Conservatives Join Liberals In Push to Censor the Internet

Conservative MPs have recently said that mass government internet censorship is “a good idea.”

There’s not a lot that the Liberal party and the Conservative party agree on, but one of the main areas that both can agree is that free speech has got to go. Recent reports say that Conservative MPs are growing increasingly warm to the Liberals push to censor the internet.

Conservative party backed website, the National Post, is noting the growing support to censor the internet:

“It’s a good idea,” Saskatoon MP Brad Redekopp told reporters this week on Parliament Hill.

Others had a similar stance.

The proposed mass government censorship program is, of course, under the name “age verification” and it is something that the Liberal party has flip-flopped on. Previously, the Liberal party rightfully pointed out that such laws is little more than a national ID program designed to track the every day movements of ordinary Canadian’s right down to what websites they visit and what they say or view online. However, the very day the Liberals scored a majority government, the Liberal party changed their mind and immediately began pushing age verification laws. The anti-free speech efforts quickly picked up steam after two resolutions in the Liberal National Convention calling on the government to crack down on free speech passed, signalling an even stronger signal that the Liberals are growing increasingly authoritarian over the internet.

Shortly after the Culture Minister said that the party was seriously considering censoring the internet, venture capitalists seized on the opportunity on potentially making a considerable amount of money off of internet censorship and pushed a fake petition, calling for the government to move forward with internet censorship. Canada’s biased mainstream media, sensing an opportunity to crack down on the internet, began heavily promoting that petition, dressing it up as a “grass roots” or “citizen led” initiative despite the very obviously dubious origins.

All of this, of course, was happening after Europe became the latest government to be thoroughly humiliated in their push for similar censorship in the continent. This after their app, allegedly designed to tell platforms that there are “no more excuses” after supposedly solving all the privacy and security concerns, suffered from a data leak and while multiple security issues were discovered. This happened right as one age verification law in the US was ruled unconstitutional. All of this over top of the fact that the Australian age verification law completely went down in flames as people, both young and old, trivially defeat the technology. As a result, such laws have managed to score a failure rate of 100%. Wherever the law was implemented, the laws completely and utterly (though predictably) failed.

Back in Canada, though, it seems that all the evidence is being actively ignored and, instead, politicians are leaning into the moral panic being pushed pretty much everywhere, falsely suggesting that social media is some sort of public health crisis. More from the National Post:

“It’s not an entirely bad idea,” said Ted Falk, a social conservative from rural Manitoba. “I think there’s some merit in having young children not be engaged in social media. I’m not sure about the ban or the parameters, but certainty there needs to be some guidance, if nothing else from the home anyway.”
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Scott Aitchison, an MP from Ontario, added he still has more to learn but that one thing was clear.
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“Kids aren’t okay right now, and we need to be doing more. I think it’s a very important conversation for us to have, and we’re certainly having (it in) the Conservative caucus. I think it’s good Parliament’s taken up the issue.”
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For Dan Robertson, who worked as the party’s chief strategist under former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole during the 2021 election, the answer for whether Poilievre’s Conservatives should embrace the idea is “emphatically yes.”
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“It’s good politics and it puts them on the right side of an important issue.”

Obviously, the evidence continues to not support it. We’ve seen study after study after study after study after study after study after study all come to the same conclusions. Either social media has a neutral or net positive impact. The scientific community is growing increasingly alarmed that science is being either ignored or flatly rejected altogether in favour of wild claims and conspiracy theories about social media and acting on those conspiracy theories to push obviously harmful and ineffective laws onto society. Yet, that seems to be the direction Canada is, sadly, heading in.

It is, obviously, disappointing to see the Conservatives pushing such internet censorship laws, but not entirely surprising. After all, they were the ones behind the previous efforts through Bill S-209/S-210 and if they can get censorship implemented through the Liberal party instead, they wouldn’t exactly complaining, either.

So, while there is no official law being tabled as of yet, things are looking increasingly grim for free speech in Canada. With both the Liberals and Conservatives seemingly backing these censorship laws, it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to push back against these dangerous ideas in the legislative process. Let’s hope something slows this disaster down in some way because that’s about all we got at this point.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Bluesky and Facebook.