Without free speech, what safeguards do we have on the government and other authorities?
An alarming attempt to remove free speech from medical doctors in California bears watching when we live in a country with a government trying to stem free speech on the Internet.
Justin Trudeau’s Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, would among other things require content providers to “counter disinformation.”
Lorne Gunter wrote: “We learned, via Emergencies Act commission documents, that during last winter’s Freedom Convoy the Trudeau government had no evidence of Russian or other foreign influence behind the protest, no massive foreign funding and no identifiable threat to national security. Yet the prime minister and several cabinet ministers repeated such claims for weeks – even after the convoy was broken up.”
So whose “disinformation” would online content providers be obliged to counter?
Increasingly, rather than rise to the task of intelligent debate too many today stoop to calling anything they disagree with “disinformation.” It’s an attempt to end the debate by demonizing the other person’s right to even speak.
Taking that to its inevitable conclusion, California is moving to make it illegal for doctors to go against “scientific consensus.”
Assembly Bill 2098 which has been endorsed by the California Medical Association, defines misinformation as “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care.”
Penalties could include loss of a doctor’s medical licence.
Perhaps it sounds reasonable to censure people who spread false scientific information, but who decides what is true and what isn’t?
Early in the pandemic, Canada’s top doctor, Theresa Tam, said: “Putting a mask on an asymptomatic person is not beneficial, obviously if you’re not infected.”
Shortly after that she and others made mask wearing mandatory in many places.
In which of those cases was Tam spreading misinformation, and should she lose her licence since it had to be one or the other?
Was her first position the best medical advice she could give at the moment, or was it a political decision to ensure that the medical community got first access to masks?
Either way, had a doctor immediately countered Tam’s initial position, which one of them would have been guilty of misinformation?
We have been told all through the pandemic that the science is evolving. What we believe today could be shown to be incorrect tomorrow. That is no one’s fault, it is science.
But nothing changes if no one is allowed a counter opinion. Today’s crank could be tomorrow’s Nobel winner.
In California’s case, who decides what is the authorized medical consensus?
The Medical Board of California decides. But who are they?
A bare majority are doctors. The others are political appointees and the current president is not a doctor, but a lawyer.
Political appointees are by definition political.
I became so frustrated with the non-scientific gobbledegook – in my opinion – of the ardent anti-vax crowd during the pandemic that I stopped taking their calls on the radio.
But that is just editorial control of my show, an action taken because they failed to come up with interesting new talking points. I don’t believe there should be any action by government to shut down people’s speech, regardless of their opinion or profession.
But politicians in Canada and the U.S. do.
Is it safe for me to say that’s alarming?
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