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Censorship Industrial Complex

Trudeau government abandoning long-threatened ‘hate speech’ bill after backlash

Published

1 year ago

7 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre has warned that Trudeau’s desire to censor online ‘hate speech’ is nothing more than a ‘woke authoritarian’ tool to silence views that Trudeau dislikes.

The Liberal government is shelving its long-threatened bill to regulate truth and “disinformation” on the internet.

According to information obtained on February 21 by Blacklock’s Reporter, the Liberal government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is abandoning legislation to regulate “hate speech” on the internet following feedback from Canadians that they consider the measure unconstitutional.

“The government heard from Canadians and stakeholders that while false and misleading information online can carry significant consequences, creating legislation and policies that restrict or otherwise limit speech based on the veracity of information would undermine freedom of expression to an unacceptable degree,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc wrote the Commons ethics committee.

The committee had previously recommended legislation to “hold online platforms accountable for publishing false or misleading information”; however, LeBlanc replied that internet literacy programs were sufficient to regulate Canadians internet use.

“Legislation is not the only tool in the government’s toolbox to combat false or misleading information,” he said.

Additionally, most of 9,218 petitioners to the Canadian Heritage Department condemned the proposed legislation as unconstitutional.

Likewise, according to Privy Council research in 2023, most Canadians opposed the measure, saying that “it was of critical importance for Canadians to be able to leave comments and have their voices heard regarding initiatives and policies important to them.”

“While most believed harmful content online represented a growing concern few felt it to be a major issue at present,” the report said. “Several were of the view that individuals were typically able to avoid harmful content by blocking it or not utilizing platforms on which it was present.”

The legislation was first proposed in 2021, when the Trudeau government suggested that a “Digital Safety Commissioner” should police “content moderation” on the internet. Those who violated the “content moderation” would face up to $25 million in fines.

“I think everybody in this country, and especially elected officials, have, I think, a responsibility, a duty to ensure that we protect our institutions and that the last thing we should try to do is to somehow diminish them just in the hope we can score points,” he added.

While Liberals support the measure, Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre recently declared that Trudeau’s desire to censor online “hate speech” is nothing more than a “woke authoritarian” tool to silence views that Trudeau dislikes.

“What does Justin Trudeau mean when he says the worst hate speech?” he questioned during a press conference earlier this week. “He means speech he hates.”

Poilievre warned that Liberals would label anything they disagree with as “hate speech,” referencing former adviser Gerald Butts said that it was “hate speech” to criticize Trudeau for using the term “peoplekind,” labelling those who made fun of Trudeau as “Nazis.”

Poilievre also reminded Canadians that Trudeau branded Canadians who protested COVID regulations in the Freedom Convoy as “a small fringe minority” with “unacceptable views.”

“I point out the irony that someone who spent the first half of his adult life as a practicing racist, who dressed up in hideous racist costumes so many times he says he can’t remember them all, should then be the arbiter on what constitutes hate,” said Poilievre.

“What he should actually do is look into his own heart and ask himself why he was such a hateful racist… And maybe in that way, rather than through coercion, he could help us all in the fight against real hate,” he added.

While the bill regulating “hate speech” seems to have been abandoned for now, since taking office, Trudeau managed to pass bills C-11 and C-18, both of which restrict free speech over the internet.

Bill C-11, or the Online Streaming Act, became law last year and now mandates that Canada’s broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), oversee regulating online content on platforms such as YouTube and Netflix to ensure that such platforms are promoting content in accordance with a variety of its guidelines.

Recently, Canadian law professor Dr. Michael Geist warned that new powers granted to Canada’s broadcast regulator 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.

Trudeau’s other internet censorship law, Bill C-18, the Online News Act, was passed by the Senate in June.

This law mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadians content on their platforms.

As a result, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, blocked all access to news content in Canada.

Critics of Trudeau’s recent laws, such as tech mogul Elon Musk, have said it shows that “Trudeau is trying to crush free speech in Canada.”

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Telegram founder Pavel Durov exposes crackdown on digital privacy in Tucker Carlson interview

Published on June 11, 2025

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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.

“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.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Alberta senator wants to revive lapsed Trudeau internet censorship bill

Published on June 9, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

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.

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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