While reflecting on the past, a Conservative MP said that a positive for her was stopping Bill C-10.
Alberta Conservative MP, Rachael Thomas, recently began reflecting on the past year. While discussing the ups and downs, she described the fact that Conservatives helped to stop Bill C-10 was a positive. From Lethbridge News Now:
Not everything was gloomy this year, Thomas adds, saying Bill C-10 being stopped by the Federal Conservatives was certainly a positive to look at.
“Bill C-10, which is a censorship bill. It would have prevented individuals from posting certain things online. It would have hindered freedom of speech within the public square. It would have determined what is Canadian enough to stay on YouTube and what has to get pulled down.”
“I’m incredibly proud of the work that my team and I did to fight against this bill, to raise awareness, and I’m really proud of Canadians. I’m really proud of Canadians for speaking up for having their voices heard, for telling the government to back off. I’m really proud of Canadians for defending their freedom.”
“The point is Bill C-10 is dead, and I’m really proud of that.”
While the description plays a bit fast and loose with what Bill C-10 actually does, she is correct that the bill getting stopped was a good thing. While Bill C-10 was a censorship bill, it doesn’t actually “[prevent] individuals from posting certain things online”. Instead, it actually ensures that such content that gets posted gets demoted on large platforms like YouTube should they be deemed “not Canadian enough”. In fact, we offered a visualization of what Bill C-10 actually does. It’s an assessment that Canadian Senators agreed with.
Still, pulled down or demoted, the effects it would have on Canadian creators is pretty much the same – they would lose access to the broader Canadian audience. At any rate, everyone outside of hardcore Liberal supporters were breathing a sigh of relief when Bill C-10 died on the ordperpaper. The legislation got sent to Senate committee on the last extended sitting day.
Had that bill become law, it would have very likely been challenged in court. At that point, Canadian’s would have a situation similar to the US where the future of freedom of expression would be decided through the court system. American’s, of course, found out the hard way that, sometimes, those rulings don’t go the way that they should.
Luckily for Canada, such a scenario has been, at the very least, postponed. Late in December, Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, directed his ministers through a mandate letter to revitalize the Canadian governments war on the open Internet. As we previously reported, the next sitting day is January 31st, so there is still going to be a nice gap between now and when this war will resume.
At any rate, while the MP might have gotten a few things slightly wrong about Bill C-10, we can agree on the idea that stopping Bill C-10 was a good thing. That effort was certainly helped by the then Heritage Ministers incompetence as well, but hey, supporters of free speech will take all the help they can get at that point. Here’s hoping the seemingly inevitable redux of this debate will end in a similar way. We can only hope, right?
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
