Trudeau-appointed senator calls out gov’t over ‘Stalin’-esque internet censorship bill
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Senator David Richards said the government should never in ‘any way’ tell Canadians what ‘Canadian content should or should not be or who should be allowed to bob their heads up out of the new murkiness we have created.’
(LifeSiteNews) – A Liberal-appointed Canadian senator compared an internet censorship law introduced by the Liberal federal government to something out of Nazi Germany, warning that such a bill is an Orwellian attempt to force individuals to comply with government messaging.
On Tuesday, Senator David Richards, also an acclaimed author, said as per Blacklock’s Reporter that Bill C-11 is the type of law that will “be one of scapegoating all those who do not fit into what our bureaucrats think Canada should be.”
“Stalin again will be looking over our shoulder when we write,” he added in reference to former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin.
Richards made the comments during the third reading debate of Bill C-11 in the Senate.
He was appointed to the Senate by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017.
Bill C-11, titled An Act to Amend the Broadcasting Act and to Make Related and Consequential Amendments to other Acts, was introduced to the House of Commons by Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez in February 2022.
Bill C-11 has faced immense criticism for its implications on freedom of speech and passed its second reading in the Senate late last year.
Critics have long warned that Bill C-11 will stifle free speech online. Even Big Tech giants YouTube and Apple, which both have a history of censorship, urged the Senate to stall the bill.
In effect, the law, if passed, would mandate that Canada’s telecommunications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), be in charge of regulating online content from platforms such as YouTube to ensure that such platforms were promoting Canadian content.
Richards said that he has a lot of “problems” with “this bill,” noting that he thinks it is “censorship passing as ‘national inclusion.’”