BIll C-10 Passes The House
The HoC goes into overtime to pass Bill C-10 at 1:30AM this morning. Interestingly enough, Jody Wilson-Raybould voted no as an independent, while all Liberal, Bloc, NDP, and Green party members who stayed up for the vote supported it. This kind of shows you the way politics has been done during this minority government, coalitions are made, typically against the CPC, to push through legislation. As this is done, the party spins a narrative that the only reason the CPC wants to vote against the bill is because they are the party of white nationalists, without actually going deep into what the bill offers Canadians.
What does the Bill offer Canadians though? What it offers them is actually very little, unless you are a French Canadian. What it guarantees is that French language social media and movies get a spotlight, which is why every party but the CPC supports this bill, because Quebec is one of the two voting blocks in Canada that decide an election. With the LPC and Bloc, the bill would have passed anyway, so the NDP and Greens are basically tagging along for the ride. The NDP is also always on board to create more regulation, even though this is probably not going to have any effect for at least a year.
Another thing this Bill offers is funding for our CanCon programs, which if you’re an artist like myself, know are plagued with nepotism and ideologically driven, self important, irrelevant people, who fund the absolute worst projects. Nobody outside of Canada loves Canadian media, with a few notable exceptions, and these people are the reason why. They tend to fund the projects that are filled with the most woke checkbox ticking, which to people in the real world is usually off-putting, even before woke was a popular term. That’s because the CRTC is tasked with promoting content that is uniquely Canadian, which means diversity, diversity, diversity, because that’s been our only identity for the past 40 years. If you’re old enough, you have watched our TV and movies shift from uniquely Canadian activities and stereotypes, to poignant looks at diverse people trying to fit into Canada. It’s a good thing that content like that exists, but it’s literally all the content we have today.
Why does this shift matter? Because now the CRTC who has pushed this within TV and radio now has access to CanCon online. With Bill C-10, they will be able to throw their weight around by licensing online content as well, and censoring content that doesn’t meet their standards. I realized a while ago that at some point, the days of the internet being the new wild west were going to end. You see that with global tax systems being put in place to tax internet giants outside of the country that they physically occupy. This I’m not terribly concerned with, because realistically we do rely on tax money, and this is the only way to really keep our country afloat in an increasingly online world. The problem with the CRTC going online, is that they are, and always have been, thought police, which we already have enough of online already.
So now that Bill C-10 has passed the house, it will go on to the senate where it may receive a different treatment. Members of the senate aren’t beholden to their party, and there is at least one Liberal member who has said he will vote against it. We can only hope that it will die in the senate, but will not see the outcome of that until the fall. Hopefully by then they will get a good chance to look at this bill that was rushed through the house.