By Anthony Murdoch
MP Michelle Rempel Garner said the goal is to ‘protect the most vulnerable Canadians without creating a government-managed surveillance state or restricting Charter-protected speech.’
Canada’s Conservative Party promised to introduce a new online harms bill that will counter legislation from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals that aims to further clamp down on online speech.
Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, speaking to reporters on September 12, said the new Conservative bill will “protect Canadians online” and preserve “civil liberties.”
“After nine years of Justin Trudeau, the NDP-Liberal coalition has failed to put forward any legislation that will protect Canadians online without infringing upon their civil liberties,” she said, adding that “Canadians are paying the price for this failure.”
Rempel Garner added that online criminal behaviour is “still rampant” in Canada, “yet the Liberals’ only response has been to table two censorship bills, forcing Canadians to choose between their safety and free expression.”
In a blog post about the forthcoming legislation, Rempel Garner observed that “for nearly a decade, the Liberals have presented Canadians with a false dichotomy; that they should have to water down their civil liberties to be protected online.”
She made a direct reference to the Liberal’s Bill C-63, or the “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.”
Bill C-63 was introduced by Justice Minister Arif Virani in the House of Commons in February and was immediately blasted by constitutional experts as troublesome. Put forth under the guise of protecting children from exploitation online, the bill also seeks to expand the scope of “hate speech” prosecutions, and even desires to target such speech retroactively.
Trudeau’s law, which is in the second reading, also calls for the creation of a Digital Safety Commission, a digital safety ombudsperson, and the Digital Safety Office, all tasked with policing internet content.
Rempel Garner promised the Conservative’s online harms bill will “introduce protections in three areas of focus,” and will “protect the most vulnerable Canadians without creating a government-managed surveillance state or restricting Charter-protected speech.”
“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,” Rempel Garner noted.
“Specifically, the provision in our new Conservative legislation will be based on the existing definition of criminal harassment, applying specifically to those who repeatedly send unwanted, harassing content that causes someone to reasonably fear for their safety or well-being.”
Conservative bill will not mandate Digital IDs for internet use
Rempel Garner observed that the new bill will have provisions to protect minors and will criminalize the sharing of “intimate” photos without a person’s consent, as well as “deep nudes” (AI images that look real), as well as the sharing of pictures or video of sexual assault.
“The legislation will outline in detail how operators must comply with and operate under this duty of care, including reporting requirements, marketing prohibitions, and other items. Operators who don’t comply with these provisions will face steep fines and a private right of action,” she said.
Rempel Garner said the Conservative’s new bill will look to implement privacy-preserving and “trustworthy age verification methods (for example, computer algorithms that ensure reliable age verification) to detect when a user is a minor,” to be able to restrict access to any “content that is inappropriate for minors to such users while expressly prohibiting the use of a Digital ID for these purposes.”
In June, Rempel Garner said Trudeau’s Bill C-63 is so flawed that it will never be able to be enforced or come to light before the next election.
C-63’s “hate speech” section is accompanied by broad definitions, severe penalties, and dubious tactics, including levying preemptive judgments against people if they are feared to be likely to commit an act of “hate” in the future.
Details of the new legislation also show the bill could lead to more people jailed for life for “hate crimes” or fined $50,000 and jailed for posts that the government defines as “hate speech” based on gender, race, or other categories.
Jordan Peterson, one of Canada’s most prominent psychologists, accused Trudeau’s Bill C-63 of trying to create a pathway to allow for “Orwellian Thought Crime” to become the norm in the nation
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