Transparency in the Canadian Government is being used inefficiently and unfairly. Over many years since Canada has been a country their have been many different censorship laws. Censorship has been included, in film, broadcasting, print, art, and the internet. As years pass the Canadian Government has been lenient towards censorship towards film, broadcasting and the arts. However, with the expansion of technology the Government still censors and denies multiple files and information from the General Public. The Harper Conservative government and CSIS have denied access to multiple government files and even censored out files allowed viewing by the general Public and now Canada has had the most files censored currently in the history of the …show more content…
This is declared by Edward Snowden, a former NSA member who leaked information about government surveillance in America, discussing security, liberty, and Bill C-51 in Canada. Multiple former prime ministers are aware that their surveillance lacks liberty and is weak but the government muzzles them and refuses to let them talk to the public about the issue. Bill C-51 is a document that declares that information from Canadian citizens is being collected and documented, while they are unaware. Spy agency are primarily targeting mobile phones and their apps to find information about the user as it the easiest way possible. The surveillance of Canadian citizens breaks many sections of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and the Privacy Act. In the Privacy act it state that no personal information shall be collected by a government institution unless it relates directly to an operating program or activity of the institution, and that the government institution shall inform any individual from whom the institution collects personal information about the individual of the purpose for which the information is being collected. Both of these sections are being denied. PIPEDA follows very strict guidelines in relation to the Privacy act. It states that the individual must know why their information is being collected and who is in charge of the protection of the of the collected information. It is very similar to one must having a warrant to inspect ones personal property. These two sections are also broken in Bill C-51. Edward Snowden explains that a Bill C-51 is useless as it occurs that one is more likely to die to lightning much higher than dying in a terrorist attack. When there is more laws to serve the protection of citizens for unlikely reasons, it decreases the liberty, people don’t want to be caught up in political movements and motives they just
Today, Canadian’s lives today are as translucent as ever. Most organizations especially the government constantly watches each and every one of our moves. By definition, surveillance is any systematic focus on any information in order to influence, manage, entitle, or control those whose information is collected. (Bennet et Al, 6). From driving to the shopping mall to withdrawing money from the ATM machine, Canadians are being watched constantly. With Canada’s commitment to advance technology and infrastructure in the 1960s, government surveillance is much easier and much more prevalent than it was hundreds of years ago. Even as early as 1940s, the Dominion Bureau of Statistics used punch cards and machines to determine who is available
The purpose of this act is to encourage and monitor the sharing of information between Government of Canada institutions in order to protect Canada against activities that threaten the security of Canada, but this bill not only fails to fix those flaws, it recreates and causes more underlying problems without adding any meaningful safeguards to ensure the expansive powers it grants will not be similarly abused. The bill allows information sharing across 17 government institutions for a wide range of purposes, most of which have nothing to do with terrorism. After the bill was passed, it has raised serious concerns regarding the potential impact is has on the basic civil liberties of all Canadians. The new legislation significantly expands CSIS’
There are moments when civil liberties should be curtailed in democratic countries like the US and Canada, in order to maintain national security. While this is true, there are also moments that an individual’s civil liberty should be maintained whereas it is not. Consequently, governments should make clear boundaries as to which occasions civil liberties should be restricted. For instance, both the Patriotic Act and the Anti-terrorist Act allowed rover wiretapping which are needed to deal with terrorists who have a sophisticated knowledge of how technology works.
Canada has always had strict rules when regarding freedom of speech. Some believe that for democracy to function properly, freedom of speech is necessary. Although absolute freedom of speech allows for all voices to be heard. The voices of many can be heard, but there are many more that are left to not be heard. Wealth and power play a huge role in determining who gets heard. Although media outlets are supposed to be reliable sources of information, the media has become less and less reputable because of the now large number of sources derived from radio, television and the internet. These sources are hard to monitor and can generate false information and biased opinions. The line between verified and non-verified sources have become greyer
As a Canadian in today’s society we believe we have a certain set of inalienable rights. One of those rights that seem to be at the forefront of the 2015 Canadian election is privacy. As Dr. Kent Roach and Dr. Craig Forcese state, “privacy is, in our society, the right to be left alone by the state.” The Conservative upbringing of Bill C-51 challenges the ideology around our right to be private, as well as our government’s role in the protection of Canada from threats of terrorism. The Harper government essentially, will increase their role in national security to keep a constant watchful eye on potentially harmful situations and end them before anyone is hurt or killed. If passed, the bill would allow the government to arrest anyone suspected of terrorism without that person even committing a crime. Furthermore, the language used in the bill is extremely vague and makes one question, where the line will be drawn? Will our basic rights to peaceful protest and free speech be affected? Unfortunately perhaps they will. One of the most concerning parts of the bill in regard to privacy is the fact that the government will now be able to access several sensitive documents about citizens from top agencies such as the Public Health Agency, Canadian Border Services Agency as well as the Canadian Border Services Agency. Privacy is changing in Canada. This is a landmark bill and as such it is creating quite a splash in the ongoing Canadian Election.
At the end, the crew and captain of Estai were released from prison and the boat was returned back to the Spanish. But, this only happened after they paid $500,000 to the Canadians for what they had done. Canada wanted to make sure that all the trawlers in its zone had left but the Spanish didn’t agree to that and acted fast by sending many of trawlers back. Things began getting very tense and Canada cut the nets of Spanish vessels. On April 15th in 1995, Canada and Spain decided to finally sort out the turbot war and come to a solution that would prevent overfishing of the turbot fish. In the end, Spain had to leave Canada's zone and Canada had the right to remove any vessels from other countries in its zone. On the other hand, the Estai
The schematic format of this paper is to provide a brief inquiry of Parliament’s response to the legislature, examine the issues surrounding oversight, and investigate the violations of constitutional rights. Although C-51 is divided into five parts, the following experts will examine privacy protection from parts one through four. These include, the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, the Secure Air Travel Act, the Criminal Code, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act (Parliament of Canada, 2015).
The history of the world has undoubtedly been dominated by an endless struggle for power. However, after a brief glimpse into the pages of history it should not take long to realize that the trick to maintaining power lies in the control of information. Even the most fearsome military generals of the past acknowledge the power of the mind and ideas over lethal force. Former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin once said “… [Ideas] are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, then why should we let them have ideas.” Stalin’s quote personifies the main concept of this literature review which will be discussing the history of government censorship and its effects that are
The purpose of this act is to encourage and monitor the sharing of information between Canadian government institutions in order to protect Canada against activities that threaten the security of Canada, but this bill not only fails to fix those flaws, it recreates and causes more underlying problems without adding any meaningful protection to ensure that the powers it grants will not be abused. The bill allows information sharing across 17 government institutions for a wide range of purposes, most of which have nothing to do with terrorism. After the bill was passed, it has raised serious concerns regarding the potential impact is has on the basic civil liberties of all Canadians. The new legislation significantly expands CSIS’ (Canadian Security
Bill C-51 defines the security of Canada as needing an information sharing act. This act interferes with many aspects of the public as it expands the definition of security allowing the government to exploit an individual of their
Rules revolving around Canadian Content (CanCon) have been set in place since the 1920’s. In 2005, revisions to the 1991 Broadcasting Act were made. Since this revision was made there have been further changes to the Act trying to create the best set of rules for CanCon to be broadcasted (Dewing, 2011). CanCon is an outdated concept that is causing consumers to switch to other forms of media. The CanCon rules cannot determine what is considered Canadian and they cannot keep up with the ever-changing forms of media. Canadian producers are only getting a slim portion of the industry even with the rules in place. Therefore CanCon rules should be totally eliminated.
Imagine a scenario where Kanye West is in his Los Angeles home with his wife and daughter and the police knock on his door. They arrest him based on exposing the American population to vulgarity, indecency, racist and sexist comments that offend many people. The government does not want America to be subjected to this type of music and turn the American culture into something more bigoted than it already is. However, a situation like this would never occur in the present day American society. That does not mean it could not happen in the future. Many American citizens are promoting censorship to an extreme that it could possibly become a reality. The American citizens claim that censorship is needed to shelter America’s citizens, but
Once slavery had been abolished the tension between people who were white and people who were black never really seemed to vanish. But as I started to watch the news I never realized how much hatred and cruelty there was between people who are pale and others who have much darker skin. This problem continued to grow and with the borders of censorship weakened then I realized that this issue needs to be taken care of. Growing up in a city that does not have to deal with a large issue like this makes it difficult to have an opinion on the subject in the beginning. When I was first introduced to racism as a subject I never realized how much harm it caused people today but now that I have been enlightened racism is something that I am against.
The major reason for what makes Canada’s newest anti-terrorism law so controversial is that it compromises the privacy of Canadians, by granting greater power
Furthermore, the government spying on its citizens is a huge violation of the rights they are granted. Privacy is a person’s right as a human being, however, privacy is also a privilege. If a