Canada: Government introduces online harms bill, creates Digital Safety Commission
FEB 27, 2024 3:30 PM
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
6 COMMENTS
The Liberal government’s new Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, is now in first reading. Should it be finally passed, it will “amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act and An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts.” The first part of the act is laudable. The second part, however, has nothing to do with protecting children and is cause for concern:
Part 2 amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) create a hate crime offence of committing an offence under that Act or any other Act of Parliament that is motivated by hatred based on certain factors;
(b) create a recognizance to keep the peace relating to hate propaganda and hate crime offences;
(c) define “hatred” for the purposes of the new offence and the hate propaganda offences; and
(d) increase the maximum sentences for the hate propaganda offences.
It also makes related amendments to other Acts.
Part 3 amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to provide that it is a discriminatory practice to communicate or cause to be communicated hate speech by means of the Internet or any other means of telecommunication in a context in which the hate speech is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination. It authorizes the Canadian Human Rights Commission to deal with complaints alleging that discriminatory practice and authorizes the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to inquire into such complaints and order remedies.
Who decides what constitutes hate? And in whose interests? The Trudeau government and its woke arbiters already have a reputation of trampling upon the rights and freedoms of Canadians. This latest legislation establishes huge parameters with plenty of space for possible exploitation by a woke government. Bill C-63 also creates a Digital Safety Commission of Canada.
The potential abuse of this Bill by the Trudeau government to create a “surveillance state” is legitimately worrying. Already, “surveillance cameras made by a sanctioned Chinese tech company, Hikvision,” were “reportedly installed in 50 Quebec cities and public facilities,” as well as in “government facilities”.
Inch by inch, without accountability, the Trudeau government has encroached upon Canadian rights and freedoms. This bill represents a final push to reshape Canada before the election of 2025.
“The online harms bill risks replacing digital anarchy with a surveillance state,” by John Ivison, National Post, February 26, 2024:
John Stuart Mill’s ideas on liberty and the freedom of the individual in the face of state and social control remain as relevant today as when he wrote them in 1859.
Individuals must be free to form opinions and to express those opinions without reservation, short of “making himself a nuisance to other people.”
“Society can, and does, execute its own mandates, and if it issues the wrong mandates … in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression,” he wrote in On Liberty, a rejection of the “tyranny of prevailing opinion.”….
The changes to the Criminal Code that create a new hate crime offence, and a new maximum punishment of life in prison for particularly egregious cases of genocide promotion, are reasonable responses to the explosion of hate online.
Canada has a law against displaying hate: Section 319 of the Criminal Code, which says anyone who incites hatred against an identifiable group where incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace is committing a crime. The problem is, it is rarely used — just 20 times between 2001 and 2019.
Yet, in recent months, we have seen people glorify terror, promote genocide and lionize murder and rape……. |
