Trudeau regime's extremist attack on free speech

Canada's Online Harms Bill C-63 would impose draconian criminal penalties on hate speech and curtail people’s liberty in order to stop crimes they haven’t yet committed.

Canada’s Extremist Attack on Free Speech | The Atlantic | Conor Friedersdorf:

June 6, 2024 - "In 1984, George Orwell coined the term thoughtcrime. In the short story 'The Minority Report,' the science-fiction author Philip K. Dick gave us the concept of 'precrime,' describing a society where would-be criminals were arrested before they could act. Now Canada is combining the concepts in a work of dystopian nonfiction: A bill making its way through Parliament would impose draconian criminal penalties on hate speech and curtail people’s liberty in order to stop future crimes they haven’t yet committed.

"The Online Harms Act [Bill C-63] states that any person who advocates for or promotes genocide is 'liable to imprisonment for life.' It defines lesser 'hate crimes' as including online speech that is 'likely to foment detestation or vilification' on the basis of race, religion, gender, or other protected categories.  And if someone 'fears' they may become a victim of a hate crime, they can go before a judge, who may summon the preemptively accused for a sort of precrime trial. If the judge finds 'reasonable grounds' for the fear, the ... judge may put the defendant under house arrest or electronic surveillance and order them to abstain from alcohol and drugs. Refusal to 'enter the recognizance' for one year results in 12 months in prison. This is madness.

"The proposed law ... does many other things too. One section concerns the obligations of online platforms to police content. Another bears on the worthy goal of protecting children from viewing pornography and stopping the distribution of child-sexual-abuse material, raising the odds that the bill will pass with too little attention to its worst provisions. (In February, it passed its first reading in the House of Commons. Becoming law would require a second and third reading in that body, where amendments can be proposed; passage in the national Senate; and approval by the governor general.)... 

"Arif Virani, Canada’s minister of justice and attorney general, is championing it. 'We need the ability to stop an anticipated hate crime from occurring,' he declared last week. 'The Conservatives need to get on board. Now.' According to The New York Times, some version of the bill is likely to pass, because 'Trudeau’s Liberal Party has an agreement with an opposition party to support government legislation.'

"Just countries do not punish mere speech with imprisonment, let alone life imprisonment. Just countries do not order people who have not committed and are not even accused of a crime to be confined to their home or tracked with an ankle bracelet. I have reasonable grounds to fear that the Trudeau government is going to trample on the civil rights of Canadians. That is hardly sufficient to secure the house arrest of its officials.

"Earlier this year, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association urged substantial amendments to the legislation. 'The broad criminal prohibitions on speech in the bill risk stifling public discourse and criminalizing political activism,' it warned. 'The bill imposes draconian penalties for certain types of expression, including life imprisonment for a very broad and vaguely defined offence of "incitement to genocide," and 5 years of jail time for other broadly defined speech acts. This not only chills free speech but also undermines the principles of proportionality and fairness in our legal system.'

"But amendments would not go far enough. No one who favors allowing the state to imprison people for mere speech, or severely constraining a person’s liberty in anticipation of alleged hate speech they have yet to utter, is fit for leadership in a liberal democracy. Every elected official who has supported the unamended bill should be ousted at the next opportunity by voters who grasp the fraught, authoritarian folly of this extremist proposal."

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/canada-online-harms-act/678605/

Trudeau's new online censorship law - Problems with Bill C-63 / the Online Harms Law | Canadian Constitution Foundation | March 4, 2024:

Governor-General's symposium promoted Bill C63

Canada's Governor-General is officially non-partisan and apolitical, but hosted a symposium where Liberal cabinet minister Arif Virani promoted his Online Harms Bill C-63 to a selected group of influencers. 

‘NON-PARTISAN, APOLITICAL’: Governor General hosts event in support of Online Harms bill | Western Standard | Jen Hodgson:

April 16, 2024 - "Governor General Mary Simon’s office insists she is 'non-partisan and apolitical' after she personally hosted a symposium in support of the Trudeau Liberals' Online Harms bill. The guest list was limited to Attorney General Arif Virani and supporters of internet regulation, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. No opposition members or critics of Bill C-63: An Act To Enact The Online Harms Act were invited.... 

Read thread on X.

"Simon’s office would not disclose the names of all invitees or explain why others were excluded from the April 11 event. Nor did Rideau Hall justify the pro-government event. 

"Further, it refused to release any video or audio recordings of the conference or a transcript of speakers’ remarks. 

"Some guests did include former CTV News anchor Lisa LaFlamme, Le Devoir columnist Emilie Nicolas, former Global News reporter Rachel Gilmore, Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, gender activist Fae Johnstone and Ottawa school trustee Nili Kaplan-Myrth....

"Simon supported the bill publicly on her social media as well. 'Let’s transform these conversations into action,' the governor general posted to Twitter ('X'). 'Help us create a safer online world.' Virani on social media confirmed Simon’s private conference was intended to support Bill C-63. 'We know online harms have real world consequences,' Virani wrote. 'With industry experts at the Governor General’s symposium we discussed this and our Online Harms Act.'

"Bill C-63 would require that Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms 'mitigate the risk that users will be exposed to harmful comment' with compliance monitored by a five-member Digital Safety Commission. The bill would also appoint a federal ombudsman to 'provide support to users of social media services.” The proposal follows a failed 2021 measure C-36 An Act To Amend The Criminal Code that went further in granting a 'digital safety commissioner' powers to block websites containing legal content deemed hurtful. Hate speech is already prohibited under 1970 amendments to the Criminal Code."
Read more: https://www.westernstandard.news/news/non-partisan-apolitical-governor-general-hosts-event-in-support-of-online-harms-bill/53842

The Governor General deserves better, but we deserve impartiality  | Macdonald-Laurier Institute | Philippe Lagassé for Inside Policy:

April 16, 2024 - "As well-intentioned as the Governor General’s symposium was, she should never have hosted it in this context, a conclusion that’s reinforced by the Minister of Justice publicly tying the event to bill C-63. As soon as the government tabled the bill, Her Excellency should have understood that the symposium was no longer appropriate and would present a risk to her office’s impartiality.... As the King’s vice-regal representative, the Governor General performs core constitutional functions. These demand that the Governor General not only act impartially but be perceived to be impartial. This isn’t just good form, it’s a fundamental part of the job....

"Turning back to the symposium, it’s important to clarify why it undermined her impartiality, or at least perceptions of it.... A full-on violation of constitutional norms isn’t the standard here. Instead, we should be asking why the Minister of Justice was even there, and why the Governor General decided to host the symposium, considering how contentious Bill C-63 has been already. Hosting the event allowed Her Excellency to get pulled into the partisan fray, a predictable outcome that she shouldn’t have risked.

"Those who participated in the symposium will counter that it was the Minister of Justice who made the connection with Bill C-63, not the Governor General. Her Excellency’s motives, and the importance of the cause addressed by the symposium, shouldn’t be impugned by a careless, partisan tweet. Alas, partisans are going to partisan and politicians are going to politick. This is precisely why vice-regal representatives should avoid wading into politically charged topics.... Defenders of the symposium offer another argument: as the sovereign’s representative, the Governor General should address important social problems that affect Canadians.... This is a fair point, though Governors General need to be careful about what causes they take up.... Anything that’s the subject of notable partisan and parliamentary debate, is ideologically fraught, or might be fought over during an election should raise red flags.

"Thankfully for the Governor General, the controversy surrounding her symposium hasn’t extended beyond the Ottawa bubble yet. She should keep it that way by abandoning her 'We Deserve Better' campaign while partisans battle it out over Bill C-63 and the courts review the Online Harms Act if it becomes law. This isn’t because the Governor General doesn’t deserve better; she does, as do all those who suffer online abuse. It’s because Canadians deserve impartiality from the Governor General, both real and perceived."

Philippe Lagassé is an associate professor at Carleton University. He’s the co-editor of Canada and the Crown: Essays on Constitutional Monarchy (2014) and The Crown and Parliament (2015).
Read more: https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/the-governor-general-deserves-better-but-we-deserve-impartiality-philippe-lagasse-for-inside-policy/

Bill C-63 gives Commissions too much power

The Trudeau government's new Online Harms legislation Bill C-63, while less of an overreach than its predecessor Bill C-36, concentrates too much unchecked power in the Canadian Human Rights Commission and  a new Digital Safety Commission. 

Peter Menzies: New Online Harms Act Gives Appointed Commissioners Too Much Power | MacDonald-Laurier Institute | Peter Menzies:

Februay 27, 2024 - "Canada has launched  legislation reining in social media and reducing its citizens’ freedom to express themselves online. And while supporters of the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) believe tighter control of speech and images by government is necessary to make platforms such as X and Facebook 'safer,' it’s unclear if that will be the case.... 

"There will be a Digital Safety Commission led by a chair, vice-chair, and commissioners supported by a staff of public servants. Its job will be to oversee social media companies, each of which will have to satisfy the commission that it has policies and practices in place that protect users from seven distinct online harms. Those are: sexually victimizing children, bullying, inducing children to harm themselves, extremism/terrorism, inciting violence, fomenting hatred, and sharing intimate content without consent, including deepfakes. The platforms will have three 'duties of care' ... to act responsibly, ensure content in those seven categories is inaccessible, and to otherwise protect children. In addition, platforms will have to inform police if, while patrolling users’ content, they come across incidents of child sexual exploitation.

"The good news is that just about everything this new five-person commission of cabinet appointees will be 'imposing' is already covered in the Criminal Code and has been blocked or removed by the companies for years. And given that early drafts of the legislation envisioned a government commission empowered to directly patrol and order the removal of 'lawful but awful' online content, the duty of care approach is a welcome relief that signals a significant retreat....

"In addition, the government is creating a Digital Safety Ombudsman (also a cabinet appointee) whose job will involve duties such as supporting victims of the online harms outlined, offering advice to the companies, and educating the public in navigating the social media landscape. Seems a little heavy on the bureaucratic overkill if you ask me, but ... again, in terms of having a lot for the average person to worry about... not a lot to see here. Not much about your experience is likely to change, at least not at this stage, given that the behaviours demanded are already being performed.

"But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to worry about. As internet expert and University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist pointed out, the powers of the Digital Safety Commission are immense. 'It can issue rulings on making content inaccessible, conduct investigations, demand any information it wants from regulated services (and) hold hearings that under certain circumstances can be closed to the public,' Geist wrote. 'The Commission is not subject to any legal or technical rules of evidence, as the law speaks to acting informally and expeditiously, an approach that seems inconsistent with its many powers.'

"Another legal expert, Halifax lawyer David Fraser, put it this way on X: 

"I 100% expected it to be much worse" doesn’t make it automatically good. Take a close note of the repeated use of the phrase 'reasonable grounds to believe' and 'suspect", which set a very low bar and always err on the side of removal,' he wrote.'The content must be removed or made inaccessible permanently if there are reasonable grounds to believe that there are reasonable grounds to suspect.... Not even actually believe or actually suspect.

"Alarming, in my view, is the Online Harms’ provision to define racist and homophobic comments as discrimination and give the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) the power to take complaints on that basis, levy fines up to $20,000 against those it deems guilty, and order them to remove their posts. This stands a very good chance of flooding the human rights commission ... with complaints from organizations and individuals seeking to embarrass and impoverish their ideological foes.... It is entirely conceivable that everything from religious texts to statements such as 'a person with a penis cannot be a woman' will be subject to fines and takedown orders by the CHRC, where the usual rules of evidence don’t apply, guilt is the de facto default position, and the term 'kangaroo court' is often applied.

"Lastly, it was disappointing not to see one more duty imposed on X and Facebook, specifically the duty to preserve freedom of expression and apply their content moderation rules in an objective fashion, favouring neither progressives nor conservatives. But, given the road we’re now going down, that’s probably not the government’s preferred outcome."

Read more: https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/new-online-harms-act-gives-appointed-commissioners-too-much-power-peter-menzies-in-the-epoch-times/

Trudeau's Online Harms Act is WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT | Northern Perspective | March 1, 2024:

Trudeau gov't tables Online Harms Bill C-63

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." 

Read more: https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/cory-morgan-any-good-in-ottawas-online-harms-bill-is-overshadowed-by-its-hate-speech-provisions-5595592

Bill to combat harmful online content | CBC News: The National | February 26, 2024: 

Canada's war on free speech

Canada’s proposed speech and media bills are a buffet of bad ideas | The Hub - Peter Menzies:

May 11, 2022 - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government gained fame this winter when protestors opposed to COVID-19 restrictions took over the streets of the nation’s capital.... In response, the Trudeau government used the Emergencies Act — giving it powers designed for wartime — to disperse the protestors. Assertions of a seditious white-supremacist-led insurrection have to date proven unfounded, no weapons were found, and the government is still struggling to explain why it had to take such drastic action. Unrepentant and undeterred, Trudeau and his Heritage Minister, Pablo Rodriguez, are moving forward with a buffet of speech and media legislation.

"The Online Streaming Act [Bill C-11] places the internet under the authority of the Broadcasting Act and Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which is best known for enforcing mandated levels of Canadian content (Cancon) and ensuring that which it governs is 'of good standard.' Rodriguez says the aim is to make streaming companies such as Netflix, Disney Plus, Pornhub, and Amazon Prime pay into funds used to make Canadian films and television programs. But the ... regulator will not only get money for the funds, but it will also be expected to force YouTube et al. to give priority to approved content as well as governing TikTok, podcasts, and social media posts. The impact on consumer freedom, preferred speech, online creators, and what has been a flourishing film and television sector fuelled by foreign investment is expected to be significant.

"Next up is the Online News Act [Bill C-18], which forces American companies such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc to make payments to Canada’s struggling news industry, which insists it should be compensated for the value its posts add to social media. Facebook and the others believe the value they provide to news organizations (free access to billions of eyeballs) is much greater than any they receive but, regardless, Trudeau’s government is anxious to send revenue the publishers’ way....

"The overreach doesn’t end there: the money comes with catches. Newsrooms wishing to benefit must be approved by a government-appointed panel that assesses applicants’ bona fides and also approves which media may (or in the case of Rebel News who may not) qualify for a tax credit which is not to be confused with another panel that doles out funds to pay reporters on panel-approved beats. (This year, one of those beats involves enhanced coverage of the Trudeau government’s presence in British Columbia)....  

"The Online News Act also makes the CRTC responsible for appointing arbitrators when needed and approving agreements that must detail how newsrooms spend the dollars they obtain.... The chill created by government involvement in newsroom decisions (Canada is going far beyond legislation elsewhere in the world, including Australia) has already been pointed to by experts such as Michael Geist who say op-eds critical of C-18 have been spiked by nervous editors. And, when last checked, only one columnist from media standing to benefit from what critics are calling a shakedown — Andrew Coyne — has published an objection to his industry’s pending subservience. Editorial boards have been unanimous in their approval.

"Meanwhile, a bill amending the definition of hate speech [Bill C-36], an offense within the Criminal Code since 1970, is also underway. The original law set a very high bar, targeting only speech likely to incite a breach of the peace against members of an identifiable group and/or that willfully promotes hatred against the same. Going forward, hate will be further defined as an 'emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than dislike or disdain.' More significantly, the new Act will allow for pro-active censorship, albeit with court approval.... It remains unclear precisely what problem the government is addressing with this change, although that may become more obvious within its next piece of legislation.

"Waiting in the wings is the Online Harms bill which is, we are told, needed to deal with terrorism recruitment, unauthorized sharing of intimate images, child pornography, hate speech, and perhaps also the spread of misinformation and disinformation, about which the Prime Minister and cabinet members complain frequently. All of those are already illegal. Nevertheless, Rodriguez’s department initially envisioned creating a new online regulator with powers so extreme they were denounced across the board by civil rights organizations and many others. Twitter, for instance, referred to the government’s desired control over internet speech in the name of public safety as similar to authoritarian regimes such as Iran, North Korea, and China....

"It remains unclear whether these measures will be broadly debated, let alone opposed in the public square. At the moment, the only venue available for Canadians wishing to do either is via the free and open internet where, if Trudeau and Rodriguez have their way, they will soon be communicating only in manners of which their government approves."

Read more: https://thehub.ca/2022-05-11/canadas-crackdown-on-free-speech-rivals-totalitarian-regimes/