Dear Editor,
II’m writing regarding the comments by Damien Kurek, MP: “No Canadian culture without free speech”, ECA Review, March 9, Pg. 6.
Mr. Kurek fails to mention in his letter that Bill C-11 (The Online Streaming Act) concerns the CRTC’s powers to regulate telephone and television companies that operate in Canada, and to make sure they do not monopolize their industries, regulate their services and the costs to the Canadian consumers, and to make sure Canadian content is not submerged by US content and competition.
Plus, there is a need, in my opinion, to censor racist and bigoted comments which may incite people to violence. For example, we have seen in the US where Donald Trump and his minions incited his followers to commit violence against the duly elected US gov’t on Jan. 6, 2020 (Jan. 6th Insurrection).
We have seen white nationalists (Oath Keepers; KKK, etc.) attempt to kidnap and kill the governor of Michigan after they heard Trump criticise the governor’s actions against those who resisted COVID-19 restrictions.
We have seen countless numbers of cases where supporters of Trump tried, and continue to undermine the election results in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Arizona by threatening election officials with violence and with countless unsupported lawsuits.
Remember Alex Jones of Infowar fame? He is the person who, for years, said the Sandy Hook Massacre (Dec. 14, 2012) never happened. Twenty first-graders and six adults were not killed by Adam Lanza.
It was a hoax created by anti-gun folks who wanted to prohibit the sale of assault rifles and to end the US 2nd Amendment.
He lied about the massacre, and he lied about the parents of those children (he claimed they were all actors). Sadly, many individuals believe in his lies.
Consequently, the parents and the teachers suffered years of verbal abuse and death threats.
He was sued for defamation, and he lost, and he now has been ordered to pay over $900 million to the parents and to the families of the six dead adults.
“Free speech is free as long as a person doesn’t lie”.
Of course, most folks (those who follow the “real” news, not conspiracy theories) have heard that the US election results of 2020 were rigged. Fox News and several of Trump’s lawyers have now been sued by Dominion Voting Systems for spreading lies and misinformation about its voting machines.
The owner of Fox News admitted that several commentators on his shows had spread false information (Tucker Carlson is the main culprit), but lawyers for Trump (Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani) have also been sued for spreading lies and conspiracy theories against that company.
Bottom line: “Free speech is free as long as a person is not lying”.
Furthermore, words matter, and we shouldn’t be swayed by politicians who claim “free speech” is being destroyed in our country.
We shouldn’t accept the idea that a person can say and do whatever he/she wants to do.
This notion that we should be “entitled” to ignore rules and regulations we don’t like is unacceptable. Why? Without rules, laws and regulations, we would have chaos/anarchy.
In my opinion.
George Thatcher
Olds, Alta.
