Canada’s Corrupt Liberal Government

To support its cultural industries in the face of American dominance, Canada has for many decades depended on regulating television and radio broadcasters to share and finance Canadian stories and songs. Yet the barely regulated internet, a product of Silicon Valley’s maverick free-market mindset, now allows users to make and hoover up the content of their choosing. For people seeking stories and songs around the world, borders now barely exist.

The federal government has been trying since 2020 to wrangle together legislation that would force streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify to promote and finance the country’s cultural content just like old-guard broadcasters must. It finally received royal assent on April 27, but it wasn’t easy. What unfolded in the past few years far more resembled an agonizing battle than a nation-building exercise.

Former Bank of Canada (and Bank of England) governor Mark Carney was on CTV Question Period on Sunday and Vassy Kapelos was at the top of her game.

When Carney figure skated around her direct question as to whether Justin Trudeau should lead the Liberals against Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in the next election, she asked it again.

Justin step down? Carney an electable replacement? Neither will happen.

Bad economic arguments often come with a “tell” – a hand-waving catchphrase, inserted in place of reason or evidence as a means of coaxing agreement. Appeals for industrial subsidies are notorious for this.

For a long time the vogue phrase was “value-added.” Asked why a company’s fate should not be decided in the usual way – by its ability to sell a product to willing consumers or to raise capital from willing investors, rather than by its ability to lobby governments – the industrial strategy advocate had only to mumble something about the critical need to “move up the value-added ladder” to sweep away all objections.

SNC, McKinsey and now VW. Justin’s LPC seems to like doing business with corporate criminals.

What can you do if you don’t want the new government-approved internet?

If you want the internet, not TrudeauNet, find a VPN (Virtual Private Network) and you are on your way. VPNs are designed to enhance security but also to make your IP address invisible to the rest of the internet. That means you can’t be tracked by either the big platforms or governments. VPNs have been criticized because they enable you to go to “bad” places without anyone knowing what you looked at, but they are perfectly legal.

It is well to begin with an axiom. As all word-lovers know, an axiom is an agreed upon truth or principle, a proposition from which starts a chain of reasoning or argument. The framers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence began with an axiom — “We hold these truths to be self-evident” — and from those “self-evident truths” proceeded to the whole of their historic assertion.

Today’s axiom, as opposed to Thomas Jefferson’s simple assertion of “self-evident” (axioms do not need to be true, just agreed upon), has to its advantage that it accords with logic and can actually claim to be a, or the, truth.