(LifeSiteNews) –– Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has vowed to continue in Justin Trudeau’s footsteps if the Liberal Party is re-elected, promising even more legislation to crack down on lawful internet content.
Speaking at a recent campaign rally in Hamilton, Ontario, Carney, in response to accusations from the crowd that he had ties to Jeffrey Epstein, took aim at what he called “pollution online.”
“There are many serious issues that we’re dealing with,” Carney said. “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.”
He said that while so-called conspiracy theories targeted at him might be tolerated, the more “serious thing is when it affects how people behave – when Canadians are threatened going to their community centres or their places of worship or their school or, God forbid, when it affects our children.”
“My government, if we are elected, will be taking action,” he boasted.
While there is no concrete evidence Carney knew Epstein, such accusations become numerous online after 2013 pictures of Carney standing alongside now-convicted Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell began to circulate on social media.
Carney’s statement seems to indicate he is taking the same approach to online speech critical of the government as his predecessor, Justin Trudeau.
Under Trudeau, the Liberals put forth a number of internet regulation bills, including Bill C-11, which led to the effective barring of news being able to be shared on many social media platforms.
Prior to the election call, the Liberals were pushing Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, put forth under the guise of protecting children from exploitation online.
While protecting children is indeed a duty of the state, the bill also included a number of 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.
Specifically, the law called for the creation of a Digital Safety Commission, a Digital Safety ombudsperson, and a Digital Safety Office, all tasked with policing internet content. Its “hate speech” section was accompanied by broad definitions, severe penalties, and dubious tactics, including levying preemptive judgments against people if they were feared to be likely to commit an act of “hate” in the future.
Details of the legislation also showed the bill could lead to more people jailed for life for “hate crimes” or fined $50,000 and jailed for posts that the government defined as “hate speech.”
While the Catholic Church does teach that the state can and must deter the proliferation of evil speech, the left-wing definition of “hate speech” often refers to true speech, such as the affirmation of biological reality in the face of gender ideology. In practice, this means the state would be attempting to squash the truth, which can never lawfully be suppressed.
Canadians will head to the polls on April 28.