Margaret Atwood definitely does not lack imagination. The most internationally renowned Canadian writer is known for her bewitching books, such as The Scarlet Maid. Some of the 84-year-old Ontarian’s novels warn against the excesses of all-powerful bureaucracies and depict dystopian societies where religions and ideologies repress free thought. A fierce critic of cancel culture, this early feminist dissociated herself from the #MeToo movement because of extrajudicial “lynchings” which ensure, according to her, that “the type of justice accessible [actuellement] is thrown out of the window.
It is therefore hardly surprising that Mme Atwood is now attacking Bill C-63 on online harms just tabled by federal Justice Minister Arif Virani. According to the author, C-63 opens the door to abusive procedures aimed at limiting freedom of expression by qualifying as “hateful” any speech that hurts the self-esteem of the people targeted. She deplores that the bill also gives too much power to “authorities acting without supervision” to enforce “vague laws” which are based on vague definitions.
She protests, above all, against an article of C-63 which would allow a provincial judge to order house arrest or the wearing of a remote monitoring device to any person he has reasonable grounds to believe that she could commit an offense of hate propaganda or a hate crime.
If this is the case, “this would mean the return of the lettres de cachet once again”, thundered Mme Atwood in a comment on the X network. Here she refers to the proclamations of the kings of France under the Ancien Régime who ordered the imprisonment without trial of people deemed undesirable or threatening by the monarch. Mme Atwood doesn’t stop there. In an email sent to a journalist from Globe and Mail, she invoked the Inquisition, the French Revolution and the Salem witch trials — dark periods in history during which the right to a fair trial was systematically denied to the accused. Cherry on the cake, Mme Atwood calls the bill “Orwellian” because of its provisions allowing for preventative interventions that go so far as to criminalize thought, in her view.
Mr. Virani responded to Mr.me Atwood thanking her for her interest, then denouncing an article in the British conservative magazine The Spectator criticizing C-63 which she had cited on X. The fact remains that the intervention of Mme Atwood does not bode well for the future of C-63, with the bill mobilizing opponents of various political persuasions.
According to many of its critics, C-63 would be overbroad and have a harmful effect on freedom of expression which could lead people to remain silent for fear of being targeted by a complaint filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. person (CCDP), which would have the mandate to determine whether it deserves to be sent to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. In 2021, the appointment to this court of a lawyer who had herself complained to the CCDP about an article published in 2006 in the magazine Maclean’s, which she had accused of being likely to arouse hatred or contempt towards Muslims, does nothing to reassure the critics of C-63. They fear abusive recourse to the CCDP from those who would like to silence their detractors or polemicists of all kinds.
The debate on the repression of hate speech thus risks eclipsing that on the other aspects of C-63, in particular its provisions aimed at eradicating the sexual exploitation and bullying of children online. The Trudeau government is casting its net wide by trying to resolve two scourges that are as distinct as they are complex with this same bill. While there is political consensus on the need to crack down on cybercriminals who prey on innocent children, there is much less so when it comes to divisions over the preferred approach to preventing hate speech.
The federal Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, attacked the government even before Mr. Virani tabled his bill, criticizing Mr. Trudeau’s “authoritarian woke program”. “I point out the irony of the fact that someone who spent the first half of his life as a practicing racist… would make himself the arbiter of what constitutes hatred,” Mr. Poilievre insisted in February. He was thus referring to the occasions when Mr. Trudeau wore the blackface when he was a young teacher in Vancouver in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Conservative leader called on Mr. Trudeau to examine his conscience rather than trying to atone for his own sins by legislating in order to limit freedom of expression.
The content of the debate could become more heated as C-63 advances in the Canadian Parliament. Some wonder if this is not the effect secretly sought by the Trudeau government, by daring to regulate a right as fundamental as that of freedom of expression while conspiracy theorists have had it in their crosshairs since the pandemic. Divisional politics has become the norm in Ottawa, across all parties. C-63 risks becoming a case study in this area.