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Trudeau’s ‘online harms’ legislation includes life imprisonment for ‘hate speech’

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Justice Minister Arif Virani

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

While the government claims the bill is intended to protect kids, Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre said Liberals are looking for clever ways to enact internet censorship laws.

Details of new “online harms” legislation to regulate the internet have emerged, revealing that the bill could lead to more people jailed for life or fined $20,000 for posts that the government defines as “hate speech” based on gender, race, or other categories.

Bill C-63 is titled “An Act to enact the Online Harms Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act and An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts.”

It was introduced by Justice Minister Arif Virani in the House of Commons today and passed its first reading in the afternoon.

The new bill will create the Online Harms Act and modify existing laws, amending the Criminal Code as well as the Canadian Human Rights Act, in what the Liberals under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau claim will target certain cases of internet content removal, notably those involving child sexual abuse and pornography.

According to the Trudeau government, Bill C-63 aims to protect kids from online harms and crack down on non-consensual deep-fake pornography involving children and will target seven types of online harms, such as hate speech, terrorist content, incitement to violence, the sharing of non-consensual intimate images, child exploitation, cyberbullying and inciting self-harm.

Virani had many times last year hinted a new Online Harms Act bill would be forthcoming.

While the Trudeau government claims the bill is being created to protect kids, Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) leader Pierre Poilievre said the federal government is looking for clever ways to enact internet censorship laws.

During a February 21, press conference, Poilievre said that Trudeau is looking to in effect criminalize speech with he does not like.

“What does Justin Trudeau mean when he says the word ‘hate speech?’ He means speech he hates,” Poilievre said.

As part of the new bill, the Trudeau Liberals are looking to increase punishments for existing hate propaganda offenses in a substantial manner.

The Online Harms Act will also amend Canada’s Human Rights Act to put back in place a hate speech provision, specifically Section 13 of the Act, that the previous Conservative government under Stephen Harper had repealed in 2013 after it was found to have violated one’s freedom of expression.

The text of the bill, released Monday afternoon, reads that the Canadian Human Rights Act will be amended to add a section “13” to it.

This section reads, “It is a discriminatory practice to communicate or cause to be communicated hate speech by means of the Internet or any other means of telecommunication in a context in which the hate speech is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

“In this section, hate speech means the content of a communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination,” the bill reads.

A “Clarification – hate speech” in the bill reads, “For greater certainty, the content of a communication does not express detestation or vilification, for the purposes of subsection (8), solely because it expresses disdain or dislike or it discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends.”

Earlier Monday, details of the bill were released to the media in a technical briefing.

“New standalone hate crime offence that would apply to every offence in the Criminal Code and in any other Act of Parliament, allowing penalties up to life imprisonment to denounce and deter this hateful conduct as a crime in itself,” the technical briefing reads.

“The maximum punishments for the four hate propaganda offences from 5 years to life imprisonment for advocating genocide and from 2 years to 5 years for the others when persecuted by way of indictment.”

For now, the law will affect all social media platforms as well as live-streamed video services, notably Meta and Google (YouTube).

Bill creates three ‘Digital Safety’ positions to enforce rules and let anyone file ‘complaints’

Bill C-63 mandates the creation of the Digital Safety Commission, a digital safety ombudsperson, and the Digital Safety Office.

The ombudsperson along with the other offices will be charged with dealing with public complaints regarding online content as well as put forth a regulatory function in a five-person panel “appointed by the government.” This panel will be charged with monitoring internet platform behaviors to hold people “accountable.”

Bill C-63 also includes text to amend Canada’s Criminal Code and Human Rights Act to define “hatred” as “Content that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination, within the meaning of the Canadian Human Rights Act, and that, given the context in which it is communicated, is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of such a prohibited ground.‍ (contenu fomentant la haine).”

Most worryingly, the new bill will allow it so that anyone can file a complaint against another person with the Canadian Human Rights Commission for “posting hate speech online” that is deemed “discriminatory” against a wide range of so-called protected categories, notably gender, race, those, or other areas.

If a person is found guilty of violating the Human Rights Act by going against what the government deems to be hate speech, they face fines of $20,000 along with being mandated to take down any postings online, notably on social media.

Many aspects of Bill C-63 come from a lapsed bill from 2021.

In June 2021, then-Justice Minister David Lametti introduced Bill 36, “An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act and to make related amendments to another Act (hate propaganda, hate crimes and hate speech).”

It was blasted as a controversial “hate speech” law that would give police the power to “do something” about online “hate.”

It was feared that it would target bloggers and social media users for speaking their minds.

Bill C-36 included text to amend Canada’s Criminal Code and Human Rights Act to define “hatred” as “the emotion that involves detestation or vilification and that is stronger than dislike or disdain (haine).”

If passed, the bill would theoretically allow a tribunal to judge anyone who has a complaint of online “hate” leveled against them, even if he has not committed a crime. If found guilty, the person would be in violation of the new law and could face fines of $70,000 as well as house arrest.

Two other Trudeau bills dealing with freedom as it relates to the internet have become law, the first being Bill C-11, or the Online Streaming Act, that mandates Canada’s broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), oversee regulating online content on platforms such as YouTube and Netflix to ensure that such platforms are promoting content in accordance with a variety of its guidelines.

Trudeau’s other internet censorship law, the Online News Act, was passed by the Senate in June 2023.

The law mandates that Big Tech companies pay to publish Canadian content on their platforms. As a result, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, blocked all access to news content in Canada. Google has promised to do the same rather than pay the fees laid out in the new legislation.

Critics of recent laws such as tech mogul Elon Musk have said it shows “Trudeau is trying to crush free speech in Canada.”

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CBC retracts false claims about residential schools after accusing Rebel News of ‘misinformation’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

CBC has issued a correction after falsely accused Rebel News of spreading misinformation while itself promoting the false claim that remains of Indigenous children were found in unmarked graves at residential schools.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has issued a correction after blaming Rebel News of “misinformation” while spreading false information itself.

On April 17, CBC corrected a comment from chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton who accused Rebel News reporter Drea Humphrey of spreading “misinformation,” while repeating the false claim that bodies have been found in unmarked graves at Indigenous residential schools.

“Yes, there have been remains of Indigenous children found in various places across the country,” Barton falsely stated during a live broadcast following the French-language federal election leaders’ debate.

Her comment was in reference to New Democratic Leader (NDP) Jagmeet Singh refusing to answer a reporter’s question whether he would condemn the rash of church burnings and acts of vandalism across Canada.

“In this case you saw Mr. Singh, and this has been his position for some time, to refuse to answer questions,” Barton said during the live stream.

“Rebel News in particular traffics in misinformation, lack of facts, and as you heard in that question, which was woven with some truth and some things that weren’t true,” she claimed.

“Yes, there have been burnings of Christian, Catholic churches,” she admitted.

“Yes, there have been remains of Indigenous children found in various places around the country, which she misrepresented,” Barton falsely stated.

Despite mass excavations, there have still been no mass graves discovered at any residential schools across Canada, but politicians and media continue to promote the false narrative.

However, even in their correction statement, CBC failed to mention that, to date, no human remains have been discovered.

“As CBC News has reported on multiple occasions, what several Indigenous communities across Canada have discovered on the sites of some former residential schools are potential burial sites or unmarked graves,” the statement read.

However, CBC is now well known for pushing the false narrative that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the schools. As a consequence of that false narrative, since 2021, over 100 churches have been burned or vandalized across Canada in seeming retribution.

Indeed, in addition to perpetuating the “mass graves” narrative, media and politicians have even threatened to punish those who oppose it. In October 2024, CBC ran a story which suggested that “residential school denialism” should be criminalized.

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John Stossel

Climate Change Myths Part 1: Polar Bears, Arctic Ice, and Food Shortages

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From StosselTV

Climate zealots tell us the end is near. It’s the era of “global BOILING!” says the UN Secretary General. Climate alarmists say the Arctic will soon be ice-free and cities will be underwater! But what do the facts say?

The facts say that the climate change fanatics’ catastrophic claims are wrong.

In this video and the next, we’ll debunk 7 myths about climate change.

First up: melting ice, polar bear extinction, and climate change famines.

Here are the sources for this video:

No new record low summer ice extent observed since 2012. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c…

Satellite data show average annual sea ice volume largely stable since 2010: https://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-c…

Total arctic ice mass: http://psc.apl.uw.edu/research/projec…

Polar Bear Estimates 1993-today: https://www.iucn-pbsg.org/wp-content/…

1981: https://portals.iucn.org/library/site…

1960s: https://www.google.com/books/edition/…

Global agricultural output: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ag…

NASA Greening study: https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-faci…

Malnutrition deaths: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ma…

Coffee production: https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

 

After 40+ years of reporting, I now understand the importance of limited government and personal freedom. ”

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Libertarian journalist John Stossel created Stossel TV to explain liberty and free markets to young people.

Prior to Stossel TV he hosted a show on Fox Business and co-anchored ABC’s primetime newsmagazine show, 20/20.

Stossel’s economic programs have been adapted into teaching kits by a non-profit organization, “Stossel in the Classroom.” High school teachers in American public schools now use the videos to help educate their students on economics and economic freedom. They are seen by more than 12 million students every year.

Stossel has received 19 Emmy Awards and has been honored five times for excellence in consumer reporting by the National Press Club. Other honors include the George Polk Award for Outstanding Local Reporting and the George Foster Peabody Award.

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In order not to miss the next video from Stossel TV, sign up here: https://johnstossel.activehosted.com/f/1

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