A school board in BC has told teachers to take classic books like How to Kill a Mockingbird off the Grade 10 reading curriculum, claiming that the books might offend students.
Plus, an independent content creator highlighted the devastating impact of Bill C-18 on smaller media companies in a recent committee meeting discussing the legislation which was meant to save failing legacy news companies.
And the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s 2024 departmental plan made no commitment to preserve freedom of expression.
Tune into The Daily Brief with Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Lindsay Shepherd!
CPAC Hungary chairman Miklós Szántó spoke with True North’s Harrison Faulkner about how Hungary has been so successful at reversing its plummeting birthrates. Hungary’s pro-family and pro-natal initiatives can serve as a lesson for other countries around the world, like Canada, that are struggling from plummeting fertility rates.
Szántó encourages Canadian conservatives to adopt similar policies and to not let political correctness and wokeness stop them from discussing demographics.
Educators in British Columbia think that classic books like To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are too offensive for Grade 10 students.
A number of books have been quietly banned from the reading curriculum for Grade 10 students at the Surrey School District based on concerns that the books are too controversial and not inclusive.
The removed books are To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie and In the Heat of the Night by John Ball.
A panel of 12 teachers decided to pull titles from the recommended reading curriculum last November.
While the books will still remain in school libraries, they will no longer be part of the curriculum’s recommended reading list.
“We received a lot of feedback from families of students not feeling safe in the classroom when these resources were used,” the board’s communications officer Ritinder Matthew told Global News on Thursday.
A review of the four aforementioned books was conducted over a year ago as a result of negative feedback from parents and other community members.
The review described the “portrayal of Black characters as one-dimensional, the use of the white saviour trope, the use of ableist language, the use of the N-word, noting it’s normalized in the text and not necessarily used as a slur, but often as another word for Black people. And that’s completely offensive and inappropriate,” when discussing To Kill a Mockingbird.
The books have been replaced by the following titles for the updated recommended reading list. Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, Brother by David Chariandy, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
“They give agency and voice to characters that are from historically racialized, marginalized or underrepresented groups who are in positions of power, strength or resiliency,” said Matthew.
While teachers are still permitted to read the previous books with their classes, they are obligated to adhere to the district’s policies.
These policies include fostering “inclusivity” and to “respond to the impacts of trauma and do not further traumatize students from marginalized and/or racialized communities.”
Additionally, teachers must “convey narratives, histories, and perspectives related to race, gender, class, diverse abilities, and other markers of identity.”
Education Minister Rachna Singh said she will speak with the Surrey school district regarding its recent decisions to remove the books from the list.
“I know as a parent that this is what I want my children to (do): read the classics as I did, growing up,” Singh told Global News.
“But at the same time, I want not only my child but other students to be introduced to other authors as well. And that’s why I know school districts make those decisions.”
B.C. Premier David Eby called the decision “crazy,” saying he hopes the board will reconsider the move.
“With a single Google search, you can access the most offensive, explicit, racist, awful, extreme content,” said Eby. “With apps on their phones, predators from around the world can reach down to your kid’s phone and take advantage of your child, who is not prepared to respond to that, who hasn’t been given the educational tools to respond to that.
“I think that we all need to focus on the actual threats that are facing our kids.”
BC United Leader Kevin Falcon called the situation “unbelievable.”
“To Kill a Mockingbird, you know, Of Mice and Men. I mean, these are literary classics that teach important stories about racism and the realities of life at a different time in the early 1900s or during the Depression,” said Falcon.
“We can’t have a situation that seems to be just exploding under this government. I don’t know if it’s ‘wokeism’ gone wild or what’s happening, but we can’t have books like that taken out of the school system. I think it’s wrong.”
Former Canadian Radio-Television Commission vice-chair Peter Menzies sarcastically congratulated News Media Canada, Minister of Transport Pablo Rodriguez, Bell Media, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for paving the way for the end of news on Facebook.
“Canada is a global leader in legislative incompetence,” said Menzies.
Meta, the conglomerate behind Facebook and Instagram, announced in a blog post a ban on news content across its platforms in Australia, Germany, and France.
Meta plans to remove Facebook News, a dedicated tab for news content, for users in Australia and the United States. Meta discontinued Facebook News in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany last year.
Meta said that the amount of people using Facebook News in Australia and the U.S. dropped by 80% last year. The company aims to better align its investments to its products and services values most by users.
“As a company, we have to focus our time and resources on things people tell us they want to see more of on the platform, including short form video,” said Meta.
Menzies, one of Canada’s most renowned journalists, explained in a subsequent post why he mentioned Rodriguez.
“As I recall, it was @pablorodriguez who with delight declared that ‘the world is watching’ Canada which was insisting on legislation that was built on a fantasy that inspired Meta to ask itself ‘Why are we even bothering with news — advertisers hate it,’” said Menzies.
In Canada, Meta removed the availability of news on its platforms following the Trudeau government’s passing of the Online News Act last summer. The ban did not affect those residing outside of Canada at the time.
The Online News Act required Meta and other tech companies to compensate Canadian news outlets for sharing content on their platforms.
Rachel Curran, head of public policy for Meta Canada, said that Meta had been transparent with the federal government for months regarding its concerns with the Online News Act. She added that the act was based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on its platforms when the reverse is true.
“News outlets voluntarily share content on Facebook and Instagram to expand their audiences and help their bottom line. In contrast, we know the people using our platforms don’t come to us for news,” said Curran.
CBC president and CEO Catherine Tait said big tech is to blame for the state broadcasters’ $100 million budget shortfall. She claimed that Meta’s news blocking adds to the industry’s difficulties and lets “disinformation” spread on Facebook and Instagram.
Despite CBC’s declining revenue, viewership, and laying off 10% of its staff, it will get an additional $90 million in funding next year from Trudeau’s government.
Australia’s Communications Minister Michelle Rowland and Finance Minister Stephen Jones released a joint statement in response to Meta’s announcement.
“Meta’s decision to no longer pay for news content in a number of jurisdictions represents a dereliction of its commitment to the sustainability of Australian news media,” said the ministers.
The decision removes a significant source of revenue for Australian news media businesses, they added.
The Australian government said it will work through all available options under the News Media Bargaining Code.
In 2021, Australian authorities sought to alter the existing framework by introducing the News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code, which mandated that technology platforms pay for the news content featured on their sites.
Meta said that people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content; instead, they come to connect with people and discover new opportunities, passions, and interests.
“As we previously shared in 2023, news makes up less than 3% of what people around the world see in their Facebook feed and is a small part of the Facebook experience for the vast majority of people,” said the organization.
The Trudeau government announced that it will be granting special measures to Iranians living in Canada, regarding extensions on their student and work visas to allow them to stay in the country longer.
The extension comes in response to the Iranian government’s continued crackdown on demonstrators protesting human rights.
The government had initially implemented temporary measures last February to allow Iranians living in Canada on student visas and work permits to stay longer, with a scheduled expiry deadline set for this past Thursday.
The recent adjustment announced on Thursday will now allow for Iranians already here to stay until the end of February 2025 at no extra cost, according to the National Post.
Additionally, the newly announced measures also include a provision to allow Canadians currently living in Iran to apply for passports or other travel documents for free.
The Iranian government has increasingly been suppressing any protestors involved in the Women, Life, Freedom movement.
The movement began in 2022 in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was imprisoned for refusing to wear the hijab. Amini died while incarcerated.
Numerous demonstrators have been arrested, imprisoned and killed by Iranian authorities over the past two years.
Currently, there is no formal diplomatic relationship between Canada and Iran.
This week on the Alberta Roundup with Rachel Emmanuel, Rachel unveils Ottawa’s unwillingness to address the addictions and homelessness crisis. Earlier this week, the Trudeau government rejected a proposal from the Alberta government that would allow officials to track so-called safe supply drugs to see where they end up.
Later, Rachel shares a study that shows how interest in child vaccinations has plummeted following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Finally, Rachel gives an update on Alberta’s 2024 budget which was tabled this week and explains how Ottawa’s national pharmacare program is playing out.
Eddie Cornell, a Canadian veteran who had his bank account frozen for participating in the Freedom Convoy successfully sued the federal government resulting in a judge finding the invocation of the Emergencies Act to be unconstitutional.
Cornell and his lawyer Blair Ector are now suing the federal government in a civil suit for damages.
True North’s Harrison Faulkner caught up with Cornell and Ector at CPAC in Washington DC last weekend.
Police will now be required to get a court order or a warrant to obtain the IP address of computers belonging to individuals or organizations, following a Supreme Court of Canada ruling on Friday.
The issue at hand was whether or not an IP address alone, without that attached personal information, was protected under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms privacy expectations.
The court ruled that it was a reasonable expectation of privacy that a person’s IP address should require a warrant prior to a search, in a five-four split decision.
Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, who ruled in favour of the decision, wrote that an IP address is “the crucial link between an internet user and their online activity.”
“Thus, the subject matter of this search was the information these IP addresses could reveal about specific internet users including, ultimately, their identity.”
However, dissenting Justice Suzanne Côté disagreed with Karakatsanis central argument, saying that privacy around an IP address alone should not be an expectation of privacy under the Charter.
The recent decision was based on the case of Andrei Bykovets, a man convicted of 14 online fraud offences involving purchases made from a liquor store in Alberta, according to CBC News.
Once Calgary Police Services discovered that a third-party payment processing company called Moneris was responsible for the liquor store’s payments, they contacted them to request IP addresses associated with the purchases.
Monteris obliged the request, however, CPS did so without a warrant or a court order.
CPS then went to the internet service provider with a court order to obtain the names and addresses associated with the IP addresses, one of which belonged to Bykovets and another to his father.
The names and addresses were then used to acquire a warrant to search their residences.
Bykovets was subsequently arrested and charged with possession of a third party’s identity documents and credit card.
His defence in the trial was that he was a victim of unreasonable search and seizure, a violation of Section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, due to an expectation of privacy regarding his IP address.
The trial judge ruled against Bykovets’ argument and it was later brought before the Alberta Court of Appeal, with a majority decision also siding with the trial judge.
However, one appeal court judge disagreed, saying that there was an expectation of privacy associated with one’s IP address.
In the Supreme Court ruling, Karakatsanis stated that privacy interests cannot be limited to what the IP address can reveal on its own “without consideration of what it can reveal in combination with other available information, particularly from third-party websites.”
Once an IP address unlocks the identity of the user, a reasonable expectation of privacy should be protected under the Charter, the ruling added.
“If [the Charter] is to meaningfully protect the online privacy of Canadians in today’s overwhelmingly digital world, it must protect their IP addresses,” reads the ruling.
An independent content creator highlighted the devastating impact of Bill C-18 on smaller media companies in a recent committee meeting discussing the legislation which was meant to save failing legacy news companies.
Brandon Gonez, CEO of Gonez Media Inc. and a former broadcaster for Bell Media and Corus Entertainment, spoke before the House of Commons Canadian Heritage Committee on February 15th.
Gonez painted a grim picture of the challenges faced by digital-first media entities like his own, suggesting that the legislation has pushed them to the brink of collapse.
“When Bill C-18 came about, we were severely impacted. We lost our pages on Meta-owned platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, which were literally the platforms we built our business model on,” said Gonez.
“Our revenue impact was a more than 40% loss. We were at risk of literally doing the exact same thing that legacy media companies had done to our staff.”
One of the most pressing concerns raised by Gonez was the assurance made by Pablo Rodriguez, the heritage minister at the time, promising that media companies affected by the block would be adequately compensated. However, as Gonez lamented, this promise has not been fulfilled.
“One of the issues I have in particular is that the heritage minister at the time was quoted as saying that media companies affected by this block would be made whole. We have not been made whole. In fact, we have had to be agile, to innovate and to find new ways to sustain our business and our model,” explained Gonez.
The repercussions of Bill C-18 extend beyond financial strain. Gonez warned of an impending crisis within the media ecosystem, with smaller companies teetering on the edge of closure.
“When I talk to my peers, whose companies are a lot smaller, I hear they are at the brink of closing their doors,” said Gonez.
“Meaning we are going to be left with an ecosystem of companies that are living only because of government funding.”
Bill C-18, passed amid controversy, aims to compel social media giants like Google and Meta to pay news publishers for the presence of their content on their platforms. However, critics argue that the legislation grants the government excessive control over online news dissemination.
Meta’s response to the bill was swift, with the company blocking news links on Facebook and Instagram for users in Canada last year.
Despite the urgency demonstrated by the Liberal government in pushing through Bill C-18, the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission recently released a timeline indicating that deals with big tech companies may not be reached until 2026.
Constitutional rights groups have expressed stark concerns over the Online Harms Act which was introduced in the House of Commons by the Trudeau government on Monday.
Presented as a means to protect Canadians from viewing harmful content online, the bill has become the subject of controversy due to its broad scope, with many critics arguing that it will lead to censorship en masse.
Groups like The Democracy Fund and The Canadian Constitution Foundation are aiming to sound the alarm now before the legislature is passed.
Bill C-63 would allow anybody to file complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission for any speech directed towards protected groups that they may feel to be discriminatory.
Complainants who, depending on the circumstance may remain anonymous, could be awarded up to $20,000, which could act as an incentive for some.
“This bill is a trojan horse. If allowed to pass, it would quickly release an army of bureaucrats and social media censors on the Canadian public,” wrote Mark A. Joseph, senior litigation counsel for The Democracy Fund on Thursday.
“The threat of criminal sanction and years of litigation at a human rights tribunal would silence most citizens from speaking on controversial subjects. The bill should be rejected by anyone who values their free speech rights.”
Executive Director of the CCF Joanna Baron called the bill “extremely concerning.”
“Justice Minister Virani has tied these speech restrictions to defensible measures like removing images of child sexual exploitation material and revenge porn,” said Baron.
“But don’t be fooled,” she added. “Most of the bill is aimed at restricting freedom of expression. This heavy-handed bill needs to be severely pared down to comply with the constitution.”
The commission’s findings would be based on a “balance of probabilities” metric, instead of what’s long since been understood under the Canadian criminal code as proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
This alteration will make defining what constitutes “hate speech” a very difficult and ultimately subjective task, leading many Canadians to err on the side of staying quiet at times when they perhaps shouldn’t, to avoid crossing what currently remains an unknown line.
“It’s difficult for me, a lawyer who works on free expression cases, to know exactly where the line is between protected speech and hate speech,” said CCF Counsel Josh Dehaas.
“If this bill passes, I suspect many Canadians will now be too afraid of a human rights complaint to participate in policy debates around things like race, religion and gender.”
Bill C-36 would also allow for judges to put prior restraints on people whom they believe on reasonable grounds may commit future speech crimes, meaning the accused would have the option of choosing between imprisonment or a “recognizance to keep the peace.”
This may include conditions like wearing an ankle monitor, giving a bodily sample and abstaining from drugs and alcohol.
“The bill is overbroad, replete with ambiguous language, empowers government censors and contains draconian penalties. If enacted and strictly applied, it will result in substantial and pervasive online censorship,” wrote The Democracy Fund in a press release on Thursday.
While the TDF acknowledged the importance of protecting citizens from online expression which foments hatred, they argue that Bill c-63 will more often suppress speech that may be offensive but is not illegal.
Social media companies would be required to report on how they dealt with content that had been flagged as harmful under the bill, which would encourage tech companies to censor speech that the government can’t necessarily outlaw for fear that they will face fines and other penalties from the government.
Essentially, the bill aims to reintroduce Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, an internet censorship provision that was once used to prevent online media outlets from discussing contentious subjects.
Section 13 was repealed by the Harper government in 2014 because the provision was too broad and punitive.
“The bill attempts to define hate as “vilification and detestation,” but the language is ambiguous and subjective. Thus, as with all such legislation that concerns speech acts, it will be selectively applied to disfavoured parties and political opponents,” wrote the Democracy Fund.
