OTTAWA (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.’”
He noted that “George Orwell says we must resist the prison of self-censorship,” noting that Bill C-11 goes a long way “to construct such a prison.”
Richards: ‘In Germany, it was called the Ministry of National Enlightenment’
Richards blasted Trudeau’s Bill C-11 as trying to make it so that Canada would have a “prescribed national agenda” of the government scribed into law.
He said such a law would not be a positive thing, but instead would open the “gates” to “compliance” with the government of the day’s agenda.
Richards blasted the idea of the Heritage Minister having the power to tell what is and what is not “Canadian content.”
“I don’t think the CRTC is a platform that will automatically ensure greatness of expression. As a matter of fact, I think it will probably do damage to greatness of expression,” he noted.
Richards compared the CRTC trying to act as a regulator of content as akin to what happened in Nazi Germany.
“In Germany, it was called the Ministry of National Enlightenment,” he said in reference to government departments trying to regulate thought.
“Every radio was run by Joseph Goebbels, complete ideological manipulation in the name of national purity,” he added.
Richards said that the CRTC, through the power of Bill C-11, 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.”
Since Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, his government has pushed forth many other bills targeting legal content on the internet, which critics had blasted as an affront to freedom.
Late last year, the Trudeau government decided to fast-track Bill C-18, titled the “Online News Act,” rushing it through the House of Commons. The bill is now before the Senate.
According to Derek Fildebrandt, publisher and CEO of the independent Western Standard, Bill C-18 is a direct attack on media that does not get government funding.
Last year, Twitter owner Elon Musk took a direct shot at Trudeau’s looming internet censorship legislation, suggesting the bill is an attempt to “muzzle” the voice of Canadians.