OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) –– Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that his government will not adopt a Liberal Party of Canada policy proposal which calls for online news “publications” whose sources cannot be “verified” to be, in effect, censored.
The non-binding policy, which has been blasted as an affront to press freedom, was passed by party members last weekend.
Said Trudeau to reporters on Tuesday regarding the Liberal policy proposal, “we will never harm journalists’ capacity to do the professional independent work that they do.”
He then claimed that the Liberal Party is worried about “misinformation and disinformation and wanting to make sure that Canadians are protected from it.”
Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Rachael Thomas said of the Liberal policy, that should it be placed into a future law, it would place Canada in the likes of “places like North Korea, China, Iran and Russia.”
In total, Liberal Party members “passed and prioritized” 24 official party policies, in order of priority at its party’s National Convention last weekend in Ottawa.
Coming in at number 10 was a policy resolution titled “Combatting Disinformation in Canada,” which was sponsored by the Liberal Party of Canada (British Columbia).
According to the Liberals’ “Disinformation” policy, Canada’s mainstream media “no longer employs as many reporters with extensive knowledge of particular subject areas,” and there is an increase in “disinformation” which is an “existential risk to humanity.”
Because of this, the Liberal Party produced and passed two resolutions.
The first reads, “BE IT RESOLVED THAT the Liberal Party of Canada: Request the Government explore options to hold on-line information services accountable for the veracity of material published on their platforms and to limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced.”
The second resolution reads that the government “provide additional public funds to support advertisement-free news and information reporting by Canadian media through an arm’s-length non-partisan mechanism.”
Top Canadian internet analyst Michael Geist, who serves as the research chair of internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, warned the Liberal policy sets a “dangerous” precedent.
“If enacted, the policy would undermine freedom of the press and could even spark widespread censorship on Internet platforms,” Geist warned in a blog post last Friday.
“In addition, it passed a resolution to develop ‘truth in political advertising’ legislation to be administered by an oversight body.”
Last Thursday, the Trudeau Liberals passed a first-ever law that will regulate Canada’s internet, Bill C-11. However, the government said there are more laws to come.
In practice, Bill C-11 now mandates that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) be in charge of regulating online content on platforms such as YouTube and Netflix to ensure that such platforms are promoting content in accordance with a variety of CRTC guidelines.
The bill itself has faced immense criticism for its implications on freedom of speech, to the point that even Big Tech giants YouTube and Apple, which both have a history of enacting their own forms of censorship on users, have previously urged the Senate to stall the bill.
Late last year, the Trudeau government decided to fast-track another content-regulation bill, C-18, by rushing it through the House of Commons. This bill is also now before the Senate.