The Canadian Federal Liberals have finagled themselves a new majority government and they’re hitting the ground running.
Heritage Minister Marc Miller said the quiet part out loud in a scrum on Parliament Hill on April 15th, days after a combination of by-elections and floor-crossers gave the party their first majority in 6 years:
As per Blacklocks Reporter (the only outlet reporting on this…)
“Cabinet is serious about regulating legal internet content now that it has a parliamentary majority, Heritage Minister Marc Miller said yesterday. “There are some opportunities here,” he told reporters.”
“It’s no secret that we have been in a minority for six years,” said Miller. “There are some opportunities here.”
Those opportunities include a third crack at an Online Harms bill and there will be some manner of regulation over legal internet content.
The earlier version of the Online Harms (Bill C-36) contained provisions political dissent as “hate speech” and would have invoked penalties and mandated “internet kill switches” for criticizing politicians online.
That year also saw the first attempt at B-C26, the Cyber-Security Act, which would have granted the government sweeping powers to order telecomm and internet providers “to do or cease doing anything” that posed a risk to the telecomm system, and could further designate any entity as a “vital component” of infrastructure putting them under the act.
Under Carney, many of these provisions were re-introduced under C-2 (ostensibly, the Strong Borders Act) which also included a ban on cash transactions over $10,000, expanded Canada Post’s ability to open your mail (they already can, this just removed the requirement for warrants) and tucked in the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act (SAAIA) which introduced warrantless surveillance and gag orders on the ISPs who would have to implement it.
Lately there have also been specific initiatives around the following initiatives, so be on the new bill including the following or being accompanied by other acts that will:
- Ban social media for everyone under 16 (which means…)
- Age verification for everybody else
Get ready to show photo ID next time you want to post to Facebook or create a Reddit account.
Given this “opportunity” to use their newly acquired majority status, the Canadian government now has the ability to ram anything through that they want.
It is worth reminding everyone that before he retired, NDP MP Charlie Angus once introduced C-372, a private member bill that sought to outlaw speech in favour or fossil fuels, prescribing prison terms up to two years for doing so.
The Canadian Media Guild already wants the government to seek curbs on people criticizing the media online.
All of which leads to Digital ID, because none of this is tenable without it, and eventually, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) which we already know the Bank of Canada has been working on for years (I have tens of thousands of documents on this via FOIA requests which I’ve never fully gone through but can, now that we have AI)
My concerns around CBDCs have always been that they will morph into social credit systems, and to the “it’ll never happen” people, I’ll point out that Canada was the place where people got their bank accounts frozen for political protests in an action that not one, but two federal courts deemed illegal (case now going to the supremes).
What we know is coming for sure:
- Ban on social media for under 16’s
- New online harms bill (third try)
- Warrantless surveillance at ISP level
- Gag orders on ISPs from telling you you’re being surveilled.
It’s easy to see which way the puck is going if you’ve been paying attention all these years. And we have.
Subscribe to AxisOfEasy today and get a $10-off coupon for easyDNS services for new customers.