Trudeau’s Liberals Are Siding With Big Tech on Censorship

Federal Heritage Minister, Steven Guilbeault, has been vocal on social media recently regarding his opinion on Big Tech’s censorship of prominent figures and free speech platforms.

He wants more of it.

Guilbeault states his office has been hard at work drafting new legislation that would “require online platforms to eliminate illegal content, including hate speech, child sexual exploitation & violent or extremist content”. 

The issue many Canadians have pointed out is that this type of legislation already exists. Social media platforms are already required to remove content that is in violation of the law, which would include all types of posts mentioned in the Heritage Minister’s tweet.

As reported by Blacklock’s Reporter a note from Guilbeault’s office titled “Regulation of Social Media Platforms” states:

We are working to introduce regulations to reduce the spread of illegal content, including hate speech, in order to promote a safer and more inclusive online environment. We want to protect Canadians online.

Guilbeault would like Canadians to think he is targeting illegal activity, but rather he will be going after posts that are seen to be “hurtful” or “offensive”. The issue is “hurtful” and “offensive” are very broad terms, which is why they should not be used in law, as this leaves the door open to ban Canadians for virtually any content the government would deem inappropriate.

This crackdown on Canadians most basic freedom is even drawing the attention of prominent American news hosts

Even outsiders to Canada’s political landscape can see how this legislation is not being put in place to protect Canadians, but rather to silence them, to protect the establishment, the government, from Canadians.

Along with the Heritage department, we also saw Canada’s Department of Justice suggest that it needed to “develop options for legal remedies”. This was mentioned in a document titled “Consultation Paper: Online Hate” concentrating on posts to Facebook and Twitter that are deemed “offensive”.

All of this being done at a time when we see Big Tech censoring countless individuals, groups, and even platforms.

Following the decision to ban Trump from social media we’ve seen a flood of online censorship. 

Similar calls have been made to remove other populist leaders from Twitter and Facebook, including Brazil’s Bolsonaro as well as India’s Narendra Modi, among others.

Free-speech, alternative, platform Parler was banned from both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, prior to getting the boot by Amazon Cloud Services, functionally wiping the platform off the web.

Minds, another alternative platform, is now being targeted by Google and was forced to make some major reductions in their app functionality just to avoid a ban.

In response to Big Tech going after some of their more prominent figures, we recently saw Poland pass a law that would effectively render it illegal for social media companies to censor their citizens beyond what the law would call for.

The new law would force social media companies operating in Poland to pay a fine of up to $2.2 million per post that is unlawfully censored.

Similarly North Dakota state Rep. Tom Kading, R-N.D., has drafted legislation to be introduced that would reprimand tech giants for moves that restrict political posts. Meanwhile, the Canadian government seems to be pushing in the opposite direction, they are looking for more censorship online.

In 2020 a report was released discussing how the military had been monitoring and aggregating posts critical of the government’s pandemic response and providing this to leaders.

One can only imagine what such a list would be used for.

This pandemic has truly ripped the mask off of our government, and shown our leaders for the petty authoritarians they are. Most, if not all, are far too willing to abuse their own power for personal or ideological gain. 

The legislation the Liberals are now looking to introduce only stokes public concerns as to the intentions of our government. At the least, we can expect that many Canadians will have their voices silenced.