National
Online Harms Act threatens free expression in Canada

News release from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms
This repudiates centuries of legal tradition that rightly reserved punishment for what a person had done, not for what a person might do. Under this new provision, a complainant can assert to a provincial court that they “fear” that someone will promote genocide, hate or antisemitism.
On February 26, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Arif Virani introduced Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, in the House of Commons. The Online Harms Act is presented by the government as a means to promote the online safety of persons in Canada and reduce harmful content online. The Online Harms Act would impose severe penalties for online and offline hate speech, including life imprisonment, which is the most severe criminal punishment in Canada. This new legislation would establish a new Digital Safety Commission with power to enforce new regulations created by the federal cabinet. The Canadian Human Rights Commission would acquire new powers to prosecute and punish non-criminal hate speech.
Good intentions should be applauded
Although the Online Harms Act seriously threatens free expression in Canada, there are good intentions behind some of its provisions. It is a laudable goal to force online platforms to remove revenge porn and other non-consensual sharing of intimate images, content that bullies children, content that sexually victimizes children, content that encourages children to harm themselves, and content that incites violence, terrorism or hatred.
Unnecessary duplication of the Criminal Code
However, good intentions do not justify passing additional laws that duplicate what is already prohibited by Canada’s Criminal Code. Additional laws that duplicate existing laws are a poor substitute for good law enforcement.
Section 162.1(1) of Canada’s Criminal Code already prohibits online and offline publication of an intimate image without consent. Section 163 already prohibits publication of obscene materials and child pornography. Thus, it is already illegal to post online content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor.
Section 264(1) already prohibits criminal harassment. Section 319(1) already prohibits the public incitement of hatred towards a group that is identifiable by race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and other personal characteristics. Section 59(1) criminalizes sedition: advocating the use of force to achieve governmental change within Canada. Sections 83.21 and 83.22 criminalize instructing to carry out terrorist activity; any online content that incites terrorism is already illegal.
Further, Section 22 of Canada’s Criminal Code prohibits counselling, procuring, soliciting or inciting another person “to be a party to an offence.” Any person who counsels, procures, solicits or incites another person to be a party to an offence will be found guilty if the person receiving such counsel commits the offence in question. This applies to terrorism and other violent crimes, and even to minor criminal offenses like shoplifting. Further, section 464 of the Criminal Code criminalizes counselling another person to commit an offence even if that offence is not committed.
Those who support the Online Harms Act should explain why they believe that existing legislation is inadequate to address “harmful” online expression.
New government bodies to censor online speech
If passed into law, the Online Harms Act will create a new Digital Safety Commission to enforce compliance with new regulations created by the federal cabinet. This Digital Safety Commission will have the power to regulate nearly any person or entity operating as a “social media service” in Canada. Any person or social media service found to have permitted “harmful content” would face penalties. The severity of the penalties would be established by the federal cabinet. The creators and users of online content will self-censor to avoid the risk of running afoul of the new regulations and government-imposed censorship. The Online Harms Act provides that an Order of the Digital Safety Commission may be converted into an Order of the Federal Court and enforced like a Court Order. This could result in people operating social media services being fined and imprisoned for contempt of court if they refuse to censor Canadians’ speech.
Pre-emptive punishment for crimes not committed
The Online Harms Act, if passed into law, will add section 810.012 to the Criminal Code, which will permit pre-emptive violations of personal liberty when no crime has been committed. This repudiates centuries of legal tradition that rightly reserved punishment for what a person had done, not for what a person might do. Under this new provision, a complainant can assert to a provincial court that they “fear” that someone will promote genocide, hate or antisemitism. If the judge believes that there are “reasonable grounds” to justify the fear, the court can violate the liberty interests of the accused citizen by requiring her or him to do any or all of the following:
- wear an ankle bracelet (electronic monitoring device)
- obey a curfew and stay at home, as determined by the judge
- abstain from alcohol, drugs, or both
- provide bodily substances (e.g. blood, urine) to confirm abstinence from drugs or alcohol
- not communicate with certain designated persons
- not go to certain places, as determined by the judge
- surrender her or his legally owned and legally required firearms
In other words: a citizen who has not committed any crime can be subjected to one or more (or all) of the above conditions just because someone fears that that person might commit a speech crime in future. Further, if the person who has committed no crime fails to agree to these court-ordered violations of her or his personal liberty, she or he could be sentenced to up to two years in prison.
Our criminal justice system is not supposed to function this way. Violating the liberty of citizens through pre-emptive punishment, when no crime has been committed (and quite possibly when no crime will be committed), is a radical departure from centuries of common law tradition. The respect that our legal system has for individual rights and freedoms means that an accused person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by way of a fair trial, held before an independent and impartial court. We do not punish the innocent, nor do we restrict their liberty based on what they might do. The mere fear that harmful expression may occur is not a legitimate basis for court-ordered imprisonment or other conditions that violate personal liberty.
Life imprisonment for words spoken
For the existing Criminal Code offence of advocating for genocide, the Online Harms Act would raise the maximum penalty from five years in jail to life imprisonment. Free societies recognize the distinction between speech and actions. The Online Harms Act blurs that distinction.
Considering the inherent difficulty in determining whether a person has actually “advocated for genocide,” the punishment of a five-year prison term is already an adequate deterrent for words alone.
Federal cabinet can censor speech without input from Parliament
The Online Harms Act, if passed into law, would give new powers to the federal cabinet to pass regulations (which have the same force of law as legislation passed by Parliament) that place prohibitions or obligations on social media services. This includes passing regulations that impose fines or other consequences (e.g., the removal of a licence or the shutting down of a website) for non-compliance. New regulations can be created by the federal cabinet in its sole discretion, and do not need to be debated, voted on or approved by Parliament. Parliamentary proceedings are public. Any political party, or even one single MP, can raise public awareness about a Bill that she or he disagrees with, and can mobilize public opposition to that Bill. Not so with regulations, which are deliberated in secret by the federal cabinet, and that come into force without any public consultation or debate.
Apart from a federal election held once every four years, there is no meaningful way to hold cabinet to account for the draconian censorship of social media services by way of regulations and the harsh penalties that may be imposed for hosting “harmful content.” The federal cabinet can also decide what number of “users” the “social media service” needs to have in order to trigger federal regulation of content, or the federal cabinet can simply designate a social media service as regulated, regardless of the number of its users.
New censorship powers for Canadian Human Rights Commission
The Online Harms Act, if passed into law, will give the Canadian Human Rights Commission new powers to prosecute and punish offensive but non-criminal speech by Canadians if, in the subjective opinion of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, they deem someone’s statement to be “hateful.” The Online Harms Act will empower Canadians offended by non-criminal expression to file complaints against their fellow citizens.
Those who are prosecuted by the Human Rights Commission cannot defend themselves by establishing that their supposedly “hateful” statement is true, or that they had reasonable grounds for believing that their statement was true.
Those found guilty by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal can be required to pay as much as $50,000 to the government, plus up to $20,000 to the person(s) designated as “victims” by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. These significant financial penalties will discourage or eliminate necessary discussion on controversial but important issues in our society.
Advocates for censorship often stress the fact that human rights prosecutions are not criminal. It is true that those found guilty of violating vague speech codes by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal do not suffer the consequences of a criminal record. However, those who are prosecuted for expressing their beliefs face the difficult choice of having to spend tens of thousands of dollars on legal bills or having to issue an abject apology. Regardless of whether they choose to defend themselves against the complaint or not, they may still be ordered to pay up to $20,000 to the offended party or up to $50,000 to the government, or up to $70,000 to both.
Many Canadians will continue to exercise their Charter-protected freedom of expression, but many will self-censor to avoid the risk of being prosecuted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission.
Anonymous complaints: no right to face one’s accuser
The Online Harms Act, if passed into law, will allow complaints to be filed against Canadians in secret, such that the citizen who is prosecuted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission loses the ancient and well-founded right to face and question one’s accuser. This repudiates centuries of common law tradition requiring the legal process to be public and transparent.
The pretext for eliminating this necessary and long-standing legal protection is that some complainants might be subjected to “threats, intimidation or discrimination.” This ignores the fact that threats and intimidation are already Criminal Code offences, and any illegal discrimination can be addressed by way of a new and separate complaint. Those filing complaints about expression should be accountable for their decision to do so; this is an inherent and necessary component of both criminal and civil legal proceedings.
No need to establish that someone was harmed
If the Online Harms Act is passed into law, the Canadian Human Rights Commission will not even require a victim in order to prosecute a citizen for what she or he has said. For example, a man in Vancouver can file an anonymous complaint against a woman in Nova Scotia who made disparaging online remarks about a mosque in Toronto, regardless of whether that mosque’s members were harmed, or even offended, by the post. No actual victims are required for the Canadian Human Rights Commission to find guilt or to impose penalties. Nor does a victim need to prove that he or she suffered loss or damage; feeling offended by alleged “hate” is all that is needed to become eligible for financial compensation.
Conclusion
For reasons set out here above, the Online Harms Act will harm freedom of expression in Canada if it is passed into law. Many Canadians will self-censor to avoid being prosecuted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Canadians who do not self-censor, by practicing courage and by continuing to exercise their Charter-protected freedom of expression, will still see their online expression removed from the internet by the operators of social media websites and platforms. These operators will seek to avoid running afoul of Mr. Trudeau’s new regulations. Everyone will live in fear of the Digital Safety Commission.
The Justice Centre urges all Members of Parliament to vote against this legislation.
2025 Federal Election
Mainstream Media Election Coverage: If the Election Was a NHL Game, the Ice Would be Constantly Tilted Up and to the Left

From EnergyNow.Ca
Like good refs for a NHL hockey game, election coverage should be as unbiased as possible and provide balanced judgement. In Canada, mainstream media rarely provides this.
By Jim Warren
Canada’s Conservatives face an uphill battle when it comes to obtaining unbiased coverage in the mainstream Canadian news media. Any in doubt need only watch a half hour of election coverage on CBC or tune-in to the CTV news channel, which is stacked with left leaning election commentaries favoring the Liberals, despite their abysmal record over the last 10 years, which has all but been forgotten by many media journalists in their attempt to help Canadians forget as well.
The Liberal government’s provision of tens of millions in grants and tax credits to support the jobs of journalists has certainly not made reporters any less Liberal-friendly.*
But the truth is, the Liberals did not actually need to bribe most mainstream journalists and their employers to gain their support. They already had it. And that’s been bad news for the fortunes of the gas and petroleum sectors along with many of the other things we do to create wealth in Canada (like farming, mining, construction and manufacturing, including petrochemicals).
Year’s before the Liberals launched their 2019 media subsidization programs, Canada’s legacy media outlets had embraced climate alarmism and were okay with the demonization nonrenewable energy. They functioned like public relations agents for the environmental movement’s anti-Alberta oil campaign (2008-2021).
For two decades now, conventional media outlets have been publishing and broadcasting sensationalized misinformation about the need to make deep and immediate cuts to CO2 and methane emissions to save the planet from imminent doom.
For most journalists in the conventional media, it was no great leap to fall in step behind the Trudeau government’s anti-oil, gas and pipelines agenda. Climate alarmists in the media assumed Justin Trudeau, Steven Guilbeault, Jonathan Wilkinson and other members of the Liberal cabinet were on the side of the angels. Now, with Justin Trudeau out of the picture, it has become evident that current Prime Minister Mark Carney will continue with the anti-oil, gas agenda of Justin Trudeau, who personally endorsed him and has been advising Trudeau for a number of years to not only keep the carbon tax, but increase it.
As a result, the Liberal assault on conventional energy went largely unchallenged in the legacy media.
Thankfully there are a few notable exceptions. Outstanding columnists and journalists like Don Braid and Brian Lilly have survived. They have drawn attention to the economic madness of the assault on oil, gas and pipelines, the consequent stifling of economic growth and their effects on national unity.
And there are of course large numbers of journalists and policy analysts working online outside the mainstream who have provided the bulk of journalistic criticism of the Liberals. People like Dan McTeague have been making appearances in online interviews and commentaries posted to you tube. And many online news sites including Northern Perspective have been keeping tabs on Liberal mismanagement and corruption.
As a general proposition many mainstream journalists under the age of 40 have swallowed exaggerated misinterpretations of climate science. And they accept at face value the environmental movement’s irrational claims about the urgent need to massively and rapidly reduce the consumption of oil and natural gas. Journalists rarely address the economically ruinous effects of reducing oil and gas consumption too fast and by too much.
This is in part because many of them are economically illiterate. If they went to university they typically studied soft subjects like sociology, gender studies and social justice. The values and beliefs they adopted at university are reinforced by their favourite social media sites.
They know more about things like the plight of the transgendered than they do about wealth creation or how to foster economic growth. This makes it rather easy for them to accept the gospel according the federal Liberals. “Oil is bad and why would we fuss over fiscal and economic problems when deficits and debt are just numbers that take care of themselves?”
Mainstream journalists haven’t had their eye on the ball when it comes to the social and economic harm caused by Liberal environmental policy. We’re not talking about chump change lost because of a bit of irritating red tape.
My own calculations, under an experimental scenario, show that the cost of not having Energy East, Northern Gateway, and the Trans mountain expansion fully approved and operating for a 10 year period was approximately $290 billion in lost revenue. (The historical sample period was from 2013-2023, a period of mostly low global oil prices, which suggests the $290 billion figure significantly underestimates the potential for lost revenue)
The Fraser Institute and others have conducted and published important studies identifying the massive decline in investment in the petroleum and gas industries and more generally across many economic sectors. In the first five years the Liberals were in office their energy related environmental policies like Bill C-69 (The Impact Assessment Act) in particular, cost an estimated 200,000 jobs nationally and a massive reduction in investments in Canada’s oil and gas sectors.
These losses were not mourned by the conventional media based in Central Canada. Some journalists assumed clobbering the energy industry in the west was a good thing because it would mitigate climate change. They were either unaware of or uninterested in the people who lost jobs and the damage being done to the Canadian economy.
No less influential is the mainstream media’s laser like focus on issues primarily relevant to Toronto and Montreal. Problems on the prairies typically escape notice. As a result some low information voters in the regions where Canadian elections are decided are unclear as to whether Saskatchewan is a city or a province.
Supporting evidence
On May 2 of 2024 an article appeared in EnergyNow which used published research and the actual scientific reports issued by the inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to demonstrate that the mainstream media in North America and Europe have bought into hyperbolic misinterpretations of climate science. The column showed how Journalists have taken as truth the false claims of overly zealous environmental activists about the pace of global warming and how the green transition will supposedly have little to no adverse impact on most people’s livelihoods and economic well-being.
The article explains how journalists, climate alarmists and environmental activists inhabit the same corner of the social media universe. The research shows many journalists are more likely adopt the opinions and information they encounter on Twitter (Now X) and other online forums to inform their stories than the scientific research published by organizations like the IPCC.
May 2, 2024, Opinion: How social Media and Sloppy Journalism Misrepresent Climate Science
The fact is too many Canadian journalists have bought into the environmental zealotry of an online tribe which both shares and shapes their beliefs in relation to climate science and their views about oil and gas. This has been the case since the mid to late 2000s.
To repeat. The Liberals did not need to subsidize journalists to get them to buy into their environmental and energy policies—they were already onside.
The real reason for the subsidy programs was to prevent media employers from laying off journalists. Times have been tough for the mainstream news media. The solvency of many newspapers in particular is tenuous. Network television has also been suffering. The CBC goes $1.2 billion into the red each year, which is explained by the fact it attracts just 4.4% of Canada’s viewing audience during prime time. Streaming has radically changed North Americans viewing preferences and the sources they subscribe to.
Mainstream media is in palliative care. Plowing government grant money into it is like investing in the buggy whip business well after Henry Ford had cranked out tens of thousands of Model Ts.
There may be some mainstream journalists who will suffer a pang or two of common sense or integrity and criticize Liberal environment and energy policy during the election campaign. But it seems highly unlikely mainstream media outlets will desert the Liberals and get behind the Conservatives. Anyone betting the farm on that sort of outcome needs to set down the crack pipe.
For CBC to come out swinging against Mark Carney would require one of those proverbial “caught him in the act and thrown in jail” moments.
All that being said, we might take a bit of faint hope from an older tendency among journalists. Some of them still have an underlying psychological need to pounce on gotcha moments.
These brand of journalists are on the lookout for evidence exposing malfeasance, errors, and unexplained flip flops which make politicians look bad, and simultaneously help journalists look like smart and fearless champions of the truth. Some journalists hope to be viewed like reincarnations of Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame and become legends for taking down the powerful.
However, the gotcha urge is not what it once was. For many younger journalists the catechism of all things woke and progressive encourages them to ignore gotcha ammunition which might embarrass environmentally sanctimonious Liberals.
In the final analysis, the election hopes of supporters of the western energy sector will depend largely on election coverage in the nonconventional, mostly online, media.
Add to that a Conservative campaign focused on building back Canada and elminating Liberal anti-resource development red-tape and bureaucracy, to move away from reliance on the US, which is what the election should be focused on.
*In March 2024 the Liberals added $58 million to cover three years of support for one just one of their three subsidy funds for journalists, the Local Journalism Initiative.
This fund provides media outlets with a 35% tax credit for every journalist they have on staff.
NOTE: The opinions expressed in this commentary are those expressed the author and do not necessarily reflect the views, positions, or policies of Enerpoint iMedia Corp. o/a EnergyNow.
2025 Federal Election
Canada Continues to Miss LNG Opportunities: Why the World Needs Our LNG – and We’re Not Ready

From EnergyNow.Ca
By Katarzyna (Kasha) Piquette, Founder and CEO, Canadian Energy Ventures
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Europe’s energy system was thrown into chaos. Much of the 150 billion cubic meters of Russian gas that once flowed through pipelines had to be replaced—fast. Europe turned to every alternative it could find: restarting coal and nuclear plants, accelerating wind and solar approvals, and most notably, launching a historic buildout of LNG import capacity.
Today, LNG terminals are built around the world. The ‘business case’ is solid. The ships are sailing. The demand is real. But where is Canada?
As of March 28, 2025, natural gas prices tell a story of extreme imbalance. While Europe and Asia are paying around $13 per million BTU, prices at Alberta’s AECO hub remain below $2.20 CAD per gigajoule—a fraction of global market levels. This is more than a pricing mismatch. It’s a signal that Canada, a country rich in natural gas and global goodwill, is failing to connect the dots between energy security abroad and economic opportunity at home.
Since 2022, Europe has added over 80 billion cubic meters of LNG import capacity, with another 80 billion planned by 2030. This infrastructure didn’t appear overnight. It came from urgency, unity, and massive investment. And while Europe was preparing to receive, Canada has yet to build at scale to supply.
We have the resource. We have the relationships. What we lack is the infrastructure.
Estimates suggest that $55 to $75 billion in investment is needed to scale Canadian LNG capacity to match our potential as a global supplier. That includes pipelines, liquefaction terminals, and export facilities on both coasts. These aren’t just economic assets—they’re tools of diplomacy, climate alignment, and Indigenous partnership. A portion of this investment can and should be met through public-private partnerships, leveraging government policy and capital alongside private sector innovation and capacity.
Meanwhile, Germany continues to grapple with the complexities of energy dependence. In January 2025, German authorities seized the Panama-flagged tanker Eventin, suspected of being part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” used to circumvent oil sanctions. The vessel, carrying approximately 100,000 tons of Russian crude oil valued at €40 million, was found adrift off the Baltic Sea island of Rügen and subsequently detained. This incident underscores the ongoing challenges Europe faces in enforcing energy sanctions and highlights the pressing need for reliable, alternative energy sources like Canadian LNG.
What is often left out of the broader energy conversation is the staggering environmental cost of the war itself. According to the Initiative on GHG Accounting of War, the war in Ukraine has produced over 230 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (MtCO₂e) since 2022—a volume comparable to the combined annual emissions of Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. These emissions come from military operations, destruction of infrastructure, fires, and the energy used to rebuild and support displaced populations. Yet these emissions are largely absent from official climate accounting, exposing a major blind spot in how we track and mitigate global emissions.
This is not just about dollars and molecules. This is about vision. Canada has an opportunity to offer democratic, transparent, and lower-emission energy to a world in flux. Canadian LNG can displace coal in Asia, reduce reliance on authoritarian suppliers in Europe, and provide real returns to our provinces and Indigenous communities. There is also growing potential for strategic energy cooperation between Canada, Poland, and Ukraine—linking Canadian LNG supply with European infrastructure and Ukrainian resilience, creating a transatlantic corridor for secure and democratic energy flows.
Moreover, LNG presents Canada with a concrete path to diversify its trade relationships, reducing overdependence on the U.S. market by opening new, high-value markets in Europe and Asia. This kind of energy diplomacy would not only strengthen Canada’s strategic position globally but also generate fiscal capacity to invest in national priorities—including increased defense spending to meet our NATO commitments.
Let’s be clear: LNG is not the endgame. Significant resources are being dedicated to building out nuclear capacity—particularly through Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)—alongside the rapid expansion of renewables and energy storage. But in the near term, LNG remains a vital bridge, especially when it’s sourced from a country committed to environmental responsibility, human rights, and the rule of law.
We are standing at the edge of a global shift. If we don’t step up, others will step in. The infrastructure gap is closing—but not in our favor.
Canada holds the key. The world is knocking. It’s time we opened the door.
Sources:
- Natural Gas Prices by Region (March 28, 2025): Reuters
- European LNG Import Capacity Additions: European Commission
- German Seizure of Russian Shadow Fleet Tanker: Reuters
- War Emissions Estimate (230 MtCO₂e): Planetary Security Initiative
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