Any Good in Ottawa’s Online Harms Bill Is Overshadowed by Its ‘Hate Speech’ Provisions | Epoch Times | Cory Morgan:
Feruary 26, 2024 - "It’s been a long time in coming and now the government has finally tabled a new version of its Online Harms Act (Bill C-63).... The full title of Bill C-63 is: 'An Act to enact the Online Harms Act, to 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.' It’s quite a mouthful and it reflects a bill that’s trying to take on many issues at once....
"There is a lot to unpack in the bill and there are some good regulations within it.... Child pornography is a scourge that must be pursued and prosecuted with the utmost vigour. The internet has offered a platform that has allowed the production and distribution of child pornography to flourish. We need to give law enforcement, government agencies, and internet providers tools to try and protect children and hold those exploiting children to account.... That said, the world has changed.... On websites that have hundreds of thousands if not millions of interactions per day, it can be tough to keep up with what’s being posted. The legislation must give providers reasonable timelines and means to keep inappropriate content under control....
"As always, the devil will be in the details. The bill calls for the establishment of a 'Digital Safety Office of Canada' to administer the whole thing. Forming a new bureaucracy rarely leads to a more efficient administration of laws or regulations no matter how well-intentioned the action was. It also raises the scary prospect that a few bureaucrats can decide what content is harmful.
"The bill also calls for revisions to the Criminal Code to increase the maximum sentences for hate propaganda. It specifies increasing the sentence for promoting genocide from a maximum of five years to a life sentence. This is where this bill is going to get into trouble. For one, the nation can’t even settle on what the definition of genocide is anymore. It can range from calling for the extermination of a race to opposing the changing of gender pronouns in schools. Secondly, while the promotion of real genocide is odious and could indeed earn criminal sanction, offering a penalty of a life sentence is beyond reasonable. Even murderers in Canada often don’t get life sentences. This is just inviting legal challenges.
"The bill delves into hate speech and further empowerment of the Human Rights Commission. It is returning restrictions on expression and speech that went too far in the past which is why the Harper government rescinded Section 13 of the Human Rights Act. Speech was being unduly infringed upon and the commission was overstepping its bounds. The new definitions of criminal hate speech will surely land in our courts, too.
"Bill C-63 has some merit but the bill may be lost due to the government’s zeal in trying to pack hate speech provisions into it. If the child protection section could be broken free into a bill of its own, it could be a fine piece of legislation."
Bill to combat harmful online content | CBC News: The National | February 26, 2024:
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