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People's Party of Canada leader Maxime BernierShutterstock

(LifeSiteNews) –– Leader of the People’s Party of Canada (PPC) Maxime Bernier has warned LifeSiteNews in an exclusive interview that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recently-passed internet censorship legislation Bill C-11 is “dangerous” and could lead to a metaphorical “wall” being erected around the nation’s internet, mirroring the online experience of people in Communist China. 

“In the first place, there is absolutely no need for the government and the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) to tell platforms to modify their algorithms to promote Canadian content,” Bernier told LifeSiteNews via email in response to Bill C-11, which became law last Thursday after the Senate voted to pass the bill despite the House of Commons rejecting their proposed amendments. 

“Canadians can decide what they want for themselves without the government holding their hands. This is a first step in creating a wall around the Canadian internet like the Chinese government does in China,” he added, making reference to the heavy regulations placed on the internet by the Communist Chinese Party (CCP), which prohibits citizens from accessing a variety of mainstream websites.

Continuing, Bernier said that “it’s unfortunate that the majority of Senators caved in and voted for the bill even after the government had rejected a crucial amendment proposed by senators Julie Miville-Dechêne and Paula Simons to clarify that it would not be used to regulate independent creators posting videos on YouTube and other platforms, which would be a clear violation of free expression.”

The Senate has no democratic legitimacy to reject a bill that the government clearly wants to adopt, but it has a crucial role to play in our parliamentary system in making sure all bills are constitutional, are clear and consistent, and do not violate Canadians’ basic rights and freedoms,” he added.

Speaking about the uncertainty posed by the bill in regards to its impact on user-generated content, Bernier did note that the bill’s initial sponsor, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, has “said he will issue a policy direction to the CRTC next month that will clarify that content by independent creators will not be captured by the law,” but wonders why such clarification was not made prior to the bill’s passing.

Do the Liberals want to keep this option on the table for the future? Is this a way to incrementally increase the government’s censorship powers? Given how authoritarian the Trudeau government has become, this is likely the case, and the PPC will continue to oppose this bill until it is repealed,” Bernier told LifeSiteNews.

In practice, Bill C-11 now mandates that the CRTC oversee regulating online content on platforms such as YouTube and Netflix to ensure that such platforms are promoting Canadian content in accordance with a variety of CRTC guidelines. 

Due to the broad nature of the mandate, critics have said putting the law into practice could take years of back-and-forth debate.

Some of the bill’s most intense critics, such as Michael Geist, have warned Bill C-11 could spell disaster for internet freedom for Canadians, especially content creators.  

After Bill C-11 passed, Geist, who serves as the research chair of internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, blasted the legislation, noted that lobbying groups like the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expression are already calling for “social media” rules to be enacted under the new law. 

The bill has also faced immense criticism for its implications on freedom of speech, to the point that even Big Tech giants YouTube and Apple, which both have a history of enacting their own forms of censorship on users, had urged the Senate to stall the bill. 

Besides Bernier and Geist, Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre has also sounded the alarm over Bill C-11, promising Canadians to turf the law should he be elected prime minister. 

Initially introduced in February of 2022, Bill C-11 is just one of many similar pieces of legislation introduced by Trudeau’s Liberals since they took power in 2015.  

Late last year, the Trudeau government decided to fast-track another content-regulation bill, C-18, titled the “Online News Act,” by rushing it through the House of Commons. This bill is also now before the Senate. 

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