Canada is close to dictatorship?

Canada may soon ban social networking sites. All because of a bill that will control your life by restricting the content you watch and imposing another. Nature trips and a child's matinee may soon be regulated by someone else.

Censorship and control

I recently had a personal encounter with censorship. I was preparing a task for my programmer, made a screencast, posted it to YouTube via a private link, and a few hours later received a message that it had been deleted. It was said that I had violated some confidential data by showing someone else's email. But you can't do the task of automating our customer service without it. And my friend from Toronto complained that she had posted videos of her children for grandparents, but the social network thought there was almost child pornography, so it also deleted the videos.

We live in a time when services, including paid services that we use, decide what we can and can't do. But the future is even worse because governments are interfering with social networks. There has been a fierce debate in the Canadian Parliament since 2020 about Bill C-11. It hasn't passed yet, but it has already passed its third reading in the Senate. That is, it is only a few steps away from passage, and then it will affect everyone in Canada. If there are no reactions, other countries will follow Canada's experience.

Bill C-11

Under the guise of helping Canadian performers and content creators, the government wants to be able to regulate services that it couldn't get to before. They are YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, etc. They want to be required to contribute to the creation and promotion of Canadian content. In practice, users will have fewer of their favourite videos, series, and shows. Canadian content creators will have an easier time promoting themselves, but it will happen by limiting your preferences.

Supporters of the bill present their idea as an intention to support creative people from Canada. So that people know about Canadian content creators and can find them on the Internet. As if foreign streaming platforms prevent Canadians from promoting themselves, and without this bill, people will only watch American content. And all of this is bad for Canada's cultural industry.

Have you also noticed that these "good" intentions somehow resemble censorship? C-11 supporters openly say and assure that they are not going to control any individual users or non-Canadian content creators. But if the law passes, the government will be able to regulate what Canadians watch and listen to on popular sites. Instead of offering what you might like, platforms will be forced to offer what the government wants. Naturally, many people don't like such a law. Among them are ordinary Canadians, civil liberties organizations, professors, writers, senators, and, I think, the entire Conservative Party.

Opinion on the bill

Dissenters accuse the Trudeau government of wanting to maintain power, regulate content, that this is not a democracy at all and the like. Lately, I have been hearing more and more criticism of the current Prime Minister Trudeau. Many people are noticing that Canada 10 years ago and now are two different countries. They are either restricting travel very strictly because of the pandemic or closing the accounts of the Freedom Convoy organizers. Immigration policy is not to everyone's liking either, because Canada delays processing documents, many people wait years for immigration, but instead, they accept refugees.

As for the bill, its critics believe it removes competition. Instead of competing on a level playing field, Canadian content will simply be imposed on viewers. Sure, officials may say it's all about Canadian authors, but laws like this give quite a bit of power. Some groups of people will decide what to call Canadian content and what not. This will lead to the suppression of any "non-Canadian" information. And that's real censorship.

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And during one of the meetings, the federal government rejected an amendment that C-11 should not apply to ordinary users. That is, if the law is passed, it will be possible to regulate even content that is posted not by bloggers or companies, but by ordinary people. For example, you upload a video with your cat to YouTube, and its promotion will depend not on the algorithms of the site, but on Canadian officials. I think that's a bit much. Now the bill is in the final stages of consideration, so a lot can change for people in Canada soon.

Alex Pavlenko, founder of Immigrant.Today