What Is Canada's Dystopian "Online Streaming Act"?

I went through this new bill C11 because I'm one of the people whom it will hypothetically affect. Although I have a number of maneuvers up my sleeve, so to speak, to bypass that entirely. I know Canadians don't understand this, but let's say that the new media, which is the internet itself, was capable of producing some of the opposition to the globalists and Trudeau that the legacy media have abandoned. I'm thinking of people like, say, Russell Brand, who's on the left, and not just mentioning, you know, any of the conservative commentators in the United States.

But now what the Canadian bill C-11 has done is basically, and this is unbelievable, I can't believe I read it correctly, it basically defined all internet content of any sort as subject to the same CRTC, the Canadian Radio and Television Corporation. I don't remember the last word of that. It doesn't really matter; no, it doesn't matter. They've defined them as broadcasters that are equivalent, let's say, to CBC or CTV.

Now the reason that those broadcasters are different was because the government had to parse up the airwaves because the airwaves were actually a scarce resource. Now, the internet is not a scarce resource. As far as I can tell reading Bill C11, which is an unbelievably vague document, if an internet service provider, a private one, so a small business person like me, let's say, doesn't broadcast in French and English and in Indigenous languages and to any diverse range of people with disabilities and highlight Canadian content, then the government can do what it needs to do to de-prioritize their distribution.

They'll do that by putting pressure on the search engine providers like YouTube and Google or just stopping them altogether. I read this bill, and all of it again, Rex, too. The bill is couched in all this diversity, inclusivity, and equity terminology, which is the same solution to every problem, right? Not only do we have this massive press collusion with the government that's absolutely unconscionable in a Western democracy, but we also have now the government clamping down more viciously than in any other developed country on the freedom for Canadians to get access to all of the information on the internet, not just that produced by Canadians.

I'm inclined to believe that this idea that these intellectuals, it's mainly a shallow cabinet. I don't care how condescending that sounds. What it mainly is that they somehow or other have been given Vatican-like infallibility to judge what is correct and what is not correct, to make decisions that will hold back. By the way, the whole idea of disinformation and misinformation coming out of the mouths of this government, I mean they are the greatest purveyors of confusion and evasion in the law.

The idea that they then are going to be the kind of grandmas or Mrs. Grundy, as it used to be called in the 19th century, and protect the tender sensibilities of minds that are better than their own, yeah, I'm tired of people. I'm sure you are too because it's getting so cliched bringing up George Orwell. But because he put the stamp on it and gave the template, the idea that a central authority runs thought and speech and makes judgments on what is and what is not.

And under the banner of diversity, inclusion, and equity, which is really a hidden ideology pumped up by vast self-righteousness and granting pseudo-infallibility to those who are sensitive, we know this is not the case. Mr. Trudeau got rid of his only Aboriginal female minister; there's equity, there's diversity. They confuse, this is a big point too, they confuse either at DeVos, which you referenced, or any other high meeting with saying that your virtues is the same thing as being it.

There’s a blatant arrogance attached to any government that thinks that in the modern communication system, it should have any business outside of the exact things that are defined by law as incitement and real rabid hate. They will call hate something they simply don't like. It's not an easy emotion to define. C11, as Michael Geist—I know you follow him—Michael Geist is the professor of communication who most articulately and deeply is warning over and over to give this bunch that can't issue a passport, that have a pay system for their own civil servants that's three or four years malfunctioning, that can't let passengers walk out of Pearson Airport within less than 24 hours, should suddenly have the government of the thoughts and reactions and speeches and positions and films and talks like this, like yours.

It's absurd, but it's more than that. This is truly frightening. I mean what is developing for more power than you need? Well, it's the imposition of an ideology. Go back to your China point. Here’s the reason that he may really admire China, because China, it happens to be communism. In that case, China is fired only, as was Russia, by an ideology, by a set of narrow ideas from which no deviation, no criticism under penalty of exile or death is allowed.

Not as hard over here, but die is an ideology. An ideology makes those claims and fills those who hold it with a completely unacceptable level of moral certitude, not certainty. Bill C-11 is a disaster. And boy, one more quick point: it is shameful, it is shameful to the essence that the main Canadian press are not as one voice and a one intense voice saying we're not having this. We are simply not having this. You are not going to rule on what is information and not information.

You are not going to rule on the presence of citizens on the new channels of communication. And seeing you’ve already fouled the official or legacy means to some serious degree, we're certainly not going to allow you to put a pillow over the mouth of the only possible new exchanges that we have. It's a terrible idea, an idea apart from arrogance, righteousness, and the belief in his own infallibility. I can't see why.

But why aren't the MPs, even in his own party, saying, "Justin, you're dreaming. You're out of touch. We don't want to go there. We're not following you on this." Where's the courage in any of these caucuses? Hey, hand wave about diversity, inclusivity, equity, the environment, and then in Bill C11, they add the protection of the Canadian culture, sure, to that, which sounds like something taken out of like 1979 or 1980.

It's such an outdated idea. One of the other terrifying things about Bill C-11 is that we won't, in Canada, if this is actually enforced with the collusion, let's say, of Google and YouTube and so forth— and the forced collusion in some sense— because those companies are not going to break the law, Canadians won't even know what information is being hidden from them because the laws will take the form of invisible algorithms that merely de-prioritize at the listing of content that doesn't meet the impossible criteria that have been laid down.

Bill C-11 is basically written in a way that allows the government to interfere with the promulgation of any information that they deem unacceptable for any reason. There are so many restrictions on what you're allowed to do now that there's no possible way that any member of the alternative media can meet the criteria. It's just not possible. And it won't just be YouTube broadcasters and podcasters; it's going to be people who provide all sorts of services online because the bill is written in such a vast manner that the provision of any services on the internet—we're talking about the internet here, right?—which is something people really depend on, will all fall under the invisible auspices of a tiny coterie of ideologically adult bureaucrats and algorithms.