2025 Federal Election
Mark Carney Vows Internet Speech Crackdown if Elected
By Christina Maas
Mark Carney dodges Epstein jabs in Hamilton while reviving failed Liberal plans for speech control via Bill C-36 and Bill C-63.
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It was supposed to be a routine campaign pit stop, the kind of low-stakes political affair where candidates smile like used car salesmen and dish out platitudes thicker than Ontario maple syrup. Instead, Mark Carney found himself dodging verbal bricks in a Hamilton hall, facing hecklers who lobbed Jeffrey Epstein references like Molotovs. No rebuttal, no denial. Just a pivot worthy of an Olympic gymnast, straight to the perils of digital discourse.
“There are many serious issues that we’re dealing with,” he said, ignoring the criticism that had just lobbed his way. “One of them is the sea of misogyny, antisemitism, hatred, and conspiracy theories — this sort of pollution online that washes over our virtual borders from the United States.”
Ah yes, the dreaded digital tide. Forget inflation or the fact that owning a home now requires a GoFundMe. According to Carney, the real catastrophe is memes from Buffalo.
The Ghost of Bills Past
Carney’s new plan to battle the internet; whatever it may be, because details are apparently for peasants, would revive a long-dead Liberal Party obsession: regulating online speech in a country that still pretends to value free expression.
It’s an effort so cursed, it’s been killed more times than Jason Voorhees. First, there was Bill C-36, which flopped in 2021. Then came its undead cousin, Bill C-63, awkwardly titled the Online Harms Act, which proposed giving the Canadian Human Rights Commission the power to act as digital inquisitors, sniffing out content that “foments detestation or vilification.”
Naturally, it died too, not from public support, but because Parliament decided it had better things to do, like not passing it in time.
But as every horror franchise teaches us, the villain never stays away for long. Carney’s speech didn’t include specifics, which is usually code for “we’ll make it up later,” but the intent is clear: the Liberals are once again oiling up the guillotine of speech regulation, ready to let it fall on anything remotely edgy, impolite, or, God forbid, unpopular.
“Won’t Someone Think of the Children?”
“The more serious thing is when it affects how people behave — when Canadians are threatened going to their community centers or their places of worship or their school or, God forbid, when it affects our children,” Carney warned, pulling the emergency brake on the national sympathy train. It’s the same tired tactic every aspiring control freak uses, wrap the pitch in the soft fuzz of public safety and pray nobody notices the jackboot behind the curtain.
Nothing stirs the legislative loins like invoking the children. But vague terror about online contagion infecting impressionable minds has become the go-to excuse for internet crackdowns across the Western world. Canada’s Liberals are no different. They just dress it up and pretend it’s for your own good.
“Free Speech Is Important, But…”
Former Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, doing her best impression of a benevolent censor, also piped up earlier this year with a classic verbal pretzel: “We need to make sure [freedom of expression] exists and that it’s protected. Yet the same freedom of expression is currently being exploited and undermined.”
Protecting free speech by regulating it is the sort of logic that keeps satire writers out of work.
St-Onge’s lament about algorithms monetizing debate sounds suspiciously like a pitch from someone who can’t get a word in on X. It’s the familiar cry of technocrats and bureaucrats who can’t fathom a world where regular people might say things that aren’t government-approved. “Respect is lacking in public discourse,” she whined on February 20. She’s right. People are tired of pretending to respect politicians who think governing a country means babysitting the internet.
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Powerful forces want to silence independent voices online
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Governments and corporations are working hand in hand to control what you can say, what you can read; and soon, who you are allowed to be.
New laws promise to “protect” you; but instead criminalize dissent.
Platforms deplatform, demonetize, and disappear accounts that step out of line.
AI-driven surveillance tracks everything you do, feeding a system built to monitor, profile, and ultimately control.
Now, they’re pushing for centralized digital IDs; a tool that could link your identity to everything you say and do online. No anonymity. No privacy. No escape.
This isn’t about safety, it’s about power.
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Walk this way! …singing, hey diddle diddle with the NDP in the middle…
Rumours are bouncing around that a number of NDP MPs are looking at potentially crossing the floor to join the Liberal Party of Canada and give Mark Carney the majority he is looking for. The final count for the Liberal Party was that they finished with 169 seats, a mere three seats short of the number needed to claim majority and not have to work with other parties to create a workable mandate.
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From the NDP perspective, I sort of get it. After all, Singh lost in his own riding, the party no longer enjoys Official Party Status and all the accoutrements that come along with this (the biggest one being money), and the party is rumoured to be bankrupt. From an individual’s perspective, crossing the floor gives them four years of employment (beyond that may be more murky as many will say “I didn’t vote for that”), and if you are amongst the first to cross, your bargaining position (cabinet position) can enhance your political lot in life fairly materially. If this were to occur it will happen quickly as the law of diminishing returns happens exponentially faster should you be the fourth to cross the line (maybe the Lizzy will join the race!)
From the Liberal perspective, I’m not as convinced the benefits are as transparent, from a nation building perspective. Sure, you get the majority (and thus mandate) you wish to pursue, but you truly would be thumbing your nose at Canada when you know that many NDP votes metaphorically crossed the floor to vote during the election (likely without the foresight that it would result in the death of their party), and that the country is actually pretty evenly split between the Liberals and Conservatives. Language like “now is the time for Canada to unite” and “we need a strong mandate to make Canada strong, and now we have it” could be thrown around, but that can create real fractures should that occur.
Personally, I am hoping that Prime Minister Carney says no to any floor crossers, and works to bridge the divides that are significant within this country. There is no reason that Canada cannot be one of the greatest countries, other than getting in the way of ourselves. Now is the time for olive branches, not cactus areoles.
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From William’s Substack
William Lacey
I put a lot of personal energy into this election, trying to understand why it was that Canadians so wholeheartedly endorsed Mark Carney as their new leader, despite the fact that it was the same party who caused irreparable economic harm to the economy, and he has a similar philosophical outlook to the core outlook of the party. I truly believe that we have moved to a phase in our electoral process where, until something breaks, left leaning ideology will trump the day (pun intended).
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Coming out of this election I have three questions.
1. What of Pierre Poilievre? The question for Conservatives is whether the wolves feed on the carcass of Poilievre (in my opinion the worst enemy of a Conservative is a Conservative) and initiate the hunt for a new leader (if they do, I believe the future should be led by a woman – Melissa Lantsman or possibly Caroline Mulroney), or does Poilievre move to Alberta and run for a “safe” seat to get back into the House of Commons, change his tone, and show people he too can be Prime Ministerial? His concession speech gives clues to this.
2. What of Mark Carney? Maybe (hopefully) Carney will see the light and try to bring the nation together, as there is an obvious east-west split in the country in terms of politics. Time will tell, and minority governments need to be cautious. Will we have a Supply and Confidence 2.0 or will we see olive branches extended?
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3. What of the House of Commons? As I have mentioned previously, there has been discussion that the House of Commons may not sit until after the summer break, meaning that the House of Commons really will not have conducted any business in almost a year by the time it reconveens. If indeed “we are in the worst crisis of our lives” as Prime Minister Carney campaigned on, then should we not have the House of Commons sit through the summer? After all, the summer break usually is for politicians to go back to their ridings and connect with their constituents, but if an election campaign doesn’t constitute connecting, what does?
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Regardless, as the election is behind us, we now need to see what comes. I will try to be hopeful, but remain cautious. May Canada have better days ahead.
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