Liberals Prepare To Pull Down The Maple Curtain On Their Critics
"Censorship is telling a man he can’t eat steak because a baby can’t chew it.” Mark Twain
With her soulless eyes and laconic delivery she’s the Stasi version of Jodie Foster. Beware when Melanie Joly, dirge-like holdover from the Trudeau years, contemplates "legal action" against users on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social media that she suspects of spreading "misleading information." She didn’t get to where she is today by being afraid to break a few free-range eggs.
In plain English/ French/ Cree she’s looking to emulate the UK where the government does a brisk business charging individuals who critique the inept Labour government online. (For some reason the offending critics are never from minority groups in the country.) For those who are caught in the snare, their next address can be His Majesty’s Prison.
How does it work, you say? Imagine some Canadian online suggests that the minister has generated oh, a $54,000-a-month bar tab. She could see this as misinformation or disinformation or an invasion of her safe space. And, on the request of said minister, the offending critic will be paid a visit the Mounties, likely at their home. Before you known it the person has lost his freedom of speech, his savings and, sometimes, his liberty.
That’s how the British plan works, anyhow. For Carney’s Liberals having now bought up the legacy media and purchased a majority in Parliament through floor crossings (they stashed another Quebec Tory in the Senate this week) the Maple Curtain is the start of a three-year hunting season ahead. You wonder why so many critics of the Libs have headed south? They’re getting out while the getting is good.
To distract their base from the reality of their censorship plan the Libs created Bills C22 and C34 to allegedly protect the innocent from the malign voices on social media. It’s full of well-meaning gobbledygook about protecting trans kids and Muslims who block street intersections for a prayer session. They known they don’t have to try too hard with their podcast/ bot following that palpitates over every Carney promise.
The reality is, shall we say, somewhat more menacing? Marty Moore (@CanConLaw), a constitutional lawyer funded by the Justice Centre, warns the bills reflect an “increasing desire of the current federal government to police expressions online they view as hateful.” This will all seem familiar to those who lived through years of a Trudeau government ordering you to keep six feet apart, wear paper masks and removing your civil rights for honking your truck horn in protest. “Hurt” is what they say it is.
Now the notoriously prickly PM Carney gets to complete the suffocation. There has already been an Access to Information request about the plan filed by Blacklock’s Reporter. @mindingottawa has uncovered “a federal government strategy for monitoring, organizing, assessing and responding to online ‘misinformation' — including contemplated legal action against individual Canadians. The 35-page internal Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) document outlines a system for tracking online narratives, assessing individual posts, and escalating responses. It also contemplates legal action against Canadians over social-media commentary.”
Contemplates. Hmm. Could be nothing. After all, when has this self-renewing Liberal government ever lied before? Wait, better not answer that. Some will simply rely on the Canadian Bill of Rights to protect them from surveillance and incarceration. Fat chance. When the soupçon media start guilting them it will seem like the Mahdi come to slaughter Gordon at Khartoum.
Much of this insidious movement toward censorship has been masked by Carney’s MOU flurry as he plays architect of postmodern Canada, buying up underwater condo inventories on behalf off offshore developers or proposing pipelines that his predecessor thought there was no call for. (His latest is appointing himself leader of group of nations suspiciously resembling his earlier GFanz boondoggle.)
There’s lots to deflect from. BC records show premier David Eby was briefed for a meeting with developer Bob Rennie in the same month Rennie hosted a fundraiser for Mark Carney. Brookfield become co-owner of dozens of unwanted condos via Concert Properties just 15 days before the member for Brookfield announced his plan to give them S3.2 billion from Canadian taxpayers.
Carney’s Liberal members on the panel looking into the condo collapse shut down any inquiry into the PM’s bond with the company he chaired before becoming prime minister.— much as they prorogued Parliament under Justin for eight months to keep him from answering where $300 million went.
So if you flash forward 6-12 months ahead and print this column, it may prove your last if it offends M. Joly or the former groomsmen in Justin’s wedding to what’s-her-name. In case of shutdown we may need to get government help at https://x.com/JCCFCanada/status/2074633927386714339?s=20.
No wonder Benjamin Franklin noted 250 years ago that "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2023 book Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, was voted a Top 20 greatest professional hockey books of all time by bookauthority.org . https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1770415300?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid0a1-20 His previous book with his son Evan, Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/106980270