Heritage Minister’s Actions Validate for Second Time Concerns Over Online Speech Regulation Are Legitimate

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez speaks about the government’s plans to amend the Broadcast Act during a news conference in Ottawa on Feb. 2, 2022. The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

Commentary

Canada’s Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez has now twice confirmed that fears regarding the looming regulation of online speech in Canada were and continue to be legitimate.

The first was when, in early February, he introduced Bill C-11—the Trudeau government’s second attempt, to put it simply, to define the global internet as mere broadcasting and put the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in charge of it all, lock stock and barrel. This replaced last year’s first effort, Bill C-10, which stumbled through the House of Commons before dying in the Senate when the election was called. In the course of its journey, then-heritage minister Steven Guilbeault dismissed concerns from many civil rights, legal, and other experts and insisted his legislation posed no threat to freedom of expression. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau referred to opponents of the legislation as tinfoil hatters.

So when the Liberals stepped up to the plate again this February, it was a relief to hear Rodriguez speak about having made some adjustments acknowledging the seriousness of last year’s concerns. While the gesture was appreciated, it was nevertheless quickly proven to be just that—a cosmetic gesture.

The second validation came earlier this month in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when Rodriguez (who has also been musing by the way about an Online News Act supplying more funding for “approved” private sector media and battling “misinformation”) ordered the CRTC to review the status of RT, formerly known as Russia TV. RT is funded and controlled by the Russian government and is commonly understood to be a purveyor of Putin propaganda. Tricky for Rodriguez was that the Broadcasting Act forbids politicians from ordering the removal of a TV channel just because they don’t like it. So, to get around that, he ordered the CRTC to “review” RT’s status and hold a hearing and deliver a decision within two weeks which, given the regulator’s penchant for lethargy, was like asking Old Man Simpson to do backflips.

This resulted in a process that in any other country would be denounced as a show trial and that, heavy on perception and light on evidence, concluded without surprise and with minimal contention that RT is not fit to be available on Canadian cable. Delighted with this successful end-around, Rodriguez declared that “the system works.” Through wry smiles, others saw it as proof that appointees such as those running the CRTC are not at all hesitant to, if asked politely, remove a channel that happens not to suit the government’s mood.

The basis for the CRTC’s decision—that RT had to go because its content was abusive and likely to be exposing ethnic Ukrainians to hatred—was notable for its subjectivity.

“Were these services licensed in Canada, the Commission would have called them to account for their content on the basis that it constitutes abusive comment,” stated the decision, which also referenced the rightful sanctioning by Canada of RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.

Her practices—which had previously been investigated by the United Kingdom’s broadcast regulator—and RT’s overall were viewed as inconsistent with the broad objectives of the Broadcasting Act which states, for example, that the system should “safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada.”

Fair enough. But against whom could that same subjective measure not be used were the government to make further requests for more “reviews?”

Certainly not Chinese state media, which doesn’t appear to trouble anyone either on Parliament Hill or at the CRTC offices in Gatineau.

Peter Dahlin, executive director of the human rights organization Safeguard Defenders, addresses the media during a press conference in London, England, on Nov. 23, 2018. Frank Augstein/AP Photo

Less than a year ago, the regulator flatly ignored Peter Dahlin, executive director of the human rights organization Safeguard Defenders, when he appealed to the CRTC regarding what he said was CGTN’s practice of broadcasting confessions forcibly extracted from prisoners subjected to sleep deprivation and other troubling practices. When he did so, he made the point that in 2006 the Commission had noted that CGTN’s predecessor, CCTV-4, previously broadcast abusive content and warned that if it did so again, its approval for carriage on Canadian cable could be revoked.

No doubt some observers would look at these two situations and wonder at the role politics and the mood of the government of the day plays in what is supposed to be an independent regulator’s decisions.

Why, people might ask, is a Russian state broadcaster’s abusive content bad while the same nonsense from a Chinese state broadcaster is apparently OK?

And how long will it be before the CRTC is applying the same curiously inconsistent approach to picking winners and losers on the internet and shutting down podcasts that in the opinion of its commissioners are “broadcasting” abusive content that fails to “safeguard, enrich and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic fabric of Canada?”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.