Media
Trudeau claims Canada must subsidize CBC to ‘protect our democracy’
From LifeSiteNews
Trudeau failed to explain how the CBC could be an unbiased news source for Canadians when it is being funded by the Liberal party.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claims that Canada must continue to subsidize mainstream media outlet CBC to “protect our democracy.”
During the January 31 question period in the House of Commons, Trudeau promised continued funding for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canada’s public radio and television broadcaster, arguing that the state-funded outlet is necessary for Canada’s democracy.
“At a time of misinformation and disinformation, and the transformation of our media and digital era, we need CBC/Radio Canada to be strong to protect our culture, to protect our democracy, and to tell our stories from one end of the country to another,” Trudeau said.
“We’ll always be here to defend CBC/Radio Canada, and we are going to seek to make necessary investments … to fulfill their mandate to inform and to strengthen democracy here in Canada,” he continued.
Justin Trudeau has the gall to say that state-run media like the CBC is good for democracy! Oh yeah, it's good for the government to subsidize all the media too. pic.twitter.com/QRWtcaPGm0
— David Krayden (@DavidKrayden) February 1, 2024
Trudeau’s statement was in response to a request from Quebec Member of Parliament Martin Champoux (BQ-Drummond) for increased government funding for the Quebec division of CBC, Radio Canada.
Trudeau pointed out that the Liberal government is already massively subsidizing the mainstream media.
“Supporting journalists and local media is very important for this government, particularly at this time that is challenging,” he stated.
Ironically, Trudeau celebrated Bill C-18, the Online News Act, a law which mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadian content on their platforms.
“This is why we put forth [Bill] C-18 which will help our journalists at all levels to continue operating,” Trudeau stated. “We’ll be here to support a free and independent press. That is professional. We know there’s a lot of work to be done still.”
However, thanks to his law, Canadians can no longer view or share news on Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which blocked all access to news content in Canada rather than pay the fees outlined in the new legislation. Google, on the other hand, agreed to pay Canadian legacy media $100 million.
Additionally, Trudeau failed to explain how CBC could be an unbiased news source for Canadians when it is being funded by the Liberal party.
Indeed, many Canadians have pointed out that the massive subsidies have made the CBC into a wing of the Liberal party.
In April, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre labeled the CBC a “biased propaganda arm of the Liberal Party and frankly negatively affects all media.”
“For example, Canadian Press is negatively affected by the fact that you have to report favourably on the CBC if you want to keep your number one, taxpayer-funded client happy,” he said.
“We need a neutral and free media, not a propaganda arm for the Liberal Party… When I am prime minister, we are going to have a free press where every day Canadians decide what they think rather than having Liberal propaganda jammed down their throats.”
Poilievre added that if he becomes prime minister he will cut “corporate welfare,” including money to the CBC.
Despite being nominally unaffiliated with either political party in Canada, CBC takes in about $1.24 billion in public funding every year. This is roughly 70 percent of its operating budget.
That subsidies are the CBC’s largest single source of income has become a point of contention among taxpayers who see the propping up of the outlet as unnecessary.
Furthermore, the CBC was set to receive increased funding thanks to the deal with Google that followed the passing of Trudeau’s Online News Act.
The deal was finalized in early December. Under the new agreement, Google will pay legacy media outlets $100 million to publish links to their content on both the Google search engine and YouTube.
As a result of the government handouts and the Google agreement, roughly half the salary of a CBC journalist earning $85,000 is estimated to be paid by the combined contributions of the Trudeau government and Google.
Additionally, Trudeau recently announced increased payouts for legacy media outlets ahead of the 2025 election. The subsidies are expected to cost taxpayers $129 million over the next five years.
However, even these massive payouts may be insufficient to keep the CBC relevant amid growing public distrust in mainstream media.
According to a recent study by Canada’s Public Health Agency, less than a third of Canadians displayed “high trust” in the federal government, with “large media organizations” as well as celebrities getting even lower scores.
Large mainstream media outlets and “journalists” working for them scored a “high trust” rating of only 18 percent. This was followed by only 12 percent of people saying they trusted “ordinary people,” with celebrities receiving only an eight percent “trust” rating.
Business
Telegram founder Pavel Durov exposes crackdown on digital privacy in Tucker Carlson interview
From LifeSiteNews
By Robert Jones
Durov, who was detained in France in 2024, believes governments are seeking to dismantle personal freedoms.
Tucker Carlson has interviewed Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who remains under judicial restrictions in France nearly a year after a surprise arrest left him in solitary confinement for four days — without contact with his family, legal clarity, or access to his phone.
Durov, a Russian-born tech executive now based in Dubai, had arrived in Paris for a short tourist visit. Upon landing, he was arrested and accused of complicity in crimes committed by Telegram users — despite no evidence of personal wrongdoing and no prior contact from French authorities on the matter.
In the interview, Durov said Telegram has always complied with valid legal requests for IP addresses and other data, but that France never submitted any such requests — unlike other EU states.
Telegram has surpassed a billion users and over $500 million in profit without selling user data, and has notably refused to create government “backdoors” to its encryption. That refusal, Durov believes, may have triggered the incident.
READ: Arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov signals an increasing threat to digital freedom
French prosecutors issued public statements, an unusual move, at the time of his arrest, fueling speculation that the move was meant to send a message.
At present, Durov remains under “judicial supervision,” which limits his movement and business operations.
Carlson noted the irony of Durov’s situating by calling to mind that he was not arrested by Russian President Vladimir Putin but rather a Western democracy.
Former President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev has said that Durov should have stayed in Russia, and that he was mistaken in thinking that he would not have to cooperate with foreign security services.
Durov told Carlson that mandates for encryption “backdoors” endanger all users, not just suspects. Once created, such tools inevitably become accessible to hackers, foreign agents, and hostile regimes.
“In the US,” he commented, “you have a process that allows the government to actually force any engineer in any tech company to implement a backdoor and not tell anyone about it.”
READ: Does anyone believe Emmanuel Macron’s claim that Pavel Durov’s arrest was not political?
Durov also pointed to a recent French bill — which was ultimately defeated in the National Assembly — that would have required platforms to break encryptions on demand. A similar EU proposal is now under discussion, he noted.
Despite the persecution, Durov remains committed to Telegram’s model. “We monetize in ways that are consistent with our values,” he told Carlson. “We monetized without violating privacy.”
There is no clear timeline for a resolution of Durov’s case, which has raised serious questions about digital privacy, online freedom, and the limits of compliance for tech companies in the 21st century.
Censorship Industrial Complex
Alberta senator wants to revive lapsed Trudeau internet censorship bill
From LifeSiteNews
Senator Kristopher Wells and other senators are ‘interested’ in reviving the controversial Online Harms Act legislation that was abandoned after the election call.
A recent Trudeau-appointed Canadian senator said that he and other “interested senators” want the current Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney to revive a controversial Trudeau-era internet censorship bill that lapsed.
Kristopher Wells, appointed by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year as a senator from Alberta, made the comments about reviving an internet censorship bill recently in the Senate.
“In the last Parliament, the government proposed important changes to the Criminal Code of Canada designed to strengthen penalties for hate crime offences,” he said of Bill C-63 that lapsed earlier this year after the federal election was called.
Bill C-63, or the Online Harms Act, was put forth under the guise of protecting children from exploitation online.
While protecting children is indeed a duty of the state, the bill included several measures that targeted vaguely defined “hate speech” infractions involving race, gender, and religion, among other categories. The proposal was thus blasted by many legal experts.
The Online Harms Act would have in essence censored legal internet content that the government thought “likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group.” It would be up to the Canadian Human Rights Commission to investigate complaints.
Wells said that “Bill C-63 did not come to a vote in the other place and in the dying days of the last Parliament the government signaled it would be prioritizing other aspects of the bill.”
“I believe Canada must get tougher on hate and send a clear and unequivocal message that hate and extremism will never be tolerated in this country no matter who it targets,” he said.
Carney, as reported by LifeSiteNews, vowed to continue in Trudeau’s footsteps, promising even more legislation to crack down on lawful internet content.
Before the April 28 election call, the Liberals were pushing Bill C-63.
Wells asked if the current Carney government remains “committed to tabling legislation that will amend the Criminal Code as proposed in the previous Bill C-63 and will it commit to working with interested senators and community stakeholders to make the changes needed to ensure this important legislation is passed?”
Seasoned Senator Marc Gold replied that he is not in “a position to speculate” on whether a new bill would be brought forward.
Before Bill C-63, a similar law, Bill C-36, lapsed in 2021 due to that year’s general election.
As noted by LifeSiteNews, Wells has in the past advocated for closing Christian schools that refuse to violate their religious principles by accepting so-called Gay-Straight Alliance Clubs and spearheaded so-called “conversion therapy bans.”
Other internet censorship bills that have become law have yet to be fully implemented.
Last month, LifeSiteNews reported that former Minister of Environment Steven Guilbeault, known for his radical climate views, will be the person in charge of implementing Bill C-11, a controversial bill passed in 2023 that aims to censor legal internet content in Canada.
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