The complete text of Sen. David Richards\u0027 speech to the Senate about the new Online Streaming Act
Cicero lived in a dangerous time. When Vasily Grossman completed Life and Fate, his grand novel about the Battle of Stalingrad, it had to be sanctioned by the cultural section of the Central Committee, the wise Soviet think-tank of art and culture. They took a year to answer and said that it was anti-Soviet. They did not accept it for publication.
That is something all too rare today in Canada and everywhere else. I think, overall, we have lately become a land of scapegoaters and finger pointers, offering accusations and shame while believing we are a woke society. Cultural committees are based as much in bias and fear as in anything else. I’ve seen enough artistic committees to know that. That what George Orwell says we must resist is a prison of self-censorship. This bill goes a long way to construct such a prison.
This statement is a transparent endowment to those whose support they need and whom they desire to influence, but it is a terrible insult to the great writers in my country that I know. This is not opening the gate to greatness but only to compliance. The writers I know don’t need to advance to fit an agenda, and neither do the songwriters or bloggers. When this bill mentions how we have evolved, it is simply a suggestion to comply.
“I am human, I consider nothing human alien to me.” That is, we understand because we identify, not because we are being taught a lesson. One night, after my reading at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, two people approached me. One was the great Irish writer Roddy Doyle, telling me he had long admired my work. The other was the First Nations writer Richard Wagamese, telling me he started writing because he was influenced by my work.
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