance videos.
Last month, the US House of Representatives passed a bill with broad bipartisan support requiring the owner of TikTok — a Chinese company called ByteDance — to sell the popular social media platform or cease operations in America because of concerns over Chinese government involvement and data collection.
If TikTok is banished from the US, expect major repercussions in Canada since many Canadian online creators use it to connect to the public. Nonetheless, the Trudeau government will come under considerable pressure to ban it here and risk angering China once again.
If it comes to that, a TikTok ban will become the latest in a long string of problematic internet policies emanating from the Trudeau government. And while TikTok is not a crisis of this government’s own making, three recent bills that seek to restrict or control how Canadians use the internet and communicate over social media certainly are.
The first of these foolish foundation stones was the Online Streaming Act, also known as Bill C-11, passed into law in April 2023.
It would bring streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix under the control of the notoriously meddlesome CRTC, setting criteria and extracting funds to “support Canadian artists and creative industries, advance indigenous storytelling and increase representation of equity-seeking groups.”
It’s another way for the Trudeau government to favour designated groups whose approval it craves and further impose wokeism on Canadians. It will also undoubtedly lead those streaming platforms to censor and bully online creators into following Ottawa’s direction, quashing a new generation of digital content providers who’ve told the government they don’t want or need its heavy hand on their shoulder — or in their wallet.
The Trudeau brain trust’s next assault on the internet, Bill C-18, the Online News Act, was meant to force Google and Facebook to hand over cash to failing mainstream news media.
While Google agreed to pay $100 million into this scheme, Facebook-owner Meta stopped posting news links entirely, a move that severed a key connection between readers and legacy media and did far more damage in terms of lost marketing power than was gained from Google’s outlay.
Finally, we saw the Online Harms Act rolled out in February. It is comprised of two distinct halves, one good, one evil. The first part seeks to shield children from inappropriate content online and protect victims of online sex crimes, such as the unauthorized sharing of intimate videos.
The “evil-twin” portion of the bill seeks to stamp out “hate” within Canada by creating new speech and thought crimes and by setting up an ominously named Digital Safety Commissioner. Expression considered hateful by the courts will be made punishable by up to life in prison. Hate speech is defined as “detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals,” but not, however, “disdain or dislike.” Got that?
The promotion of genocide is dealt with in an equally severe manner, and is defined in an equally vague way. The bill also revives the thoroughly discredited concept of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act by allowing anonymous hate-speech “victims” to bring complaints against anyone who has said something they consider offensive. As commentator Jen Gerson put it, “these measures reveal deeply authoritarian instincts toward speech and regulation.”
Who takes the concept of protecting children and twists it into an assault on free speech? What accounts for the Liberal government’s determination to control the internet and restrict how Canadians can express themselves online — and thus put an end to the internet as an unregulated forum for the free exchange of ideas?
Timothy Denton, a consultant and former CRTC Commissioner, says leaders in Canada and elsewhere have simply become nervous about the manner in which the internet has freed citizens from their control. It’s hugely expanded the capacity for independent thought, he says, and so “must be hampered and stopped.”
Philip Palmer, president of the Internet Society Canada Chapter, attributes the urge to regulate mostly to the sin of pride on the part of the Liberal government.
“They see themselves as virtuous,” he says, and “if they are virtuous, and their political actions reflect virtue, then opposing those measures is anti-virtuous — possibly even evil.”
They are unable or unwilling to consider the real-world effect of their actions, and believe anyone who disagrees is wrong or ill-intended.
The government’s willingness to grant sweeping powers to various non-government authorities such as the CRTC, Human Rights Tribunals, a Digital Safety Commission or, through Criminal Code amendments, the police and Crown prosecutors, reflects a “simple lack of imagination,” says Palmer, an inability to understand how moves could possibly do any harm.
It’s worth noting that the shortcomings of these three bills will primarily befall the demographic cohort that grew up with the internet — Millennials and GenZ. Once Trudeau’s dream demographic, they may now be watching these bungled efforts to legislate the internet and suffering buyers’ remorse.
If Palmer is right, and sinful pride is at the heart of Trudeau’s legislative assaults on Canadians’ liberty, then perhaps the unfolding crisis over TikTok and the three online-related laws are omens of a fall yet to come.
Peter Menzies is a past vice-chair of the CRTC and a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
