It’s election day and I would ordinarily post up something about what to look forward to, but I don’t think there is any.
It’s election day here in Canada. The party platforms are in, the advertising campaigns have run their course (most of which was pretty bad), the arguments were made, the debates became a debacle that proved, once again, they are irrelevant, and now Canadian voters are heading out to the polls if they haven’t already.
Just before the campaign first began, it seemed like the Conservatives were going to easily cruise to an easy election victory. That party had a 25 point lead over the Liberals and the election seemed like it was going to be a coronation for Pierre Poilievre (I really hate trying to spell that last name as I get super paranoid I got it wrong). Now, the inverse is true. Mark Carney surged in the polls, Donald Trump touched the Conservative election campaign, the Conservative party died in the polls (Poilievre today reportedly begged Trump to stay out of the election, hilariously enough), and now the Liberals are looking to easily cruise into an easy victory.
So, the statistics gathered have been concluding that there really is only three real possible outcomes. The most likely outcome is the Liberals sweep to power in a majority government. I’ve seen the odds reach 80% at one point and the odds of that are still roughly that good. Then there is the second most plausible outcome which is the Liberals win a minority government again. Finally, the more unlikely scenario is that there is a surprise Conservative minority government. The odds of it being anything other than the above three are so remote that it’s not even really worth mentioning.
The question then becomes this: looking through the lens of digital rights and technology, what would be a good outcome for Canadians? The sobering answer is none of the above. All three are bad for the country. So, let’s go through, one by one, why each scenario is bad for digital rights and technology starting with the most plausible.
Liberal Majority Scenario
The first scenario is the Liberal majority government. It would be a really bad outcome for Canadians for a number of reasons. First of all, the Online News Act, which has caused significant damage to the news ecosystem, would effectively remain in place, causing even more damage. There might be some legal challenges associated with it, but beyond that, the law would continue to wreak financial havoc on the news sector, ensuring that government hand-picked “winners” in the marketplace of ideas would live entirely on government subsidies and bailouts. This ensures that those media organizations already in the governments good graces remains in the governments good graces while many others (not all) will eventually starve out over the long term and go under.
The second major problem is that there is no hope that the Online Streaming Act would get rescinded. That law is currently being implemented at the CRTC and is on the verge of causing significant harm to online creators in Canada. This by downranking independently produced content in favour of government certified speech (aka “Cancon”). It is unconstitutional for obvious reasons and will likely get challenged in the courts on a number of fronts. Still, the damage this could do to digital first creators stands to be immense once it finally reaches the end of the consultation phase and makes its way out of the implementation phase.
Third, the Digital Services Tax which has infuriated the US for multiple years now (be it via the Biden administration or the Trump administration) will likely remain unchanged, putting Canada at a significant disadvantage on the trade front with the US when Canada needs all the advantages in the world to survive the trade war the US has started. This while raising the prices for ordinary Canadians as well since those taxes will invariably be passed onto consumers (on some platforms, that is part of the policy already).
Fourth, the renewed efforts to implement a massive internet censorship through a government apparatus. The Liberals have been well known to be pushing this through a veiled effort of tackling “harmful” content such as hate speech and racism, but such legislation has been known in the past to go far beyond that via demands to order websites to take down content within 24 hours or face multi-million dollar fines. All of this regardless of the websites capabilities or size. It wasn’t until overwhelming backlash that the Liberal government backed off most of the most controversial elements of such legislation, but with a majority government, then there is no reason not to re-introduce these awful provisions that would basically make it impossible to run a website out of Canada for virtually any public facing reason.
All of this could very well happen while critical issues such as internet affordability and access, the lack of any real privacy laws, and other issues remain either forgotten or on the slow walked path to dying on the orderpaper even if these critical issues get “addressed” through the tabling of legislation the government has no intention of passing (privacy reform is a notorious example of this as it spent over a decade waiting to see the light of day).
Liberal Minority Situation
In this scenario, the situation of the Online News Act and Online Streaming Act remains unchanged. The thing is, in this scenario, then there is a chance that things like “Online Harms” might get challenged and slowed down in the legislative process. While that sounds like a silver lining, it’s only a small one which basically means things might not get significantly worse from here on out.
In the minority government situation, it gives the Conservative party the chance to try and shoe-horn their own brand of mass online censorship and surveillance through the so-called “Age Verification” legislation. This is a piece of legislation that would mandate that your personal identity online get tied to a drivers license to ensure that the government knows who you are when browsing the web.
All of this while censoring content that can be labelled under a very loose definition of “pornography”. That term has had a history of being placed on LGBTQ content among other things and has long been a tool to censor content that the right wing politicians don’t personally like. Even worse is the fact that such legislative efforts have been known to make a very fluid and easily changed definition as well so that anything deemed “offensive” can be placed under the category of “pornographic”.
The impact on websites, of course, is significant. Not every website can afford to pay the paymasters thousands of dollars just to ensure that their website remains “legal” under this new law. Without being forced to pay the protection money to the censorship mafia, websites could face millions of dollars in fines and financial ruination.
While a minority government doesn’t guarantee that this scenario plays out, it opens the door to making this scenario possible to play out. After all, the NDP and the Bloc have been known to support such censorial efforts in the first place (just as they have been known to support the Online News Act and Online Streaming Act respectively).
What’s more, actual issues such as privacy reform and internet affordability and access have effectively zero chance of even making their way to the political surface as the political parties fight over which brand of internet censorship is the “right and just” version and which one is the government overstepping its authority and becoming a direct threat to the Canadian Charter. So, I don’t see this exactly being a good scenario by any means, though it could be far worse.
Conservative Minority Scenario
Apart from the surprise you would see from analysts and commentators, this scenario would bring about it’s own set of problems. Yes, it is entirely possible that the Online News Act and Online Streaming Act days would be numbered (and that would be a great thing to see, don’t get me wrong! Both of those laws need to be removed as quickly as possible.) What’s more, it would be much harder for an “online harms” bill to see the light of day – and in all likelihood, if one were to emerge, it would very likely look much different than what we’ve seen in the past. How well it would look remains to be seen in my view.
Still, this would all but ensure that the “Age Verification” bill, and all of the horrors that come with it, would be on track to pass with only the hopes that the other parties slow it down enough to die on the orderpaper.
What’s worse, I suspect that we’ll also be seeing legislation coming forth cracking down on environmental activism just like the Harper years where the Harper Conservative government tried to brand environmental activism as “eco-terrorism”. this as environmental groups could end up on terrorist watch lists for purely political reasons. This while science groups such as those who are in health face threats of defunding as well as political intervention (i.e. in the area of vaccine mandates and vaccine educational efforts).
Journalism efforts would probably not be spared as news outlets that don’t exclusively publish material constantly flattering the Conservative party would constantly have to watch their backs as there is no telling when their funding will get pulled or the SLAPP lawsuits start raining down on them. Any speech that is contrary to the political would probably be deemed “treason” in the eyes of the government as the government looks to stamp out speech that doesn’t comfortably align with the far right ideology.
There would be some pushback from other parties given the minority situation, but it would be a very real potential threat under this scenario as speech would be under fire in very similar ways it is in the US at this point in time.
Conclusions
This is all what I can visualize happening in these different scenarios. Obviously, it’s entirely possible that something different happens, but I see this as being parts of the likely outcomes. I don’t see any of these scenarios being good, but I think the Liberal minority government scenario is probably the best case scenario despite all the problems that come along with it. This followed closely behind the Conservative minority government which is far more unlikely to happen. A Liberal majority, with it being the worst case scenario of the three, is also the most likely at this point based on what I’ve seen.
At any rate, regardless of the outcome, it’s going to be bad news for Canadian’s if you care about digital rights and technology. While I’ll look on with interest to see what actually happens with the election, I don’t believe I have a chance at being happy with the outcome.
