Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has announced he is stepping down. We dive in to what that means for tech legislation.
It was news that seemed like a long time coming. Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has announced that he is stepping down as Prime Minister. According to reports we’ve seen, this mean that Parliament is prorogued until March. From the CBC:
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday said he will be stepping down from the country’s top office and from his role as Liberal Party leader as soon as a replacement is chosen.
In the same breath, he also confirmed Parliament will be prorogued, or suspended, until March 24.
Arguably, the moment this moment seemed like less of a matter of “if”, but rather, “when” was when deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland resigned from her position in a rather fiery move. It really sparked questions on just how Trudeau could keep going on like this. Evidently, as we know today, it was ultimately the straw that broke the camels back.
Now, the talking points by the mainstream media is generally that the Trudeau government didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. Instead, it was just a number of factors beyond his control that caused Canadians to second guess his leadership and Trudeau was unable to adequately solve those problems. That puts a heck of a lot of mental gymnastics around his leaderships to try and get to that conclusion. Reality, of course, is very different and we saw that very vividly in the world of tech policy.
Rewinding back to his early days as Prime Minister, the every famous “sunny ways” walk, Trudeau was putting a lot of positive things on the table. Among those things was broad privacy reform, plans to bolster network neutrality, an apparent “Digital Charter”, devotion to fostering innovation in Canada so that Canada can compete on the global stage, listening to all perspectives to come up with the best possible solutions to problems facing Canadians, and keeping Parliament open and transparent among other things.
As time went on, however, the Liberal party seemed to gradually move in the wrong direction and slowly abandoning those very principles that helped propel him to the role as Prime Minister in the first place. One of the big moments that really helped to signal that directional change from principled government came in the form of the departure of Navdeep Bains in 2021. Bains, of course, was the Innovation Minister who was trying to make network neutrality strengthening a thing and bolstering Canadian innovation. The hope was that he would be replaced by someone with a very similar vision for Canada, but that ultimately didn’t happen. It really cemented fears that the Canadian government has abandoned its policies.
One thing we will note is that we still don’t know what was originally planned for the so-called “Digital Charter”. The old rumours that we can recall were that it was supposed to be about giving more power to consumers when dealing with cell phone contracts among other things, but those details were ultimately never released.
There was also privacy reform which was long promised, but never really delivered on. Privacy reform was ultimately a slam dunk vote getter for the Liberal party since it is something that has long been supported by all political sides. All the government had to do was more or less follow the blueprint of Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), make a few tweaks as necessary, and pass it. Politically, this was just an obvious move to make – especially if the government found itself into turmoil. They could easily say, “hey, we passed privacy reform and now your life is much better and more protected as a result”.
Unfortunately, the Liberals kept dragging their feet, sparking many questions as to what the heck the holdup is. Current Innovation Minister, François-Philippe Champagne, responded to those criticisms by pretending to be enthusiastic about privacy reform and said that it is his “top priority“. What followed was even more radio silence. After years of delay, Bill C-27 was finally tabled in 2022. The legislation itself only left more questions. Given that so little changed apart from the odd word here and there from the previous attempt, it left questions as to what the heck the Minister was doing all this time if there wasn’t really and substantive changes to the legislation.
What followed was even more foot dragging as the Canadian government further slow walked the legislation and ignored the obvious urgency of such legislation. This over top of the criticism that this legislation is ultimately a half measure in the first place to protecting people’s privacy. Now, it’s seemingly inevitably that it’s going to die on the orderpaper since it still has a very long way to go to becoming law, but little runway to make it happen.
After the departure of Bains, another pillar to innovation was seemingly never heard from again. That was the strengthening of network neutrality laws. Indeed, strong network neutrality laws would help ensure that innovation can continue to thrive in Canada. Yet, the end of Bains tenure seemingly meant the end of any devotion to network neutrality.
While all of that was bad enough, things got even worse. There was the introduction of Bill C-11, Bill C-18, the push for Online Harms legislation, and the effort to bring in a Digital Services Tax. All of this represented a move away from a transparent Parliament and a move towards the notorious Liberal corruption that caused the Liberals to lose to the Stephen Harper Conservatives all those years ago. Gone are the days of being transparent and accountable to the public and we saw a return for the old corrupt pay for access insiders only cool kids club. If you are a part of the corporate elite in this country, then you had the governments ear. If you were an ordinary citizen, you get left behind or even trampled on, depending on the circumstances.
While mainstream media companies were able to basically write the legislative agenda for their own selfish reasons, those who innovated, such as Digital First Creators and independent media outlets, were routinely ignored, accused of being part of some sort of conspiracy to thwart the legislation, intimidated with threats of “investigations“, and even demonized as little more than “cat videos“, “not art”, or even “not news” on top of it all. The moves made it clear that if you aren’t part of Canada’s established corporate insiders, then you were the enemy that must be taken out.
Of course, it wasn’t just Canadians that the government declared war on. Anyone out there that was seen as opposing the corporate written political agenda of the Liberal Party got flipped the bird. Stunningly, that even included the United States when it came to the Digital Services Tax. Indeed, the US government was extremely upset at the Digital Services Tax and issued countless warnings, saying that such a tax violates Canada’s international trade obligations. Even representatives from the business communities were sounding the alarm on what is happening here. Yet, despite all of that, the Trudeau Liberal government ignored all of that and foolishly implemented it anyway. With everyone giving the government a collective “WTF?”, the US government (before it became clear that Trump was going to win the White House) initiated a trade dispute consultation which is the start of the process of issuing trade retaliatory measures against Canada.
At least from the digital perspective, this is what actually got Trudeau in a heap of trouble. It’s the attitude of “I do what I want, get out of my way” that got him in trouble. While those in the internet community saw this happening for a long time now, it seemed as though he was bringing that attitude to everything he touched. This includes what happened with Freeland where Trudeau, as the rumours go, asked her to deliver the Fall economic statement that blew past Freeland’s own guardrails before handing in her resignation, taking the fall for Trudeau when the bad news got delivered. Freeland, for her part, basically responded by saying “F that” and resigned in protest. That, ultimately, got us to where we are today.
Ultimately, the Liberal party fell back into their old corrupt ways and seemingly felt that because Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre was so unlikable (and he really is unlikable), that the Liberals had no threat at all to their political futures. So, for them, they could go nuts because the party never ends for them. It was a gamble they made and a gamble they lost. Now, there is a very real threat that Poilievre could become the next Prime Minister, repeating the same mistakes American’s made when electing Donald Trump.
So, what does all of this mean for tech policy in general? Well, lucky for you, I already wrote a detailed piece on that. Essentially, the Online News Act, Online Streaming Act, and Digital Services Tax is moving ahead since they are all laws now. Age verification is put on hold again. Unless there is a quick session to push it through before an election, then it could very well die on the orderpaper. Canada’s privacy reform legislation, legislation on artificial intelligence, and online harms legislation are all basically toast and would likely have to start over from scratch again. Not to trivialize the devastating impacts of the Online News Act, Online Streaming Act, or the Digital Services Tax, but the situation could be a whole lot worse even if they could be a whole lot better.
In terms of who best to lead the country and get things back on track, I’m not really aware of any good viable alternatives. Freeland, for her part, supported disinformation campaigns against those who criticize the legislative agenda. Poilievre supports internet censorship through the age verification laws. NDP leader, Jagmeet Singh, supported the bad policies of both parties and the Green party had a soft support for both as well. So, I’m not really seeing anyone who has a good track record on digital issues at the very least.
Ultimately, we are in one big colossal political mess right now. The timing couldn’t have been worse with the looming Trump administration, but at this point, it is what it is. This is a mess that is going to take a while to clean up and there doesn’t seem to be much hope that things are going to get cleaned up any time soon.
