Liberals Move to Censor Discussion of Their Internet Censorship Bill

As if to put the cherry on top of the less than covert attempt of the Liberals to censor the content viewed by Canadians online through Bill C-10, just this Friday morning in the committee set up to study the bill the Liberals put forward a motion to restrict the time allotted for discussion in order to block criticism.

C-10 itself doesn’t censor the internet in a literal way, where content is blacked out and removed that the Liberals do not like, rather it “promotes Canadian content” by dictating to online businesses operating in Canada that a certain percentage of their revenues need to go towards creating original Canadian content, and platforms for user content must promote Canadian content.

This in turn is a backdoor way of censorship. Yes, content is not being directly deleted from the internet, but content is being buried under government mandated nonsense that the CRTC will be in control of regulating. It wouldn’t be a shock if Liberal Canadians were benefited significantly on platforms like Youtube, and Facebook as being “good Canadian content” and Canadian content more on the right will be quietly shovelled under the pile except for a few token Liberal-lite Conservatives.

The truly pathetic part about the Liberals trying to speed up and rush the discussion over Bill C-10 is that the Conservatives aren’t even exactly putting up that stiff resistance in Parliament, or online rallying support. Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole has already symbolically seemed to have given up by stating the CPC will repeal C-10 if elected, rather than fighting until it C-10 passes or not and then announcing they will repeal.

The Conservatives have tacked their opposition mostly to concerns on whether C-10 will apply to individual Canadians and not just tech companies. The issue with this line of argument against C-10 is that regardless of whether the law is applied directly to individuals or companies it will still affect the individual because regulations on Youtube will inevitably then be applied also to creators and viewers as well.

So right now Canadians are finding themselves in a position where the Liberals are censoring discussion over a bill they claim will not censor content on the internet, while the Conservatives and the NDP are quibbling over whether or not the bill will symbolically be only applied to corporations or if it will just cut to the chase and openly be going after individuals.

The discourse over C-10 is no doubt in need of an upgrade, the same way lockdown policy is being argued over when all the major parties pretty much agree on what is going on.