An official associated with Trudeau’s administration in Canada is asking that anyone who writes about the news first get a government license to receive permission.
Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault suggested the frightening new policy.
The plans to license news producers, which include news blogs, were given in a report called the “Canada’s Communications Future: Time To Act”—to the Trudeau government recommended that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) or another regulatory body control licencing of all companies creating “audio, audiovisual, and alphanumeric news content.”
Steven Guilbeault said, “If you’re a distributor of content in Canada and obviously if you’re a very small media organization the requirement probably wouldn’t be the same if you’re Facebook, or Google. There would have to be some proportionality embedded into this,” Guilbeault told Evan Solomon an interview on CTV’s Question Period.
Critics have pointed out there’s no good way to delineate small news blogs and large news publications. Despite denials, the recommendations would require blogs to be licensed through the Canadian government as well as major networks.
Free Speech advocates argue this is a sure-fire way to clamp down and on expression and provide a means for the government to kill a blog at the flip of a switch by revoking their license.
