[BREAKING] Canada’s Controversial Online Harms Bill is Finally Here
Users sharing 'hateful content' could face lifetime imprisonment & other updates
Canada’s long-awaited controversial online harms bill is finally here.
The Liberal government unveiled Bill C-63 three years after the legislation was first introduced under former Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez1, where it was met with widespread criticism and has since been reassessed, with consultations restarting again in 2022. I previously wrote about the highlights from the consultations, here:
In the first iteration, the bill was sold as creating a “safe online space that protects all Canadians” but Prime Minister Trudeau and his ilk pivoted once again as early as last week claiming that the legislation will focus on “protecting children and youth from the dangers of the Internet” seemingly as a way to make it more palatable to the public. The ‘protecting minors’ narrative was already being regurgitated by the mainstream media before the bill had even been introduced.
So what’s in the bill?
The bill covers content shared through social media platforms, live streaming sites, and user-uploaded adult content services.
As expected, the bill goes far beyond protecting minors.
Here are the main takeaways, separated in three parts:
Creating a Digital Safety Regulatory Body
The first part of the bill includes the establishment of a Digital Safety Office, a Digital Safety Commission and a Digital Safety Ombudsperson of Canada, whose mandate is to “promote online safety in Canada and contribute to the reduction of harms caused to persons in Canada as a result of harmful content online.” The overall goal is to investigate complaints by users and ensure online platforms are acting in accordance with the bill. The bill would authorize the Digital Safety Commission to assign certain individuals to “conduct research or engage in education, advocacy or awareness activities that are related to the [bill].”
With this new regulatory body, social media users can lodge a complaint to the Digital Safety Commission, with respect to social media content that “sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor or intimate content communicated without consent.” The commission would also require online platforms to take down inappropriate content.
The Digital Safety Commission would comprise three to five full-time members to be appointed by the Governor in Council.
Tackling Online ‘Hate’ Content
The second part of the bill is focused on the dissemination of ‘hate’ content, including the dissemination of ‘hate crimes,’ ‘hate propaganda’ and ‘hate crime offences’—all of which would result in increased maximum sentences. For example, users who ‘advocate or promote genocide’ can lead to lifetime imprisonment. Other hate offences can lead to two to five years of imprisonment.
The bill defines ‘hatred’ as being “the emotion that involves detestation or vilification that is stronger than disdain or dislike” whereas online hate speech is defined as content that “foments detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”
Hate propaganda is also used several times in the bill, and while it’s not defined directly in the bill, it includes a number of caveats outlined in the Criminal Code of Canada. These include: advocating genocide, publicly inciting hatred, wilfully promoting hatred, and wilfully promoting antisemitism—the latter of which was championed by the Zionist group Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs which attributes any criticism of Israel as tantamount to ‘antisemitism.’ Victims of hate speech can also be compensated to the tune of thousands.
Protecting Minors Online
The last part of the bill is related directly to Trudeau’s claim that the bill focuses on protecting minors. Under the bill, online services would be required to report and take down inappropriate content which includes the dissemination of child sex abuse material, material that sexually victimizes and revictimizes a survivor, and intimate images shared without consent, i.e., ‘revenge porn’ and AI deepfakes.
This also includes content that incites violence or terrorism, content used to bully minors, and content that could push a child to harm themselves.
The same platforms are obligated to report and take down inappropriate content. If such material isn’t removed within 24 hours, the platform(s) may face millions of dollars in fines.
I will update this post as we learn more.
Pablo Rodriguez was also behind introducing both Bill C-11 (Online Streaming Act), which gives unprecedented power to the CRTC to monitor and influence the media we consume, and Bill C-18 (the Online News Act), which requires online platforms to pay media outlets for sharing news content.