Drivers in Saskatchewan who are pulled over by RCMP should be expected to take part in alcohol screening tests beginning April 1.
“Saskatchewan RCMP will be conducting roadside Mandatory Alcohol Screenings (MAS) on all lawful traffic stops in Saskatchewan RCMP jurisdiction on an on-going basis,” an RCMP news release said.
Regina police announced a similar initiative(opens in a new tab) for the month of March.
h/t Mauser
Canada’s “Freedom to Read” week was all about promoting censorship.
As Big Brother says, “Ignorance is Strength.”
There was a bit of good news about the future of public discourse this week. The United States Supreme Court, even though stacked with right-wingers, sounded like it was ready to give the Biden administration the go-ahead to try to persuade social-media platforms not to put out content promoting nonsense about the presidential election, conspiracy theories about the pandemic and other assorted bilge and crackpottery.
The states of Missouri and Louisiana accused the government of stifling their speech by pressuring platforms to downgrade or drop their posts. But the justices, including conservatives Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, didn’t sound like they were buying it.
The TDS is beyond cure in this one.
Police Scotland’s officers will investigate actors and comedians if a complaint is made under new hate crime laws.
Training, obtained by The Herald, states that material regarded as “threatening and abusive” under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) can be communicated “through public performance of a play.”
The Scottish Tories said this appeared to be at odds with the legislation and called for the force to explain.
This is Madness.
It’s troubling how willingly some societies will forsake civil liberties in the name of a purportedly greater or more urgent cause.
Because there are very few, if any, really, in a liberal democracy which eclipse precious rights of freedom of speech, assembly and beliefs. Even what most of us might condemn as outrageous expression or heretical — hateful — ideologies.
Governments wade into the murky end of the suppressing pool at our peril. And they’re never more baleful than when cloaking themselves in virtue — by way of shielding us from what they’ve decreed to be harmful.
March 14, 2022, was an ordinary day. I snoozed my alarm at 7.15am and then again at 7.30am. I checked on a prescription at 10.25am, scanned my bank balance at 2.40pm and bought a birthday card for my father at 4.05pm.
I didn’t record these mundane actions, but Facebook did.
In fact, between December 2021 and December 2023, Meta — the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — tracked me an average of 33 times a day from websites and apps that aren’t connected to my social media accounts. Even when I wasn’t looking at them, they were looking at me.
You have to understand: the Online Harms Act was supposed to be the “good” bill, the one part of the Trudeau government’s three-pronged effort to regulate the internet that was addressed to a real problem.
The Online News Act (Bill C-18) was a transparent shakedown operation, whose stated premise – by posting links to stories on news media websites, social-media platforms were not providing them with valuable free advertising but stealing their content – was but a front for its actual premise: the platforms have money, and the media want some.
No, Canada!
The country that brought you debanking protesters and government-assisted suicide for the poor now wants to criminalize speech to lock up people for life and to put wrongthinkers under house arrest if the state sees a chance they will commit a crime.
Doesn’t get more Orwellian than that.
In an attempt to combat theft at its stores, Loblaw is testing receipt scanners at four of its locations, the grocery giant told CBC News.
Customers who go through self-checkout must use the device to scan their receipt’s barcode — confirming that they paid something — which opens a metal gate, letting them leave.
A Canadian law that aims to make social media platforms safer is getting flak for what some decry as government overreach.
Introduced late last month, the Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63, would allow judges to imprison adults for life if they advocate for genocide.
The law would also allow a provincial judge to impose house arrest and a fine if there were reasonable grounds to believe a defendant “will commit” an offense – a provision Wall Street Journal columnist Michael Taube likened to the 2002 film, The Minority Report.
The Liberal government’s proposed Bill C-63, the online harms act, is terrible law that will unduly impose restrictions on Canadians’ sacred Charter right to freedom of expression. That is what the Liberals intend. By drafting a vague law creating a draconian regime to address online “harms,” they will win their wars without firing a bullet.
The STASI would approve Bill C-63.
Handing judges the ability to put people under house arrest because they might commit a hate crime isn’t progressive, it’s North Korean
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is threatening his most tyrannical attack on freedom yet through his government’s proposed Online Harms Act (currently Bill C-63). Brought to you by the same farcically-named “Liberal” party who froze the bank accounts of the truckers who protested vaccine-mandates, the OHA is the government’s overzealous attempt to promote online safety.
It’s only Justin vote whoring to the usual suspects again.
If Bill C-63 passes, it will lead to cancel culture on steroids.
The scariest aspect of the Liberals’ new online harms bill (Bill C-63) is that it revives the old Section 13 hate-speech provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act and puts the highly biased Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) in charge of policing the internet.
Acclaimed author Margaret Atwood has warned that the federal government’s online harms bill is “Orwellian” and its definitions of punishable hate speech are vague and could invite abuse, such as unwarranted complaints under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
Ms. Atwood said she has been the frequent target of “hate speech, online vilification, lies, threats and doxxing” and is “no fan of this kind of online behaviour.” But, in an e-mail exchange with The Globe and Mail, she said she is “also no fan of unsupervised authority acting under vague laws, without any oversight.”
OTTAWA — Some of the Liberal government’s proposed efforts to crack down on hate speech and hateful conduct has some experts wondering whether Ottawa has gone too far in introducing legislation that was initially meant to address dangerous content on social media.
Last week, Justice Minister Arif Virani introduced Bill C-63, a sweeping piece of legislation largely aimed at regulating how social media platforms should respond to harmful content online. That part of the legislation, the Online Harms Act, would focus on egregious content that targets youth, disseminates intimate images without consent, promotes hatred, or incites violence, terrorism or violent extremism.
