“Hear, hear,” says the Liberal member across the way. Every once in a while the veil falls, and they reveal their true selves. I say they want to extend their tentacles into the Internet, and one of the most prominent Liberal MPs says, “Hear, hear.” I thank him for his temporary and accidental honesty.
I will quote Andrew Coyne, who is far from a Conservative, who says in The Globe and Mail, which is far from a Conservative publication, “The Canadian government's Bill C-10 has opened the door to serious state regulation of the Internet.” The Prime Minister has expressed his admiration for Fidel Castro and for the basic dictatorship of communist China; has attempted to use this pandemic to extend to himself the unmitigated power to raise any tax at any time by any amount, until 2022; has used a debate commission to put Craig Kielburger, and other Liberal insiders, in control of how the leaders' debate would go; and has extended a taxpayer subsidy to the media and then put the head of Unifor, a Liberal-backed organization, in charge of how the money is given out. Whenever such a Prime Minister introduces a bill to extend the power of the state over the Internet, we should be very suspicious.
I will quote Mr. Coyne, who says:
While the government claims it would not empower the CRTC to regulate smaller services such as Britbox, social media sites such as Youtube or online news content, the bill contains no specific provisions that would prohibit it, and includes provisions that seem to allow it. For example, the bill exempts “programs that are uploaded to an online undertaking” by its users and “online undertakings whose broadcasting consist of only such programs.” It leaves the way open for the CRTC to regulate services that show both user-generated and curated content. Like Youtube.
That means we would be opening the door for the CRTC to regulate the kinds of things that everyday Canadians produce and upload onto the Internet.
We are allowing the CRTC, which is an already overly powerful bureaucracy of nameless, faceless government authorities, to potentially extend its regulation into what content people put on the Internet. It is no surprise the Prime Minister would want to limit and regulate that kind of content. Often the kind of independent material uploaded to the Internet by everyday Canadians is the only place outside of the House where he faces real criticism. He is not protected by the adoring glow of his supporters in the press gallery. Therefore, he has to contend with the scrutiny of everyday Canadians who dare criticize him or his ideological direction, or dare produce content that might contradict his world view.
The government refuses to clearly circumscribe the power of the CRTC, and it opens the door for that power to be extended. We can only assume it was designed for the very purpose of extending more control over what Canadians watch, read, hear and produce. That is further compounded by the fact that the bill allows the cabinet to have order-making power over the CRTC, and to direct how it will apply these brand new powers: powers that the member across the way is salivating over right now. Powers that he said, “Hear, hear” to, as soon as I suggested that he might have them.
We live in a free country. Everyday, ordinary Canadians should be allowed their own megaphones and the only limit on how loud and how vast their voices are should be whether people choose to listen to them. Everyday Canadians should be able to decide what they like by voting with their clicks. That is the kind of liberty we should extend to the Canadian people. In the marketplace of ideas, there is no role for state coercion and intimidation. There is no role for nameless, faceless government bureaucrats to decide who is heard and who is not. Everyday Canadian people should have the freedom to do that for themselves.
If we, on this side of the House of Commons, are the only ones to stand up for free speech, then there a lot of Canadians who will stand with us. We know that we have, in the Prime Minister, someone who does not believe in free speech. After a French newspaper was the victim of a terrorist attack, he was asked about free speech and whether that publication should have freedom of expression. He said, “Freedom of expression is not unlimited”, as if to suggest that the attack against the publication was somehow justified on the grounds that the publication had improperly exercised freedom of expression, and that the state ought to have the ability to limit that expression. He then backed down, by the way. He came to the House of Commons and reversed himself completely, swallowed himself whole and realized how much he had humiliated himself by revealing his real thoughts to the Canadian people.
Every time the Prime Minister attempts to extend control over what we see, hear, read and produce, we ought to view the proposal through the lens of a man who believes in strong state control over its citizens. We on this side of the House will stand for the ancient liberties we have inherited from our ancestors and that we hope to bequeath to those who come after us.