Tories Demand Emergency Debate on Bill C-11, Citing ‘Censorship’ Concerns

Conservative MP Rachael Thomas rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 2, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)

The Conservatives are demanding that the House of Commons hold an emergency debate on Bill C-11 over concerns that the Liberal government previously attempted to have certain online content be taken down for containing misinformation or being offensive.

Conservative MP and Canadian Heritage critic Rachael Thomas submitted a letter to House Speaker Anthony Rota on April 16 calling for the emergency debate.

Thomas also posted the letter on Twitter while writing that the Liberal government is “pressuring social media platforms to remove news stories they don’t want ppl to see.”

“Bill C-11 will make this type of gov censorship legal,” she wrote.

In her letter to Rota, Thomas referenced the government’s response to an Inquiry of Ministry in March that stated several federal departments and agencies previously asked social media platforms to take down certain posts and accounts for a number of reasons, including “hate speech,” “offensive language,” or impersonation.

In one of these instances, the director of communications at the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) requested in September 2021 that Facebook and Twitter remove a post with a link to an article by Toronto Sun columnist Lorne Gunter for “containing serious errors of fact risking undermining public confidence in the independence of the Board as well as the integrity of the refugee determination system.”

Gunter recently said his article cited a confidential IRB draft document that “laid out a massive expansion of the reasons under which refugee claimants could be admitted to Canada.”

Thomas argued in her letter that Bill C-11 will “greatly diminish the ability of media companies and social media platforms to ignore government commands concerning what information can and cannot be made available to the Canadian public.”

“News and cultural content will be at the mercy of government oversight and approvals,” she wrote.

The Liberal government has previously taken issue with Conservative criticism of the bill, with House Leader Mark Holland saying during the bill’s last debate in the House that the legislation’s purpose is to help Canadian artists and creators increase their visibility over American competitors on major streaming platforms.

Bill C-11 aims to amend the Broadcasting Act to give the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) regulating authority over streaming platforms like Netflix and Spotify.

The legislation will give the CRTC power to require these platforms to contribute to Canadian content standards on networks within the country or else face penalties.

The Senate recommended a number of changes to the legislation, which included adding a provision to exempt individual content creators from the CRTC’s regulating purview.

However, the House voted to reject the amendment along with others, sending the legislation back to the Senate for a final vote before it can receive royal assent. Senators also have the option of recommending further amendments to Bill C-11, which would send it back to the House.

Thomas wrote that given Bill C-11 “now awaits just one final vote in the Senate—it is all the more urgent and pressing for these serious and worrying concerns to be thoroughly improperly debated in Parliament immediately.”

Noé Chartier and Marnie Cathcart contributed to this report.