Canada’s digital innovators have taken numerous hits. Canada’s throne speech appears to have further shafted them.
During the last government, Canada’s digital innovators have taken hit after hit after hit as the Canadian government continues to work hard to make life much harder for them. Examples include how innovative digital news organizations became collateral damage when legacy media companies successfully and stupidly got Canada’s link taxes passed.
Another example is digital first creators staring down the barrel of mass government censorship as video content they worked hard to produce gets downranked thanks to government algorithmic manipulation. This after the government flipped the bird at digital first creators and stupidly passed the Online Streaming Act. The law is currently before the CRTC for consultations to determine implementation which is why the affects haven’t been felt yet.
Even Canadian users who simply use the internet got heavily shafted by the government. As Canadian’s continue to pay some of the highest cell phone rates in the developed world, Canadian’s were given a giant “fuck you” by the government when they approved the Roger’s Shaw merger, ensuring those rates are jacked up that much further thanks to an even more consolidated telecommunications industry.
Criminals continue to take advantage of a lack of laws surrounding privacy. In practical terms, there are no enforceable laws protecting people’s personal information. Only the threat of a strongly worded letter and nothing else unless the victims scrounge up the cash on their own to litigate. At that point, the victims are on their own. There are no real enforcing the protection of personal information at the corporate level and nothing is stopping from shady data brokers from exploiting the hell out of people’s personal information for profit. As a result, victimizing people has never been easier for criminals as harassing phone calls and scams can easily bombard someone at any time. This thanks to that personal information being a simply purchase away for criminals. The government’s response? I don’t care. This after privacy reform was slow walked privacy reform died on the orderpaper after the election. Punctuating the point is how little political parties even cared about digital rights in general.
The message has long been clear: if you either build a career on innovation, or even use digital technology at all, the government hates you and everything about you. As a result, they will work hard to ensure the worst possible outcome on the legislative front. After all, the last government did an impeccable job at doing just that.
Of course, with a new Prime Minister in a much different environment, it is easy to think that a page would be turned and that the government would be doing a better job at looking out for your interests. Well, Canada’s speech from the throne was the first chance the government had to at least hint at that. That was delivered today and you can read the whole speech yourself here.
If you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here is everything I could find that is even remotely relevant:
The Government is determined to protect the institutions that bring these cultures and this identity to the world, like CBC/Radio-Canada.
Canada has embraced its British, French, and Indigenous roots, and become a bold, ambitious, innovative country that is bilingual, truly multicultural, and committed to reconciliation.
It will enable Canada to become the world’s leading energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy. To build an industrial strategy that will make Canada more globally competitive, while fighting climate change. To build hundreds of thousands of good careers in the skilled trades. And to build Canada into the world’s leading hub for science and innovation.
That’s… literally it. That’s the only things I could find even remotely related to what we focus on here on Freezenet. Essentially, all Prime Minister Mark Carney cares about is protecting the CBC’s interests. The other two excerpts are just the mere mention of innovation. The first is within the context of supporting bilingualism while the other is in relationship to climate change (which, at least in that area, isn’t bad at all). Heck, Artificial Intelligence (or AI) wasn’t even mentioned once. AI is an over-hyped bandwagon that Carney seemed interested in jumping on and even that didn’t get a mention.
Once again, this is the latest sign that the government is taking a rather hostile view of digital innovation and protecting digital users. The Throne Speech was Carney’s first chance as Prime Minister to show that he cares for all Canadian’s. Instead, anyone even remotely related to internet related stuff (which is almost everyone) is, once again, getting the shaft.
Not even 2 days into the new Parliament, S-210 has been resurrected in the Senate: it is now Bill S-209.
Most instances of “sexually explicit” was replaced with “pornographic”, where section 2 no longer refers to 171.1 of the Criminal Code, otherwise the bill is literately the same Charter molesting mess it was before…only visible changes is under “Regulations” (please advise if worse or not).
Ugh! Not that mess again (and that soon to boot!). Thanks for the tip. I’ll be looking into that one.