Bill C-10 is officially an election issue.
Latest Posts
No Nonsense Podcast: Online Censorship with E-Commerce Law Expert Michael Geist
I appeared on the No Nonsense Podcast, hosted by Pamela Wallin on May 13, 2021.
In the episode, we discussed the proposed bill by the Canadian government to regulate social media.
Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault Signals Canadian Government Abandoning Support for Net Neutrality
The Canadian government’s support for net neutrality has long stood as a foundational principle of its approach to the Internet. In 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would defend net neutrality and expressed concern about the attacks on net neutrality in the U.S. That same year, Heritage Minister Melanie Joly made net neutrality a foundational part of Canadian cultural policy, stating that “as a government, we stand by the principle of net neutrality.” ISED Minister Navdeep Bains adopted the same position, stating “Net neutrality is one of the critical issues of our times, much like freedom of the press and freedom of expression before it.”
Given that freedom of expression is taking a back seat in Bill C-10 with the regulation of user generated content, perhaps it was inevitable that the government would also reverse its position on net neutrality. Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault recently gave an interview to the Toronto Star in which he appears to back away from supporting net neutrality, equating it to any Internet regulation:
Heritage Minister Guilbeault Traffics in Misinformation and Conspiracy Theory as Cause of Bill C-10 Criticism and Need for Government Speech Regulation
Last night, Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault posted a remarkable tweet that should heighten concerns about Bill C-10, forthcoming online harms legislation, and the government’s intent with respect to free speech. In the weeks since it opened the door to treating all user generated content as a “program” subject to CRTC regulation, there has been mounting public criticism and concern about the implications for free speech. While the tech companies have remained relatively silent, Canadians have been speaking out. Those voices now include the Government of Saskatchewan, with Minister of Justice Gord Wyant writing to Guilbeault to urge the federal government to stop Bill C-10 from proceeding or amend it to ensure that “all creative Internet content generated by Canadians will be exempt from any regulatory supervision by federal government agencies.”
Given the opposition – as well as Guilbeault’s well-documented disastrous interviews on CBC and CTV – one would have thought the Minister would be seeking to assuage public concern. Instead, Guilbeault took to Twitter last night to suggest that the public anger over Bill C-10 was a matter of “public opinion being manipulated at scale through a deliberate campaign of misinformation by commercial interests that would prefer to avoid the same regulatory oversight applied to broadcast media.”
Heritage Minister Guilbeault Says Bill C-10 Will Regulate Social Media Users With Large Number of Viewers
The government’s defence of Bill C-10, the Broadcasting Act reform bill, took another hit over the weekend with what might have been the worst interview yet by Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault (and that includes the CBC interview ten days ago that people are still talking about). In the span of eight minutes, Guilbeault managed to cite the wrong section in the bill, indicate that social media users with a large number of followers would be regulated, and justify the regulation by assuring that it would come from the CRTC, rather than the government directly.
Recent Posts
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 232: What Will Canadian Digital Policy Look Like Under the New Liberal Carney Government? 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 231: Sara Bannerman on How Canadian Political Parties Maximize Voter Data Collection and Minimize Privacy Safeguards 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 230: Aengus Bridgman on the 2025 Federal Election, Social Media Platforms, and Misinformation 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 229: My Digital Access Day Keynote – Assessing the Canadian Digital Policy Record 
Queen’s University Trustees Reject Divestment Efforts Emphasizing the Importance of Institutional Neutrality
