Steven Guilbeault was an unmitigated disaster in his role as Heritage Minister. Now, Mark Carney has put him back in that role as Culture Minister.
Over the last few months, Justin Trudeau was in the process of resigning as Prime Minister. For many, it was looking like Trudeau was going to be leaving after a series of major mistakes and truly bewilderingly bad decisions. That all changed when moron in chief, Donald Trump, returned to the White House and singlehandedly resuscitated Trudeau’s reputation. It’s kind of amazing that within the span of about three of four months, an outgoing Prime Minister went from someone more Canadians are shouting “good freaking riddance” to Canadian’s saying, “thank you for your service”. To be clear, Trudeau defending Canada doesn’t necessarily erase all the bad he did prior, but it does make it a bit easier to forget why Canadian’s wanted him gone.
In the interim, the governing party, the Liberal Party, was also going through the process of choosing the next leader, and, subsequently, the next Prime Minister of Canada. Eventually, Bank of Canada, and Bank of England boss, Mark Carney, got the new position in a surprising landslide among Liberal delegates. Carney’s position as part of the business establishment seemed to help position him well in the race and the Liberal party simply chose him to handle the American assault on Canada given his successful business record to take on the failed businessman south of the border.
The thing is, although Carney’s credentials are certainly there, projecting him to be a presumed good manager, Carney also had a lot to prove as well. As a result, all eyes were on his cabinet picks as a sort of first test to get a sense at how well he’d do as Prime Minister.
Given our background here at Freezenet, we were looking closely to see what would happen in the role of Heritage Minister – or as it is now known for some reason, Culture Minister. The hope was that the person filling the role would be someone who hasn’t taken the role before given how disastrously it was handled throughout the Trudeau years. After all, it was hard to really pick people worse for the role than the series of idiots that have already taken the role. The worst case scenario is that one of the major disasters would take that role again.
Disaster struck.
The word is that Steven Guilbeault is now reprising his role as Culture Minister. From Broadcast Dialogue:
Mark Carney was sworn in as Canada’s 24th Prime Minister on Friday morning, along with a new, leaner cabinet of 23 ministers.
Among other changes, Steven Guilbeault is out as Environment Minister and reassigned as Minister of Canadian Culture and Identity, and Parks Canada, in addition to serving as Carney’s Quebec Lieutenant. Guilbeault previously served as Canadian Heritage Minister from Nov. 2019 to Oct. 2021. Quebec MP Pascale St-Onge, who is not reoffering in the coming federal election, had held the portfolio since July 2023.
Carney really could not have failed in his first test much more than that in filling that role in the first place. Guilbeault’s time as Heritage Minister feels like something that happened multiple lifetimes ago, but people such as myself remember all too well what a terrible fit that was.
To set up this trainwreck of a stage, Guilbeault was the kind of person who you can imagine being mystified at the concept of a double click. He truly has no clue how technology works and it was obvious from the get go that he was completely clueless in the role of Heritage Minister. After receiving an insane amount of bribes lobbied by the media establishment, Guilbeault went on to table the first version of the Online Streaming Act, then called Bill C-10. Yes, was the guy that got us in this Online Streaming Act mess in the first place (it’s still going through the CRTC). If you want to cast blame on someone who is responsible for Canadian online creators freaking out about the future of their jobs, Guilbeault is an excellent person to point the finger at. It was other Heritage Ministers that carried this disaster of a bill through to becoming law, but Guilbeault was the guy responsible for the initial introduction.
Of course, Guilbeault wasn’t only just introducing the terrible Online Streaming Act, he was also doing a masterful job at mismanaging his portfolio as well. One of the major questions looming over the Online Streaming Act is whether or not it is even constitutional. Specifically, if you are having a government downranking user generated content in favour of government certified speech, does that violate Charter protections for freedom of expression? In fact, the visualizations I provided all those years ago in that link was in direct response to Guilbeault’s trainwreck of a bill. Originally, there was an exclusion to user generated content, but Guilbeault removed it which actually set off this whole firestorm of controversy in the first place.
So, in response, Guilbeault went running to the CBC to explain why he is cracking down on user generated content. That interview became notorious and led to many experts calling for Guilbeault to be fired. If you really want to get a sense about how much of a trainwreck that interview was, you can watch that interview yourself. It was, without a doubt, mindblowing just how incompetent Guilbeault was in that interview.
Of course, if that wasn’t bad enough, Guilbeault, realizing just how bad that interview was, decided to take another crack at this whole interview thing and did a second interview on CTV. In that interview, he flatly admitted that then-called Bill C-10 would regulate user generated content, crushing the hopes and dreams of Canadian creators everywhere. While it was a brief moment of clarity of the real purpose of that piece of legislation, Guilbeault would then proceed to walk back those comments again as he denied his own accurate comments about how this bill is about regulating user generated content. If that weren’t bad enough, he also went so far as to blatantly ignore his own officials when they raised the alarm bells over the stripping of user generated content protections as well. As a result, the legislation was delayed as it underwent a constitutional review on top of it all. Yeah, when I say Guilbeault was a trainwreck, I wasn’t joking.
Don’t worry, things only got worse from there.
After that, knowing just how terrible the legislation truly was, the Liberals pushed to silence debate on the legislation. What’s more, there were allegations that the Canadian government was also whitewashing Wikipedia pages to try and scrub the internet of the controversy. After that, the minister famously issued a “gag order” on lawmakers on top of it all.
The problem was, time was ticking, so Guilbeault tried to forcibly ram this legislation through the senate as well, demanding that the Canadian senate act as a swift rubberstamp for his bill. This infuriated senators who basically told Guilbeault to screw off and let them do their work. Senators referred to Guilbeault’s move as “insulting”. Faced with massive controversy, Guilbeault tried to wash his hands of that additional scandal by saying that he was just working to “introduce” the legislation to the senate. That’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works. With Guilbeault becoming a useless idiot, Justin Trudeau himself had to try and step in and salvage the situation himself to try and make up for Guilbeault’s pure incompetence.
The mishandling of this whole situation ultimately led to the demise of the legislation, so even Trudeau himself couldn’t salvage the situation.
While you could end that quick rundown on Guilbeault’s failures as Heritage Minister by saying, “The Aristocrats!”, that was just one bill. Yes, one bill. He was fucking up other bills as well.
Guilbeaut was also a credited architect of the disastrous link tax legislation. He went on the record and said that the lack of a link tax was “immoral“. Under his watch, news organizations were tripping over each other trying to nuke their own credibility. Examples included iPolitics and The Toronto Star. News organizations quickly transformed themselves into self-serving propaganda machines to try and sell the link tax law they thought would be in their own financial interests.
Ultimately, the link tax, now known as the Online News Act, is the reason why Canadian’s can’t see news links on Facebook. It is also the reason why major Canadian news organizations are now wholly dependent on government funding after the government issued waves of massive media bailouts. Considering the bill was touted as one that would not cost taxpayers a single penny, the fact that the sector is basically on taxpayer funded life support after their botched efforts to push a link tax really showed just how poorly thought out that whole sorry affair was. If you want to know the guy that started this whole mess in the first place, look no further than Guilbeaut. He was the guy that started that whole freaking mess in the first damned place.
In case you were wondering, yes, Guilbeaut was also the idiot that was in charge when the Online Harms bill was in its infancy. In the early version of the legislation, there were provisions that would basically nuke the entire Canadian internet off the face of the earth. At the time, an early version was put out to the public in the form of a “consultation”. By “consultation”, they meant “this is what we are going to introduce, now the public is expected to agree with everything we say”. The provisions being floated at the time included requirements that content must be removed within 24 hours if any anonymous user complained about it. Yes, any anonymous user. Failure to adhere to that time window would result in a $10 million dollar fine or 3% of annual revenues, whichever is greater. This is basically a legalese message to website owners that says, “you’re fucked”.
I became one of the first people responding to this “consultation” (or as I referred to it at the time, a “fraudsultation”) by issuing a formal response, condemning the proposed legislation in the form it took. As it turned out, I wasn’t alone in condemning it as well. In response, many other experts and organizations weighed in and the legislation basically sparked near universal condemnation. This included anti-hate organizations, digital rights organizations, law experts, and organizations representing racialized communities.
Ultimately, the backlash was so severe, when Pablo Rodriguez took over, even he couldn’t defend the extreme positions in that proposal. By the time the Online Harms Bill got introduced, a vast majority of the insane provisions were removed. While there were still problems from a criminal law perspective, the hugely problematic digital rights issues were generally removed entirely.
Ultimately, it was clear from beginning to end that Guilbeaut had absolutely no clue what the hell he was doing. Had he got his way, Canadian websites would have largely ceased to exist, Canadian creators would be looking for new jobs or moving to other countries, and the media landscape would have probably been much worse off as well over top of problems presented by the old version of the Online Harms legislation.
So, after all of that, how the hell does someone come in, look at that insane level of stupidity, and say, “yup, he’s the right man for the job!” We need a wartime cabinet manned by the best and brightest, so what better person to man this role than the original Heritage fuck up himself? After all, almost everyone worth their salt was begging the Liberal government to ditch that clown in the first place – and with damned good reason. He should never have been given the role in the first place let alone be given the role a second time.
Honestly, there is only two possible defences I can think of in all of this. The first defence would be that Mark Carney had no idea just how bad Guilbeaut was in his role the first time. He was in England or doing something else at the time and had no idea how incompetent the guy was in that role. At that point, my response would be, “You have advisors Prime Minister, use them.”
The second possible excuse for making such a terrible pick is that an election is coming up and Guilbeaut would only be in that role for a few weeks. When the election is over, Carney is going to find someone who is actually possibly going to not totally screw up the portfolio. At that point, my response would be to put some random back bencher into that role. Seriously, to borrow a joke from the late excellent comedian, Richard Jenny, a spinal cord and a bucket of popcorn would have been a better pick for that position. If it was given to a random back bencher, then at least there would be a possible narrative that he didn’t know what would be a good pick for the role and a better pick would be made after the election is over.
What’s more, it’s not just me that is flabbergasted at how bad the pick was. University law professor, Michael Geist, was also stunned at the pick:
Bringing Steven Guilbeault back as Heritage (renamed Culture) Minister is astonishing if the goal is to project change and competence. He is OG Heritage Minister for the digital files who delivered the original Bill C-11 with disastrous, inaccurate communications.
Geist won’t be the last to react to this and I’m sure others who have dealt with him in the past are also going to weigh in negatively on this as well.
Newly Minted Mark Carney, while having a finance background, still has a lot to prove to Canadian’s. Picking a cabinet going into hist first election was going to be the first step he takes to give Canadian’s an indication of what he intends on doing. It’s safe to say, at least as far as the role of Culture Minister, there wasn’t much he could do to blow it any more than he already did. Anyone who has any self respect that followed these debates closely back then are giving a collective facepalm right now.
