OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — Amid reports that Australia and the United Kingdom were looking to ban Elon Musk’s X, Canada’s federal government denied rumors that it would follow suit with a ban of its own of the popular platform.
Evan Solomon, Canada’s minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, quelled the rumors on Sunday, writing on X, “Contrary to media reports, Canada is not considering a ban of X.”
Recent reports suggest that the UK government was putting together a consortium of nations that would band together and ban Musk’s X as a measure to challenge its AI tool known as Grok.
Claims have been made that Grok has been used to generate sexually explicit images of minors, which have then been posted on X. Musk himself has addressed this issue, noting, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
A January 11 report from GB News claimed that U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer was in talks with Canada and Australia about implementing a potential ban of X.
Solomon did not comment on the GB News reports, but on January 8, he posted on X about “deepfakes,” writing, “Deepfake sexual abuse is violence,” adding, “We must protect Canadians, especially women and young people, from exploitation. Platforms and AI developers have a duty to prevent this harm.”
He noted that the Liberal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney will introduce Bill C-16 to tackle “AI” that would “amend the Criminal Code to include deepfakes as intimate images for the offence of publication of an intimate image without consent.” When it comes to internet censorship in Canada, the Liberal federal government has already passed related Bill C-11 and C-18 and is looking to pass more in the near future.
That prompted John Carpay, one of Canada’s top constitutional legal experts who heads the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), to warn that Canadians must remain vigilant and that being lazy is “no excuse” to stand by and allow the “takeover” of “free speech” online by government laws.
In recent years, under Liberal Party rule, the laws passed or introduced by the government seem to coincide with what some of Agenda 2030 proposes, those being digital IDs and restrictions on internet freedom.