Author: Blazingcatfur

The Canadian government released its plans yesterday for online harms legislation with a process billed as a consultation, but which is better characterized as an advisory notice, since there are few questions, options or apparent interest in hearing what Canadians think of the plans. Instead, the plans led by Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault pick up where Bill C-10 left off, treating freedom of expression as a danger to be constrained through regulations and the creation of a bureaucratic super-structure that includes a new Digital Safety Commission, digital tribunal to rule on content removal, and social media regulation advisory board. When combined with plans for a new data commissioner, privacy tribunal, and the expanded CRTC under Bill C-10, the sheer amount of new Internet governance is dizzying.

We who have lived in communist countries recognize the signs: American freedom of speech and thought are hanging on by a thread.

In 1991, Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel laureate from Perú, caused a firestorm on Mexican television by calling Mexico the “perfect dictatorship, a phrase that has since become iconic. He pointed out that the one-party rule in Mexico had become entrenched: the Institutional Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Institucional in Spanish, or PRI) held uninterrupted power in the country for 71 years, even though the name of the presidents changed every five years (whereupon they were automatically amnestied by their successor for any criminal activity). Criticism—up to a point—was permitted, even encouraged, to maintain the illusion of Mexico being democratic. Opposition parties were allowed, but they often found that the means for an effective election campaign was controlled by the ruling party. As Vargas Llosa explained, a special kind of political rhetoric had been created to justify Mexico’s political system by recruiting intellectuals who were too willing to prostitute themselves. In short, it was a deviation from the traditional style of brutal military dictatorship, but it was a dictatorship nonetheless.