QUESTION PERIOD — Privy Council
Restriction of Government Opposition
June 5, 2019
Honourable senators, my question is for the non-affiliated government leader in the Senate.
Senator Harder, as I’m sure you’re aware if you follow me on Twitter — and I know you do — I’m often quite critical of the media, although not nearly as critical as I am of your government.
Freedom of speech, you see, is a wonderful thing. Despite all my criticism of a free and independent media, they, along with the opposition voices in Parliament, are pillars of our democracy. It’s how we hold our governments to account. Those voices should never be muzzled, no matter how much you disagree with criticism you and your government may be facing.
Senator Harder, how far is your government willing to go to shut down dissent and opposition? You say you believe in a free and independent media, yet here in the last couple of weeks what do we have? We have seen your leader speak about imposing a digital charter without details on exactly how he intends to censor the Internet. He has appointed Jerry Dias to a panel which will help decide which outlets receive a taxpayer-funded media bailout. Recently we learned that government officials were tipping off Irving Shipbuilding about journalists questioning their contract with the government, resulting in Irving threatening to sue those journalists. There seems to be a lot of that kind of talk going around these days.
Senator Harder, how far are you and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau willing to go to shut down criticism of the government?
I thank the honourable senator for his question.
Let me disabuse the honourable senator of any interest I might have in his tweets or Twitter accounts. I do not follow him. In fact, I don’t know how to do it.
You actually retweet.
I’m sorry to disappoint in that regard.
I do find social media a challenging media with respect to civility and appropriate discourse, but that too is a matter of taste.
Where I think we need as an institution of Parliament to reflect is how social media is a tool of hate and insurrection, if I can put it that way. How is it abused? In that regard, the Government of Canada, working with other like-minded governments of liberal democracies, is reflecting on how to balance that concern with respect to hate speech, hate crimes, organized crime, all of which are using social media to undermine democratic institutions. That ought to be an issue of concern to the honourable senator, and perhaps he can tweet about that some time.
Honourable colleagues, Senator Harder, I hate to remind you, but Twitter is on record. So you not only follow my tweets but also those who retweet my tweets. That’s neither here nor there.
What’s important to point out is that this is not about simply trying to squash the opposition in criticism. The government is not preoccupied with answering questions. You keep talking about questioning the government as being hate. Questioning the government is our right to question and it’s your obligation to answer. I think we all know how far this government is willing to go. We just need to ask former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould or former Minister Jane Philpott or, for that matter, Vice-Admiral Norman and his family whose lives have been made hell for the past two years. It is simply because this Prime Minister cannot handle when someone stands up and calls him out for his hypocrisy.
I ask a second time for you to answer my first question. Who in the Government of Canada has been giving information about questions coming from journalists to Irving Shipbuilding and why is that being done? That’s the question.
I’m glad to see the honourable senator has settled on one question.
Let me simply refer the honourable senator to the answer provided by the ministry, which clearly indicated that the responsibility of dealing with the media is not that of the government but of the organization that is in question — in this case Irving. The minister responsible has urged that the more appropriate response be forthcoming from the media.
