Bill would force ISPs to censor the Internet
IN A LETTER WHICH suspends a CRTC application made by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre which said Quebec’s new web-blocking legislation, Bill 74, is not only unconstitutional, but directly conflicts with the Telecommunications Act, the Commission made it known that it more or less agrees with PIAC.
(Ed note: So do we.)
Bill 74 requires Quebec-based Internet service providers to block certain gambling websites when told to do so by the province. The Quebec government created the new law because it wants to keep as much gambling as possible with the province’s own Loto-Quebec.
As well, in July the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association filed an application with the Superior Court of Quebec challenging section 12 of Bill 74 on constitutional grounds.
Since the matter is before the court, the CRTC said in a letter today to the Attorneys Generals of all Canadian jurisdictions (as well as all Canadian ISPs) that it felt it was appropriate to suspend PIAC’s CRTC application while the CWTA challenge works its way through the legal system.
However, the Commission went a step further in the letter, addressing whether provincial Bill 74 runs counter to federal law – namely Section 36 of the Telecommunications Act, which states: “Except where the Commission approves otherwise, a Canadian carrier shall not control the content or influence the meaning or purpose of telecommunications carried by it for the public.”
The CRTC letter also added “the Commission is exclusively responsible for the administration of this provision and will remain so, regardless of any finding with respect to the constitutionality of section 12 of Bill 74.”
The letter also pointed out that the federal statute binds the provinces under it from creating laws in contravention to it and “the Commission is of the preliminary view that the Act prohibits the blocking by Canadian carriers of access by end-users to specific websites on the Internet, whether or not this blocking is the result of an ITMP. Consequently, any such blocking is unlawful without prior Commission approval, which would only be given where it would further the telecommunications policy objectives. Accordingly, compliance with other legal or juridical requirements—whether municipal, provincial, or foreign—does not in and of itself justify the blocking of specific websites by Canadian carriers, in the absence of Commission approval under the Act,” it concludes.
