The Trudeau government’s bill on online harms has been generally well received by opposition parties in Ottawa, despite some nuances they consider necessary.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, who has long criticized the bill in question, ultimately said he was in favor of the principle of “criminalizing and enforcing the laws” against the sexual victimization of a child, the intimidation of a child online or incitement to violence.
The latter, however, believes that the protection of children online should fall under the jurisdiction of the police, rather than the new institutions provided for by the Liberal bill.
“We believe that these serious acts should be criminalized, investigated by the police, tried in court and punished with imprisonment, not handed over to a new bureaucracy that does nothing to prevent crimes and does not provide justice to the victims,” denounced the leader of the opposition on Tuesday.
Justice Minister Arif Virani presented his online harm bill (C-63) on Monday, which aims to “protect children” online. Under what Ottawa is proposing, social media platforms will have to remove within 24 hours any posts flagged as “depicting the sexual victimization of children” or intimate images shared non-consensually.
Complaints regarding non-consensual sharing of intimate images as well as sexual exploitation will have to be made to a new entity, the Digital Security Commission. It would then be up to this group to demand, when it deems it justified, a removal of content within 24 hours.
The leader of the Bloc Québécois, Yves-François Blanchet, also said he was in favor of the principle of the bill, but expressed reservations about its bureaucratic “heaviness”.
“On the creation of several institutions, on the time that it could take, on what appears to be ideological deviations in certain respects, we have doubts which will have to be discussed in committee,” he argued Tuesday in Ottawa .
Incitement to hatred
The opposition parties also believe that the bill should go further with regard to hate speech. In its current version, Bill C-63 does not provide for rapid removal for these forms of harmful online content – as was intended in a proposal put forward by the Liberals before the 2021 election campaign.
Reports of content inciting hatred, violence or terrorism can be made, but Canadians will have to file a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and not with the online platform.
According to a Statistics Canada survey released Tuesday, 71% of young Canadians said they had seen hateful content online in the previous 12 months, a rate well above the national average of 49%. More than a third (36%) of victims of cyber hate crimes were under the age of 25.
The Liberal bill also maintains the religious exception included in the Criminal Code chapter on hate speech.
“This bill says that if you incite violence or genocide, you are subject to life in prison. But if you say it’s out of religious conviction, you can very well go shopping at the convenience store. It makes absolutely no sense,” quipped chef Yves-François Blanchet.
The Bloc Québécois has already tabled two bills to this effect.
“At first glance, there is no provision on this and that disappoints me. I think we could have immediately integrated the elimination of this defense,” commented Bloc MP Rhéal Fortin in an interview with Duty shortly after the bill was tabled Monday evening.
Minister Virani did not want to explain why he did not look into this exception on Monday.
The New Democrats’ parliamentary leader, Peter Julian, was delighted that the bill was “finally tabled”, after several years of waiting. He believes that the bill has “several positive aspects”, but does not provide enough measures requiring platforms to be transparent about their algorithms.
After its re-election for a third term, the Liberal government had to table a bill on the subject within the first 100 days in order to respect an electoral commitment, which was not done.
With Boris Proulx and The Canadian Press