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Censorship Industrial Complex

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

Published

9 months ago

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

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Censorship Industrial Complex

WEF ranks ‘disinformation’ as greater threat to world stability than ‘armed conflict’

Published on January 21, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Tim Hinchliffe

Misinformation and disinformation, along with societal polarization, are catalysts that amplify all other global risks, including armed conflict and climate change, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).

On Wednesday, the WEF published its annual Global Risks Report with very few changes from last year’s edition.

For the second year in a row, the number one global risk over the next two years is misinformation and disinformation, which have cascading effects on other leading risks, according to the WEF “Global Risks Report 2025”:

Similar to last year, Misinformation and disinformation and Societal polarization remain key current risks […] The high rankings of these two risks is not surprising considering the accelerating spread of false or misleading information, which amplifies the other leading risks we face, from State-based armed conflict to Extreme weather events

According to the Global Risks 2025 report, polarization “continues to fan the flames of misinformation and disinformation, which, for the second year running, is the top-ranked short- to medium-term concern across all risk categories.”

“Efforts to combat this risk are coming up against a formidable opponent in Generative AI-created false or misleading content that can be produced and distributed at scale,” which was the same assessment given in the 2024 report.

Apart from inflation and economic downturn, there isn’t much of a difference in global risks between 2024 and 2025.

Compare the top 10 short-term and long-term global risks from 2024 with those for 2025 in the images below.

WEF Top 10 Global Risks 2025

WEF Top 10 Global Risks 2024

Rising use of digital platforms and a growing volume of AI-generated content are making divisive misinformation and disinformation more ubiquitous. — WEF Global Risks Report 2025

The Global Risks Report 2025 says that misinformation, coupled with algorithmic bias, leads to a situation where you and I should accept giving up some of our privacy for convenience, which subsequently makes it easier for us to be monitored and controlled:

Despite the dangers related to false or misleading content, and the associated risks of algorithmic bias, citizens need to strike a balance between privacy on one hand and increased online personalization and convenience on the other hand.

While data governance and regulation vary worldwide, it is becoming easier for citizens to be monitored, enabling governments, technology companies and threat actors to reach deeper into people’s lives.

Those with access to rising computing power and the ability to leverage sophisticated AI/GenAI models could, if they choose to, exploit further the vulnerabilities provided by citizens’ online footprints.

What else can we blame on misinformation?

I know! Climate change:

The accelerating spread of false or misleading information […] amplifies the other leading risks we face, from State-based armed conflict to Extreme weather events.

WEF Global Risks 2025

While the term “climate change” is mentioned several times in the Global Risks Report 2025, it does not appear anywhere in the actual list of 33 global risks.

Instead of using the term “climate change,” the full list of global risks uses several climate-adjacent terms, such as:

  • Extreme weather events
  • Pollution
  • Critical change to Earth systems
  • Natural resource shortages
  • Biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse
  • Involuntary migration or displacement

The unelected globalists are now lumping terms like the ones above to push their climate policies and agendas, and they even go so far as to claim that misinformation amplifies extreme weather events, which actually might be true, just not in the way they imagined:

For example, on Tuesday WEF president and CEO Børge Brende blamed the California fires, which we may consider to be examples of extreme weather events or biodiversity loss, to climate change while not addressing how the state cut funding to fight fires, how the Los Angeles fire chief said the city failed her agency, or the role of arsonists.

By blaming the fires on just climate change while ignoring the rest, could Brende himself be engaging in disinformation?

Climate change is also an underlying driver of several other risks that rank high. For example, Involuntary migration or displacement is a leading concern. — WEF Global Risks Report 2025

The WEF Global Risks Report 2025 lumps many global risks together with the belief that they are all interconnected.

For example, it says that misinformation and polarization amplify armed conflict, extreme weather events, involuntary migration or displacement, and all the risks in-between.

It’s the same tactic the unelected globalists use when they conflate misinformation and disinformation with hate speech, so they can use one as an excuse to go after the other.

For the WEF and partners, global problems require global solutions with global governance through public-private partnerships – the merger of corporation and state, which is also known as fascism or corporatism.

In the end, the global risks report is just a survey, and the risks may or may not materialize.

In January 2023, the WEF announced the results of a survey of cyber leaders that said a “catastrophic cyber event” was likely to occur within the next two years.

Here we are exactly two years later and that never happened.

For the unelected globalists, misinformation and disinformation are words they throw out to try to crush narratives that don’t align with their own, and they will use any threat, whether real or perceived, to advance their agendas and policies.

Reprinted with permission from The Sociable.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Carbon tax tripping up Liberal leadership hopefuls

Published on January 21, 2025

By

The Liberals and progressives everywhere were so close.  At the height of their influence, no one, certainly anywhere in the English speaking world could make this claim: “Climate change IS NOT an existential threat to planet earth.” Those who did were immediately sidelined, ostracized by their cohorts, dismissed by corporate media and social media behemoths. Sure the battle still rages, but only in their information world where you still see phrases like “climate change denialist”.

You see their information world has not yet realized something new has happened.  History writers will say Elon Musk stopped the progressives in their tracks by buying Twitter, releasing the Twitter files and eventually with Donald Trump, swinging the information world in the direction of X.  If you have doubts just look at this picture.  While the Twitter files reveal the new information world was under the, let’s say ‘secret influence’ of the White House, this photo shows those same tech power brokers are publicly, and happily celebrating the man they worked secretly to bring down.  Or at least they’re not ashamed to publicly text their friends about it. The fact they’re not hiding probably reveals their eager support.

Sometimes we find it’s the people we look down our noses at who make all the difference.  Like those overweight beer-guzzling hunter types who wear the red hats. (No not the Roman Cardinals, but the Appalachian trailer house occupants). These conspiracy theorists started to proclaim that the world would in fact not burn up by next weekend.  Sure many of these seemed to be the same people who claim the world is flat and their neighbor is from another planet.  But then more people stepped forward.  Not about ‘pancake Earth’, but about the existential threat of climate change.

Family members and friends scorned and ridiculed them, and many still do.  They were outraged that a regular citizen would dare to share information from a completely sane climate scientist or researcher who did not agree with the majority. They’d lose their marbles on those silly enough to cite a peer reviewed scientific paper.  IF anyone was bold enough to take the time to read an entire report from NASA or Environment Canada, well you’d certainly hear someone say “You fool! You can’t do your own research!! You’re not a scientist!!”

Fortunately, funny man podcaster Jimmy Dore has the perfect comeback for these situations.  Dore says when his own friends warned him only a Conspiracy Theorist would do his own research, he replied “You know before COVID doing your own research used to be called… reading”.  It’s really worth two minutes to check this out.  If you don’t find it funny, really funny, then I’m sorry. One day you will.

Speaking of reading, in the days before the printing press the Church and various wildly wealthy monarchs had a stranglehold on information sharing.  Those who contradicted the party line could have their heads chopped off by a guillotine bought and paid for with their meagre tax offerings, or, they could expect to be publicly shamed and eternally condemned by their local preacher.  Sure some of them probably deserved it but who am I to judge?

Then the printing press was invented. At first the Church leaders said, “Great now everyone can be educated, learn to read and even write themselves, and study the Bible on their own!”  Eventually some of those same leaders said, “THIS IS A DISASTER! Everyone can be educated, learn to read and even write themselves, and study the Bible on their own!”  After a few centuries the power structures in Europe completely changed.  The Church divided into thousands of Protestant movements and the Catholic Church forever lost the political clout it never should have appreciated.  Universities sprung up around libraries. Monarchs handed over power to early democratic governments. Books about science lead to scientific innovations. Average Joe’s eventually moved from underground mud huts to middle class condos in the sky.

Well the same thing is happening now with the internet.  Except at breakneck  speed.  What took the printing press hundreds of years to accomplish, takes the internet a few months.  The emergence and re-emergence of Trump Presidencies, revolutions against power structures, could not have been accomplished without the way we get information on the internet.

Sure there’s a lot of murky confusion as corporate media used to their powerful podiums of the printing press and cable tv are moving their content over to the new medium.  But they’re being (sorry it’s all over, they have been) overtaken by the new form of information sharing.  We’ve gone from headlines and ten second sound bites, to three hour long conversations with plenty of time for explaining and context.  That’s something cable tv just didn’t have enough bandwidth to deliver.

So what does this mean for people trying to buy 1,200 square foot condos in Canada today?

Well we get to watch the power brokers struggle to retain their grip on / over our lives.

Those running to replace the son of … Hmm. Here’s a perfect example. Depending upon where you get your information from he’s either the son of Pierre, or he has an incomprehensively uncanny and impossibly accidental resemblance to a close personal family friend.

Those running to replace Liberal Leader Justin (let’s leave the last name out until the DNA results are back) definitely believe his father is Pierre. They believe Russians are our enemies.  They think COVID vaccines saved the world. They think NATO is protecting Ukraine. And they certainly believe if we pay higher taxes in Canada we’ll save the world from the temperatures many of us pay thousands of dollars to escape to for a few days for six months of the year.

Carney, Gould, and Freeland don’t seem to realize everyday Canadians are simply done with the idea that a Carbon Tax in any form is going to save the world.  Thanks to the internet, regular folks/voters have had time to do a little reading and listen to a few long conversations about this.  Average people are understanding that CO2 makes up not 40% or 60% of the atmosphere, but .04%.  Of that .04%, less than 4% is caused by humans. Mathematically it’s silly to think that paying more for food and groceries and everything else in Rosetown, Saskatchewan or Red Deer, Alberta is going to stop, slow down, or make any difference at all to global temperatures in 20 years.

It’s ironic that it’s the modern progressive movement who are stuck in the old information age.  You’d think the slower thinking conservatives would hold on to the old ways and they’d be the ones trying to enforce restrictions on the new communication movement.  Somehow the self proclaimed forward looking progressives are the ones trying to censor.  Maybe it does make sense.  Conservatives are more likely to read their history.  They know the ones who censor are always trying to retain their failing grasp on power.  New information consumers are ready, willing, and annoyingly attempting to debate.  But there’s no debate for those who say “The science is settled.” I guess that means they’re all finished learning things.

Sorry to the Liberal Leadership hopefuls.  They haven’t heard the news.  Well actually they have and that’s the problem.  Instead of paying attention to what’s really happening, they’re dismissing everything and everyone who doesn’t appear on the cable news channels.. other than to be ridiculed that is.

I leave you with this short video from Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.  Franco explains how those vying for control of the PMO are tripping over their new versions of an old and failed Carbon Tax. Pity them. They don’t realize voters have moved on.

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