Across Canada’s Internet, decisions are being made for the powerful, not for us.
Canada’ Internet regulator, the CRTC, has sided with Big Telecom time and again over the best interests of Canadians, directly leading to higher Internet prices for everyday people at a time when we’ve needed affordability the most. Parliament let privacy reform Bill C-11 die, perpetuating a privacy Wild West in which companies continue to sell and misuse our sensitive personal information. Media lobbyists and the RCMP have hijacked debate around online expression, turning legislation into a pathway for more money and more power for them.
Our pro-Internet platform lays out Internet policy that is about empowering YOU. Learn more below:
Key Access Recommendations
Everyone in Canada should have unrestricted access to multiple options for affordable, high-speed, world-class Internet, regardless of where they live.
- Guarantee Affordable Home & Wireless Internet: Introduce universal robust market competition to drive Canada’s sky-high home and mobile Internet prices downward.
- World-Class Connectivity — Everywhere: Every household in Canada, regardless of where they live, must be served by the gold standard of Internet technology: fibre.
- Public Interest Comes First: End Big Tech and Big Telecom calling the shots, and put power back in the hands of people to guide policies & regulation that serve us.
You can email your candidate these Access recommendations, or send them the full platform.
Access policies
- Guarantee Affordable Home & Wireless Internet:
- World-Class Connectivity — Everywhere:
- Public Interest Comes First:
Key Freedom of Expression Recommendations
Everyone in Canada should be empowered to share, collaborate, and express themselves freely online.
- Don’t Break the Internet: Reject all government proposals that would block websites on Canada’s Internet, or favour some types of Internet content over others.
- Protect Online Speech: Guarantee that any new rules that impact online speech will uphold our Charter of Rights, not expand beyond offline restrictions, and receive full public consultation and parliamentary debate.
- Empower Internet Users: Any new rules for online platforms must empower us, the users and voters, first and foremost.
- Support Canada’s Internet Creators: Support digital creators to tell our stories on the Internet.
You can email your candidate these Freedom of Expression recommendations, or send them the full platform.
Freedom of Expression policies
- Don’t Break the Internet
- Guarantee no introduction of a website blocking regime in Canada for any purpose, including copyright or online harms.
- Commit to maintaining our existing copyright system: notice and notice, with civil penalties for copyright violations.
- Reject Bill C-10, and guarantee no new regulation of user-generated content or content discoverability online.
- Tax web giants simply and fairly. But don’t tax specific types of content, distorting the Internet. This means:
- Protect Online Speech
- Check any legislation that impacts our online speech to ensure it is compliant with our Charter rights before bringing it to Parliament— not afterwards.
- Guarantee no expansion of online speech regulation beyond what is already illegal for offline speech in Canada.
- Commit to full, open public consultation and parliamentary debate around any legislation with implications for our online speech.
- Empower Internet Users
- Mandate extensive transparent reporting by online platforms to their users of how they moderate our content.
- Compel social media platforms to develop mechanisms that enable their users to easily mass block or otherwise end harassment by other Internet users.
- Work with online platforms to develop an easy to use mechanism for users to report and remove non-consensually shared sexual material that includes them.
- Fund research on approaches to fact-checking misinformation that respect user expression.
- Support Canada’s Internet Creators
- Update outdated CanCon regulation to recognize and support production of modern digital-first forms of content creation.
- Explicitly recognize and support the voices of Canada’s Indigenous and minority communities on the Internet.
- Promote the production of content under Creative Commons licensing, and other forms of public domain.
- Make copyright term extension beyond 50 years after the author’s death opt-in, not automatic, freeing our cultural heritage for further creative use.
Key Privacy Recommendations
Everyone in Canada should have control of their sensitive personal information and communications, backed by substantial consequences for violations of their privacy.
- Enforceable and Effective Privacy: Reform our privacy laws to close loopholes and meaningfully penalize violations.
- Control of our Personal Data: Require informed, ongoing consent for use of our personal information.
- Stop Emerging Technologies from Breaking Privacy: Regulate emerging mass surveillance technology, like facial recognition and other biometric surveillance.
You can email your candidate these Privacy recommendations, or send them the full platform.
Privacy Policies
- Enforceable and Effective Privacy – Comprehensively update Canada’s private sector and public sector privacy law to:
- Establish in law that privacy is a fundamental human right.
- Close loopholes that make nonprofits and political parties exempt from privacy laws.
- Give the Privacy Commissioner real enforcement powers, including:
- Oversight of privacy obligations for federal government departments and agencies, including requests for personal information.
- Order-making power for private and public sector organizations.
- The unrestricted power to levy significant fines against private sector organizations, subject only to judicial appeal.
- Control of our Personal Data – Give people in Canada real control over our personal information, including:
- An ongoing consent requirement for use of our data, including the ability to withdraw our consent and have that data deleted.
- The right to extract our personal information and associated data in a usable and transferable format.
- The ability to request timely access to our personal information, and correct mistakes.
- The right to know how our personal information is being shared.
- Require transparency and alternate recourse for any private or public decision that uses an algorithm to assess us, including:
- The ability to know when an algorithm is being used to make a decision that affects us.
- The right to request a human review of that decision.
- The right to appeal that decision.
- Compel government departments and agencies to report on the number of requests that they get from law enforcement for our personal information, and how often these requests are fulfilled or denied.
- Stop Emerging Technologies from Breaking Privacy
- Ban law enforcement from using facial recognition technology in public spaces and on databases of the general public.
- Develop legislative guidelines limiting private sector use of facial recognition and other biometric technologies without explicit consent of those affected.
- Make privacy impact assessments mandatory for every new and existing technology used by law enforcement:
- Require approval from the relevant law enforcement agency’s governing body before moving forward.
- Make the assessment results publicly available.
- Mandate completion before law enforcement is able to use the technology, and review the assessment on a yearly basis.
- Update the rules that govern how digital devices are treated at Canada’s borders:
- Develop clear and transparent CBSA policies, with mechanisms for recourse.
- End customs and immigration searches of digital devices without reasonable grounds.
- Ensure that searches of electronic devices have a dedicated legal basis that is distinct from searches of other types of goods.
