Back in September, we were shocked by Bell Canada’s overreaching proposal to introduce a mandatory website blocking system with no judicial oversight and radical new copyright rules in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which is currently being renegotiated. Not long after, rumours surfaced that Bell was planning a similar proposal at home via the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). And this January, just when we thought we’d seen it all, Bell went full throttle and spearheaded a coalition of over 25 organizations calling itself “FairPlay Canada,” including Cineplex and the CBC. This coalition has formally requested the CRTC to consider creating a website-blocking agency.
Bell’s proposal is problematic because creating a censorship committee within the federal government has a huge potential to open the floodgates to widespread Internet censorship. Website blocking schemes often result in over-blocking, as seen in the U.K., where gay-teen support sites are being added to its ever-growing list of blocked websites. So if this proposal goes through, it won’t be long before legitimate content and even services like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) become the coalition’s next targets. FairPlay Canada’s proposal is an attack on Canadians’ right to free expression and our robust net neutrality rules that Minister Navdeep Bains and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have both expressed strong support for.
Marie Aspiazu – Rabble.ca – March 1, 2018.
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