Explaining Bill C-18 and Trudeau's wide-ranging plans to destroy Canadian free speech

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On Thursday's episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Ezra explained the potential impact of Bill C-18, the Online News Act. Just like C-11 makes social media companies broadcasters for Trudeau to regulate, Bill C-18 creates a new thing called "digital intermediaries," the definition of which will include pretty much every social media platform and search engine. 

C-18 attempts to force these sites to pay news organizations that they link to, for example in a Google search. Even though news organizations usually love being linked to regardless, since it boosts their traffic.

Though the government claims this will make it harder for search engines and social media platforms to "steal" local journalism, this only applies to what they are calling "qualified Canadian journalism organizations." And of course, the government gets to decide who's qualified. As for Rebel News, the Trudeau government bizarrely declared that what we do... doesn't qualify as news. 

"It's pretty obvious why we were denied," Ezra noted. "But hard left wing media groups like the Tides Foundation-backed National Observer get the designation because they're in step with Trudeau's regime. So, C-11 commandeers the Internet. That lets Trudeau manipulate the algorithm, lets him regulate the Internet. C-18 makes Facebook and Google and other search engines and social media companies pay money to journalists in Canada — but only to the journalists that Trudeau approves, not the ones he doesn't like."

This is only an excerpt of Thursday's episode of The Ezra Levant Show. To watch the full episode, become a subscriber to RebelNews+.