Justin Trudeau’s Liberals will table their long-promised bill to crack down on harmful content online no later than next fall, more than a year after receiving recommendations from an expert panel.
“It won’t be any further than the fall,” the minister responsible for the file, Pablo Rodriguez, said Monday during testimony before the House of Commons heritage committee.
In response to a question from New Democrat Peter Julian, Rodriguez said he couldn’t provide a more specific timeline. However, he noted that Ottawa is “very advanced” and that it is “very, very soon”.
Last July, a group of experts brought together by the federal government to advise it in the development of its bill published the latest summary of its work, thus concluding its mandate. In all, these experts met for 10 workshops during which they formulated recommendations.
Asked in the scrum of the press why so much time has passed without a bill seeing the light of day, Mr. Rodriguez replied that this is explained by the “importance” of the initiative and by “diversity of opinions”.
“I am looking for a bill that will bring people together, that will reassure, but that will job as well”, he summed up when he arrived at the Parliament building, assuring that the legislative piece will have teeth.
He said that “that time” was used for cross-country consultations, especially meetings with victims and their families, such as the mother of Amanda Todd, a teenager from British Columbia who took life after being a victim of sextortion.
Moreover, the experts have recommended to the government that digital platforms be required to remove, according to deadlines, any content “that explicitly calls for violence and the sexual exploitation of children”.
Mr. Rodriguez has always agreed with this recommendation, but it is not clear at this time how Ottawa will deal with other types of content that could be considered harmful or hateful. Some experts have warned against mandatory takedowns for content that does not concern children.
During Minister Rodriguez’s appearance in committee, Mr. Julian seemed to show signs of impatience with the absence of a bill, mentioning that action is desired by many on other files, such as the reform of the Copyright Act. “Is there anything else we expect in the fall? CBC funding, online hate and this? he listed.
The Minister of Heritage then noted that the reform of the Copyright Act is a file that also concerns the Ministry of Innovation and that he is not in a position to provide a timetable for this.
As for harmful content online, the Liberals have been promising to legislate it for well over a year. Shortly before the call of the last general election, in 2021, they introduced Bill C-36, which aimed to give tools to citizens who were victims of online hate. The initiative led by the Minister of Justice, David Lametti, immediately died on the order paper. It was to be accompanied by another bill, which was to be under the responsibility of Steven Guilbeault, then Minister of Heritage.
This second piece of legislation was ultimately not tabled before the election campaign. However, a legislative and regulatory framework had been presented and submitted for consultation. The latter targeted five categories of content: hate speech, incitement to violence, terrorism, the non-consensual dissemination of intimate images and the sexual exploitation of children.