Canada’s Senate has passed the Trudeau government’s groundbreaking and “Stalinesque” Internet censorship bill along with a dozen useless recommendations. In 2018, the former Ambassador of the Office of Religious Freedom, Dr. Andrew Bennett, stated presciently that “the Trudeau government is displaying ‘totalitarian’ tendencies.” Since then, the Trudeau government has become progressively repressive. Among Trudeau’s actions: his threat about “crushing the Freedom Convoy with tanks,” his gun ban, his historic dealings with China, his appointment of an “Islamophobia” czar, and now this: the passage of Trudeau’s sweeping censorship Bill C-11, which his own appointed Senator David Richards referenced as “Stalinesque” and called “an Orwellian attempt to force individuals to comply with government messaging.”
Bill C-11 was stalled for some time in the Senate due to severe complications about how to apply it. It places Internet content under the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the historic sole broadcast regulator, which has often been criticized for being an unnecessary watchdog over Canada’s airwaves. But now, its powers have expanded to include content on social media and the Internet. Bill C-11 affects platforms such as YouTube, Netflix and Spotify, requiring them to contribute “Canadian content” or face steep penalties. One doesn’t need to look far to immediately see how this will affect American podcasters and Internet contributors with a substantial Canadian audience. The bill will also be “scapegoating all those who do not fit into what our bureaucrats think Canada should be,” according to Senator Richards.
During a previous debate in the Canadian Parliament, a Conservative MP, Dr. Leslyn Lewis, captured the essence of what Bill C-11 means. She stated that it will make the government the arbiter of “what Canadians must view.”
Bill C-11, like its predecessor C-10, shows that the government doesn’t trust Canadians with free speech & to make their own internet choices. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/vi6ecJROky
— Dr. Leslyn Lewis (@LeslynLewis) March 2, 2022
Senator David Richards also rightly stated about Bill C-11:
The government should never in “any way” tell Canadians what “Canadian content should or should not be or who should be allowed to bob their heads up out of the new murkiness we have created.”
But that is precisely what Trudeau wants to do. Most dangerously, Trudeau presents his ruthless ambitions as good for Canada. Senator Richards further explains that Trudeau’s bill is really “censorship passing as national inclusion.” Trudeau has repeatedly used “inclusion” and “diversity” to enforce the most repressive agendas upon Canadians. Few deeds are worse than using a pretense of good for nefarious purposes. In Trudeau’s view, it was good to attempt to crush the Freedom Convoy and present concerned citizens as a “fringe minority” who posed a danger to Canada’s security. To Trudeau, it is a good to ban firearms in order to protect Canadians, when everyone knows (or should know) that the greatest danger comes from illegal firearms. And while he bans handgun sales from law-abiding citizens — which in effect boosts the illegal gun market — he is simultaneously reducing sentences for those who commit violent gun crime, citing “racial equity” as his reason. Some provinces are refusing to comply as Trudeau further dismantles Canada’s unity. To Trudeau, it is also a matter of the public good to fight “Islamophobia,” when antisemitism and anti-black racism are bigger problems statistically. In addition, the hateful attitudes of a woke generation toward Christian views is also nothing less than social persecution, so where is the Christian czar to protect the Constitutional rights of Christians?
Bill C-11 is a violation of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and makes the Liberal Government of Canada the arbiter of what Canadians can watch and what can be expressed. The Senate has proven itself tone deaf, a failure and an utter disappointment to Canadians, to compound its already established uselessness. The Canadian Senate does not have the same function as its American counterpart. Macleans Magazine summed it up nicely a decade ago:
It now seems ludicrous to imagine the Senate should take up even an hour of serious discussion. Rather than a place for sober second thought or regional balance, the upper chamber has become a repository of political cronies, former media personalities and many other depressingly unserious characters.
The recommendations from the Senate are virtually useless. The amendments are to highlight “the promotion of Indigenous languages and Black content creators,” and according to Canada’s Heritage Minister, Pablo Rodriguez (that same Heritage department from which anti-Islamophobia M-103 emerged , which set the groundwork for Bill C-11):
There are amendments that have zero impact on the bill. And others that do, and those, we will not accept them
Under section 2 of Canada’s Charter, Canadians are guaranteed the fundamental freedoms of conscience, thought, religion, belief, opinion, expression, of the press, communication, and peaceful assembly. It is difficult to accept how a country’s freedoms can be be so easily hijacked by its own public servants. Trudeau even managed to find a loophole in Canada’s parliamentary system by signing a pact with the New Democratic Party (which has socialist roots and ideology) to prop him up until 2025.
