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Censorship Industrial Complex

Scotland’s crazy anti-hate law may be sign of things to come here

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9 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

Scotland had 8,000 complaints in the first week. Is it likely that a similar avalanche of claims will result in Canada if C-63 becomes law?

Actually, there will probably be a lot more here.

For one thing, our population is many times the size of Scotland’s.

Some argue that Scotland’s new hate speech law is more draconian than Canada’s yet-to-be-enacted equivalent, Bill C-63. Others say this is not so — that portions of ’63’ are even greater threats to free speech than Scotland’s extreme new law.

Regardless of who wins in this radical experiment in mass censorship, one thing we can predict with certainty: Both laws will be a goldmine for the legal profession and a nightmare for anyone who has ever dared to write, say or broadcast anything controversial.

How? Well, in the first week that Scotland’s new hate legislation has been in force there has been an avalanche of new claims launched — 8,000, and counting. Every one of those claims will have to be defended by a person who believed that they were exercising their right of free speech.

Now, 8,000 of those people will be caught up in expensive, time consuming, and emotionally draining litigation. Their cases will mostly be heard by officials and judges who were appointed specifically because they shared the same views as the government that appointed them — the same government that felt the need to prosecute these 8,000 people.

That 8,000 surpassed the total number of hate crime allegations in Scotland for all of 2023. A projection is that there will be an estimated 416,000 cases for 2024 if this rate keeps up. The complaints have completely overwhelmed Scotland’s police.

The Scottish Police Federation’s David Threadgold said this about how the new law was being used by angry citizens with an axe to grind: “…the law was being “weaponised” by the public in order to settle personal grudges against fellow citizens or to wage political feuds, while suggesting that the government encouraging the public to report instances of ‘hate’ has clearly blown up in their face.”

We have already seen this Scottish law in action when J.K. Rowling, who is famous not only for her wonderful Harry Potter books, but more recently for stating what we knew as fact for the first few hundred thousand years or so of human history — namely that men are men, and women are women — famously reposted that claim and dared the Scottish police to charge her.

The police announced that she wouldn’t be charged — at least that particular police officer wouldn’t charge her at this particular time.

The other person who has been the subject of many of those 8,000 complaints is First Minister Humza Yousaf — the very man responsible for this monstrosity of a law. Yousaf is himself quite famous for complaining that Scotland has too many white people. Who knew?

That odd observation resulted in a world famous spat with none other than Elon Musk. The online slugfest basically took the form of each man accusing the other of being a racist. At times it looked more like a schoolyard fight.

That a national leader seriously feels that the sledgehammer of the criminal law must be used to sort out such cat fights between citizens is rather alarming.

But, in this regard, Yousaf and Trudeau are birds of a feather. Both are convinced that only “acceptable views” — namely the views they agree with — will be allowed, while “unacceptable views,” namely, those they don’t like, must be disappeared by the machinery of the state.

It should be explained at this point that Scotland’s new law, unlike our C-63, requires police to determine whether or not the person under complaint has “stirred up hatred.”

Bill C-63 has those “hate” complaints heard by the Human Rights Tribunal.

In both cases however, one person’s opinion will judge another person’s opinion. However, one person will be paid to perform this function, while the other person might become a criminal if their opinion fails a completely subjective test.

Scotland had 8,000 complaints in the first week. Is it likely that a similar avalanche of claims will result in Canada if C-63 becomes law?

Actually, there will probably be a lot more here.

For one thing, our population is many times the size of Scotland’s.

For another, C-63 allows people to make complaints anonymously if the tribunal says so. It also promises up to $50,000 per complaint. That’s a powerful motivator. That $50,000 doesn’t come from some magic bank, by the way. If you are the person complained about, it comes from you. And you might be required to fork over an additional $20,000 to the tribunal for their troubles.

I’m not sure if they will expect a tip.. 

Much has been written about C-63. Many knowledgeable Canadians have discussed in detail the hundreds of objections they can see with this Bill. Senior Canadian voices, such former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, and world famous author Margaret Atwood, have warned Canadians about this seriously flawed legislation.

But what no one has done — except for Trudeau apparatchiks — is to give any good reasons why Canada needs this legislation.

If Scotland’s projected number of complaints for 2024 is 416,000 and they have a population of less than six million, the projection for Canada would be into the millions of complaints. Even setting aside the obvious impossibility of paying for thousands of new tribunal adjudicators, staff, and the thousands of new lawyers required to help the million-plus people who are thrust into this hate complaint boondoggle, why would any serious government even wish such a thing on their citizens?

Do we not have a rather large bag of serious problems we must contend with?

We have a generation of young people, for example, who might never in their lives be able to afford a home of their own. How do we expect these young people to raise a future generation of Canadians without a home in which to raise them? Isn’t that a bigger problem than someone’s hurt feelings?

Another example… Trudeau has just noticed that we don’t seem to have an army anymore. Isn’t that a bigger problem than whether or not someone feels that they have been misgendered, or called nasty names?

There is a list, as long as the longest arm, of very real problems that need urgent attention. Why are we wasting time and money on the brainchild (yes, I use that term loosely) of a desperate prime minister and his few remaining fellow ideologues?

This legislation is totally unnecessary, and an appallingly disrespectful way to treat Canadians. We already have hate laws. We already have laws to protect children. C-63 is as useless as the tired apparatchiks pushing it.

We should definitely pay attention to what is happening in Scotland. It will be our fate if this perfectly awful Bill C-63 is not defeated.

Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Censorship Industrial Complex

Canadian pro-freedom group sounds alarm over Liberal plans to revive internet censorship bill

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The Democracy Fund warned that the Liberal government may bring back a form of Bill C-63, which is aimed at regulating online speech.

One of Canada’s top pro-democracy groups has sounded the alarm by warning that the Canadian federal government is planning to revive a controversial Trudeau-era internet censorship bill that lapsed.

The Democracy Fund (TDF), in a recent press release, warned about plans by the Liberal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney to bring back a form of Bill C-63. The bill, which lapsed when the election was called earlier this year, aimed to regulate online speech, which could mean “mass censorship” of the internet.

“TDF is concerned that the government will try once more to give itself the power to criminalize and punish online speech and debate,” the group said.

“TDF will oppose that.”

According to the TDF, it is “concerned that the government intends to re-introduce the previously abandoned Online Harms Bill in the same or modified form.”

Bill C-63, or the Online Harms Act, was put forth under the guise of protecting children from exploitation online. The bill died earlier this year after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the 2025 federal election.

While protecting children is indeed a duty of the state, the bill included several measures that targeted vaguely defined “hate speech” infractions involving race, gender, and religion, among other categories. The proposal was thus blasted by many legal experts.

The Online Harms Act would have censored legal internet content that the government thought “likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group.” It would be up to the Canadian Human Rights Commission to investigate complaints.

The TDF said that Bill C-63 would have made it a criminal offense to publish ill-defined “harmful content.”

The TDF warned that under Carney, the government is “once again considering new or similar legislation to regulate online speech, with the Minister of Justice claiming he would take another look at the matter.”

Mark Joseph, TDF litigation director, pointed out that Canada already has laws that “the government can, and does, use to address most of the bad conduct that the Bill ostensibly targeted.”

“To the extent that there are gaps in the Criminal Code, amendments should be carefully drafted to fix this,” he said.

“However, the previous Bill C-63 sought to implement a regime of mass censorship.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews last month, a recent Trudeau-appointed Canadian senator said that he and other “interested senators” want Carney to revive a controversial Trudeau-era internet censorship bill that lapsed.

Another recent Carney government Bill C-2, which looks to ban cash donations over $10,000, was blasted by a constitutional freedom group as a “step towards tyranny.”

Carney, as reported by LifeSiteNews, vowed to continue in Trudeau’s footsteps, promising even more legislation to crack down on lawful internet content.

He has also said his government plans to launch a “new economy” in Canada that will involve “deepening” ties to the world.

Under Carney, the Liberals are expected to continue much of what they did under Justin Trudeau, including the party’s zealous push in favor of abortion, euthanasia, radical gender ideologyinternet regulation and so-called “climate change” policies. Indeed, Carney, like Trudeau, seems to have extensive ties to both China and the globalist World Economic Forum, connections that were brought up routinely by conservatives in the lead-up to the election.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Global media alliance colluded with foreign nations to crush free speech in America: House report

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From LifeSiteNews

By Dan Frieth

The now-defunct ad coalition GARM shared insider data and urged boycotts of Twitter to punish non-compliance with its ‘harmful content’ standards, a US House Judiciary report shows.

A new report from the U.S. House Judiciary Committee has shed light on what it describes as an alarming collaboration between powerful corporations and foreign governments aimed at suppressing lawful American speech.

The investigation focuses on the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), an initiative founded in 2019 by the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), which the committee accuses of acting as a censorship cartel.

According to the report, GARM, whose members control about 90 percent of global advertising spending, exploited its market dominance to pressure platforms like Twitter (now X) into compliance with its restrictive content policies.

A copy of the report can be found HERE.

The committee highlighted how GARM sought to “effectively reduce the availability and monetization” of content it deemed harmful, regardless of public demand for free expression.

Documents obtained by the committee reveal direct coordination between GARM and foreign regulators, including the European Commission and Australia’s eSafety commissioner.

In one exchange, a European bureaucrat encouraged advertisers to leverage their influence to “push Twitter to deliver on GARM asks.”

Similarly, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant praised GARM’s “significant collective power in helping to hold the platforms to account” and sought updates to “take into account in our engagement and regulatory decisions.”

Partial email from Julie Inman Grant to Rob Rakowitz dated November 9, 2022, expressing interest in GARM's collective power to hold platforms accountable and emphasizing the importance of brand and platform safety, with email addresses partially redacted.

Robert Rakowitz, GARM’s co-founder and initiative lead, expressed a chilling goal in private correspondence, stating that silencing President Donald Trump was his “main thing” and likening the president’s speech to a “contagion” he aimed to contain “to protect infection overall.”

Email from Rob Rakowitz dated Tuesday, November 1, 2022, discussing plans approved by the Steer Team to influence Twitter and Elon Musk regarding advertising standards, mentioning collaboration with WPP and outlining transparency and remediation plans for advertisers; includes blacked-out and redacted email addresses and ends with his title as Initiative Lead at the Global Alliance for Responsible Media and mentions WFA locations in Brussels, London, New York, and Singapore.

The report outlines how GARM distributed previously unavailable non-public information about Twitter’s adherence to its standards, fully aware this would prompt advertisers to boycott the platform if it failed to conform. According to the House report, Rakowitz admitted that this information sharing was designed to encourage members not to advertise on Twitter.

He went as far as to draft statements urging GARM members to halt advertising on the platform, telling colleagues he had gone “as close as possible” to saying Twitter “is unsafe, cease and desist.”

Despite the widespread impact of GARM’s actions, including what the committee describes as coerced “concessions” from platforms, internal polling circulated within GARM showed that “66 percent of American consumers valued free expression over protection from harmful content.”

Still, GARM pressed ahead with efforts to “eliminate all categories of harmful content in the fastest possible timing,” ignoring consumer preferences.

Even after GARM dissolved in 2024 amid legal challenges, similar efforts persisted.

A new coalition led by Dentsu and The 614 Group briefly attempted to revive GARM’s mission before disbanding under scrutiny. Gerry D’Angelo, a former GARM leader, reflected on the initiative’s overreach, stating, “Did we go too far in those first rounds of exclusionary restrictions? I would say yes.”

The Judiciary Committee warns that despite GARM’s downfall, the threat of collusion to stifle free expression remains.

It pledged to continue oversight to defend “the fundamental principles” of the Constitution and ensure that markets, not coordinated censorship efforts, shape the flow of information in the digital age.

Reprinted with permission from Reclaim The Net.

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