National
Paul Wells on PM Trudeau’s cabinet shake up
Rechie Valdez teared up a bit taking her oath. It was nice.
Posted with permission from Substack author Paul Wells
The army you have
Exciting new combinations of Liberals and syllables
I skipped almost the entire cabinet-shuffle business on Wednesday. I think I’ve mostly managed to avoid getting jaded in this job, but there are days, boy howdy. Welcome, Minister Blah Blah Blah to the crucial office of Provision, Preparedness, Children and Popular Song. Congratulations, hug your kids. Next.
Then here was Rechie Valdez’s voice catching as she took the oaths (one for entry into the Council of the Elders and the other to join the Resonant Circle of the One, or whatever) and for just a minute, boredom took a holiday. The people who do these jobs should be emotional about them. Optimism is a good thing. Small businesses are definitely on the list of things worth caring about. Go get ’em, minister.
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A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of days like this. During the 2021 campaign, when things were going badly, the official line out of the Trudeau brain trust was that the prime minister “doesn’t do shakeups.” And yet here’s one now. What’s changed?
There are always two ready answers to such a question. For one, the world has changed, as it always does. Previous shuffles addressed the astonishing 2016 votes for Brexit and Trump, and the less epochal but still significant election of Doug Ford as Ontario premier in 2018. In late 2021, when Trudeau was randomly firing one of the most experienced ministers in his cabinet, it might still have been possible to believe the PM’s third term in office wouldn’t be dominated by Russia, China, and the knock-on effects from a sharp increase in immigration. The misplaced optimism of that bygone era 20 months ago can no longer be maintained.
Second, the electoral context has changed. “We have all the time in the world before the next election” has become “We sure don’t,” and the readers who get cross when I link to horse-race polls are going to hate clicking on this.
I guess this shuffle is designed to address the Poilievre threat? Kind of? Listlessly? A year ago Trudeau was already getting advice to make sharp, noticeable changes in his team, message and style. (Yes, I just linked to myself.) Today he put Sean Fraser in charge of Housing and Marc Miller in charge of Immigration. Those might be the two most encouraging moves among dozens, both for Liberals who hope “good communicators” won’t turn out to be a sad joke, and for citizens who hope strong administrators might, even if only occasionally, be put in charge of challenging files.
The rest of the day’s news is puzzling. Seamus O’Regan to Labour? I thought the boss liked him. Pablo Rodriguez to Transport would seem to be yet another case of ministerial burnout on all those Web Giant-Killer bills that have become the torment of a succession of Heritage ministers. Pascale St.-Onge replaces him on the censorship ‘n’ subsidies beat, ringing a new variation on the eternal question: Why do they call it Canadian Heritage if only ministers from Quebec are allowed to do the job?
Gary Anandasangaree at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Arif Virani as Minister of Justice and Attorney-General are two cases of rookie ministers promoted to tough jobs. I’ve heard good things about both of them. Both have relevant committee and parliamentary-secretary experience. Virani was Jody Wilson-Raybould’s parliamentary secretary; she seems not to have kept many fond memories. (In her memoir she calls him one of the “talking heads” who were sent out “to make comments that evidence has now shown were not accurate or right.” In general, Trudeau, a non-lawyer mostly counselled by non-lawyers, seems to be chronically unsure why he should have a justice minister or what they are good for.)
Freeland, Guilbeault, Champagne and Joly remain in their previous jobs, evidence of their clout. On the other hand, I maintain that Rodriguez’s being shuffled was evidence of his clout. By now it’s clear that Freeland writes her own rules: she does the work she wants to do, to varying degrees of success, and nobody in this government can make her do anything else. Her fate is bound up with the prime minister’s. Probably neither of them expected it, but the stability of the tandem is now part of Trudeauworld’s game physics.
Cabinet shuffles defy confident prediction, or should. Will Jean-Yves Duclos make a difference as Public Services and Procurement Minister? He should. He’s a detail man in a detail job. But ministers are rarely better than they are permitted to be by circumstances and by the circle around the PM. Duclos will shine if this government wants to buy stuff, and not if it doesn’t.
That 2021 bit of campaign spin wasn’t entirely false. In some ways this prime minister really doesn’t do shakeups. He keeps his chief of staff, his indispensable deputy, his own way of thinking and talking about his government. Everything else swirls around. He came to office promising real change. Increasingly what’s real is what doesn’t change.
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National
Trudeau’s internet censorship Bill C-11 will not be implemented until late 2025
From LifeSiteNews
The delay is due to not having a framework to determine exactly how much streaming services will be forced to pay and also what kind of inclusion and diversity requirements will be mandated.
The implementation of a Canadian law passed by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that would mandate the regulation of online platforms such as YouTube and Netflix to ensure they meet government requirements, has been delayed until late 2025.
As reported recently by the Globe and Mail, Bill C-11, known as the Online Streaming Act that was passed into law in April 2023, was already supposed to have been implemented by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the country’s broadcast regulator that is tasked with putting in place the law.
The law mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadian content on their platforms. As a result, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, blocked all access to news content in Canada. Google has promised to do the same rather than pay the fees laid out in the new legislation.
However, the CRTC said it will not be until late 2025 that it will finally have a framework to determine exactly how much streaming services will be forced to pay, to be in line with mandates for more Indigenous and Canadian content.
As per the Globe and Mail, consultations will be held that will go into March 2026, on what kind of inclusion and diversity requirements will be mandated by the CRTC.
“The Online Streaming Act and the policy direction are both complex and multi-faceted, and we have announced an ambitious set of public hearings and proceedings to address all of the elements they contain,” CRTC spokesperson Leigh Cameron said.
“The CRTC anticipates that by 2026 it will have both had the opportunity to consult widely with Canadians and to have put in place the key elements of the new broadcasting framework,” he added.
Critics of recent laws such as tech mogul Elon Musk have said it shows “Trudeau is trying to crush free speech in Canada.”
This bill has been panned by other critics, such as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, after in October 2023 the CRTC said that certain podcasters must “register” with the government by November 28, 2023.
Regarding Bill C-11, Canadian law professor Dr. Michael Geist warned last year that new powers granted to CRTC via Bill C-11 will not stop at “Web Giants” but will lead to the government going after “news sites” and other “online” video sites as well.
“Bill C-11 was never just about ‘web giants’ and the latest CRTC decision confirms that an extensive regulatory framework is in the works that is likely to cover podcasts, adult sites, news sites, and a host of other online video and audio services,” Geist observed.
Geist said that the “crucial” issue with Bill C-11 was always whether “CRTC exemption from registration requirements, which it sets at $10M in Canadian revenue.”
“That isn’t trivial, but additional exemptions for podcasts, social media, adult sites, news services, thematic services were all rejected,” he noted.
Geist observed that the CRTC in its new rules is effectively saying that a “podcaster or news outlet that generates a certain threshold of revenue must register with the government.”
Delay means Bill could be rescinded before it’s ever implemented
The Conservative Party of Canada, under leader Pierre Poilievre, was a strong opponent to Bill C-11. With polls showing them on track to win the 2025 election in a landslide, it is conceivable the bill may be rescinded before it’s ever implemented.
After the bill was passed by the Senate last year, Poilievre promised a Conservative government would “repeal” Bill C-11.
“The power-hungry Trudeau Liberals have rammed through their censorship bill into law. But this isn’t over, not by a long shot,” Poilievre tweeted.
“A Poilievre government will restore freedom of expression online & repeal Trudeau’s C-11 censorship law.”
Recent polls show that the scandal-plagued federal government has sent the Liberals into a nosedive with no end in sight. Per a recent LifeSiteNews report, according to polls, in a federal election held today, Conservatives under Poilievre would win a majority in the House of Commons over Trudeau’s Liberals.
Canadians are not happy as well with Bill C-11 or the other internet censorship laws put in place by the Trudeau Liberals.
Indeed, in light of the barrage of new internet censorship laws being passed or brought forth by Trudeau, a new survey revealed that the majority of Canadians feel their freedom of speech is under attack.
Trudeau’s other internet censorship law, the Online News Act, was passed by the Senate in June 2023.
The law mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadian content on their platforms. As a result, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, blocked all access to news content in Canada. Google has promised to do the same rather than pay the fees laid out in the new legislation.
The Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63, will target internet speech retroactively if it becomes law. The law, if passed, could lead to large fines and even jail time for vaguely defined online “hate speech” infractions, and has also been panned by Musk.
espionage
The Scientists Who Came in From the Cold: Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory Scandal, Part I
From the C2C Journal
By Peter Shawn Taylor
In a breathless 1999 article on the opening of Canada’s top-security National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, the Canadian Medical Association Journal described the facility as “the place where science fiction movies would be shot.” The writer was fascinated by the various containment devices and security measures designed to keep “the bad boys from the world of virology: Ebola, Marburg, Lassa” from escaping. But what if insiders could easily evade all those sci-fi features in order to help Canada’s enemies? In the first of a two-part series, Peter Shawn Taylor looks into the trove of newly-unclassified evidence regarding the role of NML scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng in aiding China’s expanding quest for the study – and potential military use – of those virus bad boys.
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