Bill C 63 – The Online Harms Act – Canada
On February 26 the Canadian government, the Liberal Party of Canada with Leader Justin Trudeau introduced in the House of Commons a bill to establish a new responsibility regime for social media operators and direct content distributors in Canada. The aim is to focus on online harms and the protection of users, particularly children.
The bill certainly does way more than just that – it falls in line with the (already on this website portrayed) Europe’s digital service act – the same “spirits” seem to be international. It even caught the attention of Matt Taibbi, who wrote in a article – “The purview of the Online Harms Act extends far beyond speech, reimagining society as a mandated social engineering project, creating transformational new procedures that would:
- enlist Canada’s citizens in an ambitious social monitoring system, with rewards of up to $20,000 for anonymous “informants” of hateful behavior, with the guilty paying penalties up to $50,000, creating a self-funded national spying system;
- introduce extraordinary criminal penalties, including life in prison not just for existing crimes like “advocating genocide,” but for any “offence motivated by hatred,” in theory any non-criminal offense, as tiny as littering, committed with hateful intent;
- punish Minority Report pre-crime, where if an informant convinces a judge you “will commit” a hate offense, you can be jailed up to a year, put under house arrest, have firearms seized, or be forced into drug/alcohol testing, all for things you haven’t done;
- penalize past statements. The law gets around prohibitions against “retroactive” punishment by calling the offense “continuous communication” of hate, i.e. the crime is your failure to take down bad speech;
- force corporate Internet platforms to remove “harmful content” virtually on demand (within 24 hours in some cases), the hammer being fines of “up to 6% of… gross global revenue.”
Looking at other “Western” countries and similar laws we just can assume that bill C63 will eventually be law. It carries all the trademarks of a future dystopian world, control of language and speech, a snitch system, as well as draconian fines for non compliance. In closing his article Taibbi points out that “… might particularly affect a high-profile person like J.K. Rowling who’s already declared an intention to keep saying things deemed offensive to Canadians, who in 2017 passed a law (C-16) forbidding “gender identity” discrimination.”
This is not how Trudeau sold it to the public and certainly the timing with one year left before the upcoming election is very likely no coincidence. Let’s see what the quality of time for the day might be able to tell us. Moon the planet of Hs.1 and 2. located in Hs.4 discloses that we are dealing with some sort of an expression of “life”, since it is a Neptune-Moon we can infer that it is about not accepting Neptune – denying the flow of life, one’s destiny, so not really life rather it’s hindrance, that is what would like to come to life.
Hs.12 illuminates what is about to be delivered into the present – Gemini with Mercury at the MC. To be more precise Saturn-Mercury – a blockage that is known for not acting according to its own judgment and certainty is about to be delivered into the present or should we say should get its life. How does it get to its origin – Taurus (12.to 11.) with a Mars-Venus in Hs.8 – “It must come into existence – a compulsive need to prevent any community from forming”, which almost reiterates the next step as well – how does the determination come about – Aries with its Mars tangled in with Venus, an aggression against the communal.
I guess at that point there is not too much to add. If the bill will pass it certainly will not be about any sort of security for anyone other than the government’s own security, ensuring that no other is attempting to rival its position. To eradicate all potential future “rivals” and critics it punishes anything that would and could question it, even if it has to go that far to put that voice into prison for life.
In that context Italo Calvino’s words come to mind – “Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than one’s mother’s womb.”
Once the state gets so powerful that it can punish its people for simply not using language that the state deems legally permissible and to enforce infractions with lifelong incarceration or draconian penalties the communal spirit of a nation has been lost – the demise of the country has clearly begun. Parallels to the German 30’s could be made.
The day Bill C 63 will become law in Canada will mark the end for this Canada based website as well. We will see what is about to come, so far the bill still has to pass the different levels of government, but what can be expected? One thing can already be said – this so-called oh “sooo democratic” country has morphed into an ueber-surveillance and autocratic entity and free speech is certainly its biggest enemy. The saddest part of it – most of the Canadian populace is sound asleep.
Copyright 2024 by Dirk Heinicke