Bill C-11 Passes the Senate With Some Amendments, Which The Liberals Threaten To Remove

On February 2nd the Liberal’s major internet censorship bill, C-11, passed the third reading in the Senate and will be sent back to the House of Commons for ratification. The bill is being marketed as a way to promote/protect “Canadian content” but in reality, it gives the power to the regulatory bodies, primarily the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to decide what is “Canadian content”.

Bill C-11 focuses on online streaming which includes both major production sites like Netflix or Disney+ as well as user-generated video platforms like YouTube. The bill has drawn criticism from all across the political spectrum including Peter Menzies, the former VP of the CRTC, who outlined the dangers of the bill. However, there are also a lot of establishment media figures that have chosen to stick their heads in the sand on the issue. For example, at the time of writing this article, February 3rd, 2023, two of Canada’s largest newspapers The Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail have nothing about the bill on the front page of their websites.

This gets closer to the core of the issue, which is the government intermingling with the media. The Trudeau government has a pattern of behaviour when it comes to the media. They famously gave $595 million to mainstream media outlets as a “bailout”, which was their first step towards monopolizing the narrative. 

Bill C-11, along with its sister bill C-18 would extend the government’s influence over the entire internet with the potential to treat your Twitter, YouTube or Facebook account the same as the CTV main network. 

The fears of overarching internet censorship are exacerbated by the previous history of the Trudeau government’s willingness to throw due process out the window whether it be the SNC Lavalin scandal or the invocation of the Emergencies act on peaceful protestors.

The one saving grace may be that because the Liberals are so hyper-focused on total censorship of our society, that fact that the senate has amended the original bill and watered down some of the censorship powers. This has caused Minister Pablo Rodriguez to state that the Liberals will not accept the bill as is.

It is still unclear if there will be a new censorious tone to the internet in Canada in the coming weeks, or if the Liberals will take the time to return the bill to its full draconian powers. It may be a strategic mistake for the Liberals to insist on Bill C-11 being as strong as possible, seeing as overall there are very few individuals not working in the legacy media that actually support its measures. The vast majority of people talking about C-11 are opposed to the way it would alter the way Canadians interact with the internet, and frankly never liked the CRTC to begin with.