Liberals set to reject Senate amendments on online censorship Bill C-11

The Canadian Press / Adrian Wyld

Bill C-11 was recently sent back to the House of Commons (HoC) for approval after the Canadian Senate made several amendments to lessen the infringing scope of the Liberal's proposed legislation.

And again today, Liberal Senators voted against our amendment to ensure your right to decide what to watch online. One by one, they voted against our efforts to protect your online feed from regulation. WATCH: pic.twitter.com/jvNkjftP7s

— Senator Leo Housakos (@SenatorHousakos) February 3, 2023

The bill is the first of its kind in Canada. Bill C-11 An Act to Amend the Broadcasting Act, has been widely criticized as an Orwellian attempt to control the content Canadians can produce and access online.

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who is the minister responsible for the bill – declined most of the proposed amendments made by the Senate, saying that they “created loopholes.”

As promised, we are accepting amendments that ensure tech giants pay their fair share toward our culture, and we are declining the amendments that create loopholes. That’s what Canadian artists and creators have asked us to do. (2/4)

— Pablo Rodriguez (@pablorodriguez) March 8, 2023

This prompted law professor and critic Michael Geist to remind Minister Rodriguez that Canadian content creators are not loopholes.

Ensuring user content is not subject to CRTC regulation in Bill C-11 is not a loophole. Rather it upholds what you said was the bill’s objective. The rejection of a Senate amendment indicates the true intent: regulating user contenthttps://t.co/xtIIg8rh71https://t.co/tC6hDIRqCo

— Michael Geist (@mgeist) March 8, 2023

Geist argues that this is disinformation and shows the true intent of the legislation: To retain power and regulate user content.

Government’s response to Senate amendments to Bill C-11, including rejecting an amendment to carve out user content from regulation, being read now in the House. My post on @pablorodriguez commitment to “platforms are in and user content regulation is in.”https://t.co/3YYPZbtNVL

— Michael Geist (@mgeist) March 8, 2023

“The Senate amendment crafted by Trudeau-appointed Senators Simons and Miville-Duchêne took the government at its word that their objective was to ensure sound recordings on services such as Youtube were caught by the bill. Their amendment did that, while scoping out user content on sites such as TikTok that might be captured by virtue of the inclusion of indirect commercial revenue as a criteria for the CRTC to consider in the regulatory process,” a post by Geist reads.

Yet the rejection of this amendment means ambiguously worded, sweeping regulation of social media regulation by the Canadian Radio-television broadcasting Commission (CRTC).

On the contrary, creators like @JennValentyne @JJ_McCullough @u_m_a_m_i @brittlestar @SwBenzie @FortierMorghan @AuntySkates @resilientinuk begged and pleaded with you to protect them from regulation. Today, you have failed them. https://t.co/gCLqaYy4SB

— Senator Leo Housakos (@SenatorHousakos) March 8, 2023

"Canada [will be] the only country in the democratic world to engage in this form of user content regulation," Guist points out, assuming the bill will pass in the HoC thanks to the Liberal-NDP coalition government.

Liberal-appointed-Senator David Richards has previously drawn a chilling comparison between Bill C-11 and totalitarian regimes.

“In Germany, it was called the Ministry of National Enlightenment,” he said during the third Senate reading before stating that “Stalin again will be looking over our shoulder when we write.”

He thinks that the bill is “censorship being bundled up and sold to the public as ‘national inclusion,” and criticized it further for “creating compliance instead of greatness.”

Senator Richards even referred to the dystopian writings of George Orwell directly.

“Orwell said that we must resist the prison of self-censorship. This bill goes a long way to construct such a prison,” he said, continuing with unsettling parallels between this bill and dictatorships.