Never before has the CRTC made a decision as confusing as the one in which Radio-Canada was asked to “publicly” apologize to a complainant.
As if the decision wasn’t ridiculous enough, the CRTC prefaced it with this warning: “This decision contains words or comments that may offend some people, particularly members of the black community and people of color!
We added a little more that the decision was made “on unceded territory”!
I will not use my 500-word column to respond to a single listener’s complaint about the 15-18 show that is the subject of the dispute. Readers are all aware that the complaint gave rise to lengthy deliberations by the CRTC, culminating in a decision that two good-judgment commissioners challenged.
This ill-considered decision has many questioning the CRTC’s competence at a time when several aspects of the C-11 bill under review in the Senate will fall under its jurisdiction. As a result, we have to worry about the decisions that will also be taken by the Digital Safety Commission, which will oversee the law on hate speech online. Pablo Rodriguez, Minister for Inheritance, David Lametti, Minister for Justice, and Marco Mendicino, Minister for Public Safety, are due to introduce this bill in the autumn. Prime Minister Trudeau’s mandate letters gave them 100 days to do so, but they decided to consult.
DECISION BASED ON THE WIND…
If a 54-year-old body like the CRTC can make a decision based on a changing school of thought and social context without regard to Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, then what can we expect from a nine-member federal body like this Digital Security Commission? ? , who will have to draw the difficult outlines of online hate?
The decision just made by the CRTC does not bode well for those it will have to make when the Online Streaming Act goes into effect. Since the submission of the first draft by Minister Steven Guilbeault and the submission of the amended draft by Pablo Rodriguez, there have been voices denouncing the new powers that the CRTC will have. All Conservative MPs rallied behind University of Ottawa Internet Chair guru Michael Geist, former CRTC vice president Peter Menzies and former president Konrad Finkelstein, three allies who were the most outspoken opponents of the bill.
TRUST THE CRTC?
Ian Scott
Throughout the saga, which culminated in June with the third-reading passage of Bill C-11 and its submission to the Senate, Ian Scott, the CRTC’s current chairman, never stopped proclaiming that the CRTC would never exceed its new powers We had to trust this organization that has governed Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications for well over half a century. Conservatives, led by Michael Geist, fear the CRTC will end up regulating and even “taxing” content posted online to YouTube or TikTok by an ordinary citizen. Despite the outraged denunciations of Ian Scott, he nonetheless occasionally made ambiguous remarks, as did Scott Hutton, his Director of Research and Communications.
At a time when such winds of wokism are blowing upon the federal government and the dozens of organizations that depend on it, the worst is to be feared for this freedom of expression that we constantly flaunt.
