By Lisa William-Harris & Michael Choo-Chong

The Canadian Bill of Rights recognizes freedom of speech and freedom of press as fundamental freedoms and human rights. Having the right to voice one’s personal opinions is critical in allowing humanity to grow and flourish. In an age that is quickly digitizing all aspects of humanity, social media has become the de facto town square, where individuals can stand on a symbolic soap box and speak their minds.

Individuals, content creators and independent journalists are growing increasingly concerned with the direction of these laws. Given how one-sided mainstream media has become, social media has been crucial for Canadians to express and explore multiple points of view, and make informed decisions for themselves. It seems that the mainstream news simply parrots the narrative dictated by their advertisers or shareholders — with very little investigative journalism being performed — allowing global political & financial interests to be shaped into a ‘cohesive’ narrative. They’re engineering an environment of division and hatred; for divided people are easier to control.

It became very clear early on in the pandemic that the ability to share one’s opinion openly and without fear was quickly eroding. This proves extremely dangerous, especially at a time when freedom of speech has never been more important. The reality is that the number of doctors and citizens who have spoken out against the ‘$cience’ account for more than a mere ‘Fringe Minority’. If one were to combine them with the number of individuals who recognize that something is wrong but have been fearful of the repercussions of speaking against the narrative, we’re certain this would represent a majority.

Buried within a rather large bill, obscured by actions intended to preserve Canadian “culture” and language, is section 4.2 of Bill C-11. This will give the CRTC significant control over every Social Media platform and algorithm, severely hindering independent journalism. Bill C-11, known as the “Online Streaming Act”, is a thinly veiled attempt at censoring the internet. This is why it is sometimes referred to as the “Internet Censorship Act” or somewhat offensively the “Great Firewall of Chinada Act”. This is due to the eerily reminiscent nature of China’s strictly regulated internet/firewall. China blocks much ‘Western’ content in an attempt to shape the behaviour of its citizens. Frighteningly, this seems to be a worldwide trend, as many democratic countries are developing similar measures; like the United States’ “Board of Disinformation” and the United Kingdom’s “Online Safety Act”. Author, Bruce Coville once said “Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.” To dismantle freedom of expression under the guise of keeping people safe by stopping misinformation, disinformation, and mal-information is incredibly dangerous.

The failed predecessor, Bill C-10, excluded user-generated content. This exclusion was quietly modified as the bill was updated to Bill C-11. The bill claims to only affect monetized users but the terminology could be interpreted to include non-monetized users if they include licensed content in their upload. There will be requirements for English, French and Indigenous content. As well as requirements for accessibility to disabled individuals in terms of consumption and creation of content. This may create significant financial barriers for new social media services, limiting competition against existing services like YouTube. These new rules could also result in frivolous fines for non-compliance, exorbitant licensing fees, and restrictions and manipulations to the algorithms affecting what content is promoted to individuals. Bill C-11 was quickly passed through the House of Commons, skipping consideration of amendments suggested by the opposition, and now sits with the Senate in the second reading.

Social media companies have already taken it upon themselves to define what is considered truthful by the standards of their platforms — like how frivolously users have been de-platformed, de-monetized, disparaged and cancelled for disagreeing with the narrative — or with inaccuracies of the ‘Fact Checkers’, hired by Big Tech, often without specialized knowledge.

One might think this is a good reason to allow the CRTC to take tighter control of social media. Yet how are we to trust that the CRTC can neutrally fulfill this role, without bias, given what many would see as an apparent recent conflict of interest? — having made a decision that would result in lower internet prices, then going back on that decision — it was later revealed that CRTC’s Ian Scott and Bell Canada’s Mirko Bibic met over beers a week after Bell filed the application to overturn the decision. The matter was first presented to the Integrity Commissioner, who referred the case to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.

When the government defines what is allowed to be voiced and shared, they are essentially defining the reality which we are allowed to experience. Even if you trust and rely on the government’s knowledge today, how do you know you will be able to trust them tomorrow, in a year, a decade or even a generation from now? Where do we draw the line in outsourcing our knowledge and critical thinking to the Elite Globalists who influence politics throughout the world?

The worldwide lockstep response to Covid-19 could be interpreted by many as the largest psychological operation experienced by the human race. Allowing the media to control the messaging of medical information gave them the ability to instill fear using skewed statistics resulting in a widespread sort of culture shock. Their protocols forced restraints on the social fabric of humanity, with very little evidence that these methods are effective. It will be years before we understand the true extent of the physical, mental and social side effects of the mandates — handed down through governments around the world — as dictated by the unelected World Health Organization.

Freedom of speech is essential to ensure ALL human rights are respected. It is essential for Science to remain a debate amongst intellectuals, rather than an edict by the entity which can fund the most studies in support of their narrative. We would say it is imperative for an equal amount of research to be done to disprove a narrative, otherwise, the techniques outlined in “How to Lie with Statistics” by Darrel Huff, will continue to be a mechanism for distorting reality itself. Imposing geographical and cultural restrictions on something that originated as the World Wide Web is somewhat of a paradox, that we just cannot accept.

Please ask yourself what kind of world we want to leave for the generations to come, and take the time to read the bill and contact all of the senators, before it is too late!

The latest version of the bill can be found here: https://www. parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44- 1/bill/C-11/third-reading

Physical letters to parliament are free to mail, and do not need a stamp or postage before being mailed. Senator information can be found at:
https:// sencanada.ca/en/senators/
https://sencanada.ca/en/contactus

And the following sites can be used to send an editable, prepopulated email to the senators instead. This method tends to be less effective than physical letters, but these templates can also be printed and mailed, if desired. Using these sites may result in being added to the website’s mailing list:

https://KillBillC-11.blogspot.com
https://action.openmedia.org/page/105612/action/1
https://digitalfirstcanada.ca/bills/fix-c11/