The Conservatives announced plans to present new legislation as an alternative to the Liberals’ Online Harms Act when Parliament returns, claiming it will protect Canadians without infringing upon their civil rights.
“Canadians are paying the price for this failure. Online criminal behaviour is still rampant, yet the Liberals’ only response has been to table two censorship bills, forcing Canadians to choose between their safety and free expression,” said the Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, the sponsor of the bill, in a statement on Thursday.
“Not only will this Liberal legislation censor Canadians, but it will also create costly bureaucracies, led by radical Trudeau appointees, who will take more money out of working Canadians’ paycheques while punishing people for posting content the Liberal Government doesn’t like.”
The Trudeau government introduced the Online Harms Act in February, pledging that it would “hold social media platforms accountable for addressing harmful content on their platforms and for creating a safer online space that protects all people in Canada, especially kids.”
However, the bill has been met with much criticism.
Many legal scholars have also sounded the alarm about the bill, raising concerns of excessive criminal penalties and oversight issues.
University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist criticized the legislation as being too vague and granting expansive powers to the digital safety commission, a panel of three to five members that would have to be created under the bill.
According to Bill C-63, “the Commission and Ombudsperson will be supported by the Digital Safety Office, with day-to-day operations and staffing decisions being managed by a Chief Executive Officer.”
Geist called this a position with “truly quite enormous powers” which depend on people placing their “trust in this legislation.”
However, Geist’s largest concern is the Criminal Code provisions.
“I think the notion of life in prison, where any violation is motivated by hate, the idea that this could include life (in prison) has some pretty significant implications, and I find it really difficult to justify,” he said.
The Online Harms Act, C-63, is currently in second reading in the House of Commons.
Rempel Garner said her newly proposed bill will modernize existing criminal offences to protect Canadians from online harassment” without “creating a government-managed surveillance state or restricting Charter-protected speech.”
The legislation will provide mechanisms and provisions to protect minors as well as update existing laws around non-consensual distribution of intimate images.
The bill also intends to tackle the issue of “highly realistic intimate images created by artificial intelligence” sometimes referred to as “deepnudes,” which would be criminalized under the proposed legislation.
The Conservatives claim this issue can be dealt with in a way that still preserves the existing provisions regarding fair use.
“To be clear, this update won’t criminalize something like two people disagreeing about policy online, or other types of expression of opinion that is protected under the Charter, which Liberal Bill C-63 will undermine,” said Rempel Garner
She said that the legislation will be based on the existing legal definition of criminal harassment, “that causes someone to reasonably fear for their safety or well-being.”
However, the legislation will not seek to reinstate Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which the Liberals’ Online Harms Act would reimpose.
Section 13 was intended to deal with hate speech communicated online or by telephone but was repealed after a series of scandalous prosecutions under the Harper government.
While the Conservatives are calling upon the Liberals to scrap Bill C-63 in favour of their newly proposed version, the party wishes to maintain one aspect of the Online Harms Act regarding strengthening mandatory reporting requirements of Internet child pornography by internet operators.
“This component could be hived off and passed on unanimous consent while the measures of our new legislation are considered – or put into a new bill should an election be called,” said Rempel Garner.
A poll conducted earlier this year found that the majority of Canadians don’t believe that the Online Harms Act will lead to a safer internet landscape.
While half of the respondents said that they would support the controversial Online Harms Act, in theory, introduced to protect children and others from harmful internet content, they were not convinced that the government would be able to do so while still protecting free speech.
