While the Emergencies Act inquiry exposes mainstream news misinformation, the Trudeau Liberals’ Censorship Bill C-11 has crept one step closer to becoming law.
“Out of the 19 senators who voted NO to Bill #C11 at 2nd Reading, only 2 of those senators were appointed by PM Trudeau: Senators Black and Richards,” tweeted Conservative Senator Denise Batters.
“I was proud to join all #CPC senators present who voted NO to this awful Trudeau Government Bill C-11.”
The Censorship bill passed second reading in the Senate by a vote of 49-19. If it passes third reading, it will go to the governor general for royal assent.
Under Bill C-11, search engines like Google will be required to boost news organizations that promote “racialized communities, cultural and linguistic minorities, LGBTQ2+ communities, and persons with disabilities.”
Consequently, non-compliant news publishers will be punished by receiving lower rankings in searches.
Google criticized the Trudeau liberals for the proposed bill earlier this month.
Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer of YouTube, owned by Google, wrote a blog titled “Canada: Keep YouTube yours.”
“What’s deeply concerning is that the current version of the Bill has the potential to disadvantage the Canadian creators who build their businesses on our platform, and change the personalized experience of millions of Canadians who visit YouTube every day,” said Mohan.
Additionally, Twitter representatives compared the Liberals to communists over their desire to implement mass censorship via Bill C-11.
“The proposal by the government of Canada to allow the Digital Safety Commissioner to block websites is drastic. People around the world have been blocked from accessing Twitter and other services in a similar manner as the one proposed by Canada by multiple authoritarian governments (China, North Korea, and Iran, for example) under the false guise of ‘online safety’ impeding peoples’ rights to access information online.”
“Further, there are no checks or balances on the commissioner’s authority, such as the requirement of judicial authorization or warnings to service providers. The government should be extremely mindful of setting such a precedent – if Canada wants to be seen as a champion of human rights, a leader in innovation and in net neutrality globally, it must also set the highest standards of clarity, transparency and due process in its own legislation.”
If Bill C-11 becomes law, organizations like The Counter Signal, True North, Rebel News, and The Post Millennial will likely be found on the last page of search results.
