NDP MP Charlie Angus has been a consistent – and persistent – voice on digital policies since his election to the House of Commons in 2004. He was one of the first MPs to seriously consider user rights within Canadian copyright law, a vocal supporter of net neutrality and more affordable wireless services, and a leading advocate for privacy protection and social media regulation.
Last week, Angus called a press conference to unveil his six point plan for digital policy, which emphasized accountability, privacy reform, and algorithmic transparency. Along the way, he derided the government’s Bill C-10 efforts as a political dumpster fire and voiced support for the creation of a new officer of parliament charged with responsibility for social media regulation. Charlie Angus joins the Law Bytes podcast this week to reflect on the failed bill C-10 and C-11, his concerns with the online harms consultation, and his hopes for the coming parliamentary session.
The podcast can be downloaded here, accessed on YouTube, and is embedded below. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify or the RSS feed. Updates on the podcast on Twitter at @Lawbytespod.
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CPAC, NDP MP Charlie Angus Calls for Stronger Regulation of Facebook
Why should I take him seriously? He voted for Bill C10 after calling it a political dumpster fire.
THEY DIDNT GET ANY NEW SEATS AND LOOKS LIKE THEY REALIZED I WAS RIGHT IN FLAMING THAT FACEPLANT AREA OR WHATS IT CALLED NOW META ABOUT IT NOT BEING JACK LAYTONS PARTY NO MORE…
HES A MUSCIAN THEY DONT CARE ABOUT ANYTHING BUT COPYRIGHTS AND MONEY
GO PUT COPYRIGHTS TO 50 YEARS AND WATCH HIM REALLY RAIL
You were quoted here. I like it, “Of course” –
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/privacy-commissioner-not-consulted-over-controversial-online-harms-bill
This isn’t a dumpster fire. This is a mountain of tires the Illiberal Party is holding a blowtorch to. If they light it, it’ll burn indefinitely blanketing society in toxic fumes. But hey why not abandon liberal values and the foundation for centuries of our civilization, maybe it’ll protect someone’s feelings.
In reply to DB, I checked. Angus has voted 6 times for C-10, twice against it, once against allocating time to it, and three times against what I think was its introduction (Business No.10)? Maybe I misunderstand but it seems like DB is right. My name above is a link to his voting record this parliamentary session, with Charlie Angus voting “yea” on the “3rd reading and adoption of Bill C-10” N. 174. Yay! We’d welcome him changing his mind. Has he addressed this?
It was painful watching Angus vote for Bill C-10. With Jack Layton no longer with us, Chuck Cadman no longer with us, and Elizabeth May bowing out, Charlie Angus was the last politician standing in my list of politicians I personally respected.
After Angus voted for Bill C-10, I just shook my head in disbelief and literally ran out of politicians to respect. There’s plenty of reason to believe his vote was either some sort of dealmaking process at the political leader level or some political ploy to garner votes in Quebec, but at the end of the day, that move wasn’t some 3D chess move, it was a selling out of your principles (not to mention, that selling out your principles in this case wound up leading to nothing in return).
I like the idea of Charlie coming back, kicking up dirt, taking names, and doing what he has done for years, but that vote really tarnished his reputation in my view. In the political math, his vote did not matter and he could have done the moral thing and voted against it at the time (heck, if he felt pressure from his own party, he could have abstained and I would still have respected that). All the Liberals really needed was Bloc support and that would have been enough. That vote proved that when NDP leadership tells him to jump, he’ll ask, “how high?”
At the end of the day, it’s going to take a lot more for me to be supportive of him. I know he’s saying the right things now, but this is more of an effort to salvage his reputation more than anything else. How am I to believe he won’t go back on his principles at the drop of a hat further down the road on another crucial vote?
Was the C-10 vote a whipped one? That is a problem in Canadian politics; the party expects that their MPs will be good little minions and vote the way that they are told to, or face party discipline. In fact, it isn’t just the parties; the news media has a hand in it. They will complain that MPs are not being allowed to vote either their conscience or as their constituents want one one hand (typically if it is with respect to something that the media doesn’t support, and then turn around and berate a leader who can’t make their minions vote in accordance with party policy if the media outlet is in favour of the bill.
To my knowledge, it wasn’t a whipped vote. Even if it was, Angus was, up to this point, silent on the whole matter to boot. It leads into the theory that the NDP was after Quebec ridings. Now that this is essentially not in play, Angus is suddenly able to come out and call C-10 a dumpster fire.
Still, I’m not a fan of how he can be kept quiet when other political considerations are at play.
I went back and had a look at the voting records for the third reading. Voting was along party lines, only the CPC and half of the independents voting Nay, so I would suspect it was whipped. Given that it was expected that there would be a fall vote the parties would be trying court votes in specific parts of the country as you indicated. The MPs were probably told to tow the party line or face not being allowed to run in the fall.
his hollywood masters tell him how to vote
they dont do nothing for society but complain that they cant have all your wallet, and never want to give back ever until there is some mess they created then its charity time that only them the uber rich could ever afford and makes little to no real change
society is enarign that endgame of where they are parasites
THEY ARE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE LIKE ME BACK TO THE NDP , IT WONT HAPPEN AND USING AMUSIC WHOM SITS AROUND ON TAX DOLLARS AND HAD A 50% INCREASE IN COPYRIGHTS UNDER TRUDEAU IS NOT MY FRIEND OR ANY USERS FRIEND
LIKE I SAID THE JACK LAYTON PARTY IS DEAD
ITS THE BC HOLLYWOOD PARTY NOW
AND IF YOU EVER THOGUHT ANYONE THAT PROFESSES TO BE A MUSICIAN IS RESPECTABLE ONLY IN GETTING MORE COPYRIGHTS AND CONTROL FOR HIMAND HIS FRIENDS
HE DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE
If we have algorithmic transparency we won’t need social media regulation.
People will naturally choose a newsfeed that gives them better information.
I’m all for following Charlie, but first he’s got to come to understand what a free Internet really means, that you can’t just have SOME censorship, or as the punks said, the Net just routes around censorship. That’s the dumpster fire part. Right now he sounds like he wants to re-introduce the same laws, only “better”.
I want a Charter of Rights, that Canada will NEVER censor, block, takedown, filter, seize domains, or whatever. And then stop all that spying, make snooping impossible, even. That IS technologically possible, btw…
Just leave the net alone, the way it has been for most of us for well over a quarter of a century now! Yes, criminals misuse it, but so do politicians, and they’re worse. No backdoors, no compromises! Not even “just a little ways” down THAT slippery slope! That’s something I used to think Charlie thought.
The only “out” I see is that the NDP would want to see better accountability for large platforms. Specifically, better transparency which I consider non-controversial for the most part. In fact, during the last election, I was able to utilize the transparency of Facebook to uncover how much money the Liberals were spending on political advertising (the same Facebook some were saying makes too much money).
It’s, admittedly, an extremely narrow interpretation of the situation which allows the NDP to be fairly clean on this, but the chances are not really zero either. I suspect they are, at least, going to try and find ways of targeting Facebook over the whole “Instagram makes teens feel bad about themselves” story (which wound up being one of the most wildly overblown stories I’ve seen in a long time – the original survey pegged the real percentage at 3% of teens feeling worse about themselves and it didn’t touch on any nuances as to why those teenagers felt worse about themselves). We’ll have to see how things play out with how they plan on these regulations.
I do agree with you that, especially with the way the Liberals are wanting to regulate the Internet, we’d be FAR better off just leaving things the heck alone. If they are going to implement regulations, I wished it was privacy reform, but I know that won’t happen because it would upset corporate interests and their lobbyist friends. Great news for anyone involved in hacking your personal information for a fast buck, sucks for everyone else involved.
lol it sleader uses facebook where a person showed that absues of animals and people are left up on it
same with global news
if they want better accountability make your own website and have your own forum …oh wait they dont have the brains to do it
WE DONT NEED BILL C-10
WE DONT NEED YOU OR ANYONE TELLIGN ANYONE WHOM TO PUT HIGHER IN SOME YOUTUBE RACE OR HAVE ME PAY FOR GODS DAMN ABILITY E=TO EVENPOST AND HAVE IT CNTROLED BY ANTI USER ANTI CONSUMER CRTC THAT UPPED OUR INTERNET COSTS 58% IN 1 YEAR DURING A PANDEMIC
Really I appreciate the effort you made to share the knowledge. The topic here I found was really effective to the topic which I was researching for a long time.
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we do no tneed any more lazy musicans that sit around taking tax dollars when we need ot fix the 400 billion trudeau just spent and wants to spend 100 billin in a slush fund…this guy is the hollywood end of the ndp and the ony reason he is still there is for that very reason it brings bucks to NDP….
we dont need to lose any more freedoms cause some musician or actor wants to be more lazy
anyone notice how seasons a tv are now only 10 long where they used to be 20 -24 ? and yet things all cost more way more its like cons are saying you get 10% less in the bag a chips but it costs the same
i htink we need to reduce copyrights to 50 years and leave them there 75 years is far too long
definitely he’s saying tooth