Last Tuesday, Justice Minister David Lametti tabled his department’s Charter statement for Bill C-18, the Online News Act. A link to the statement appeared briefly on the department’s website, but by the end of the week reference to the Bill C-18 Charter statement was removed from the Justice site altogether. As of this morning, there is still no reference to the statement, even though it is a public document having been tabled in the House of Commons. In fact, I have now obtained a copy of the Charter statement and posted it publicly here with an embed below. The department will presumably re-post the statement at some point and it would be useful to confirm that it remains unchanged and provide an explanation for the online removal (I asked and did not get a response). [UPDATE: Hours after this blog post went live, the government posted the Charter statement.]

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