44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 7, 2024 10:00AM
moved that Bill C-63, 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, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
He said: Mr. Speaker, hon. colleagues, I am very pleased today to speak to Bill C-63, the online harms act. I speak today not only as a minister and as a fellow parliamentarian, but also as a father, as a South Asian and as a Muslim Canadian.
There are a few moments in this place when our work becomes very personal, and this is one such moment for me. Let me explain why. I ran for office for a number of reasons in 2015. Chief among them was to fight against discrimination and to fight for equality in what I viewed as an increasingly polarized world. In recent years, we have seen that polarization deepen and that hatred fester, including at home here in Canada.
I would never have fathomed that in 2024, Canada would actually lead the G7 in the number of deaths attributable to Islamophobia. Among our allies, it is Canada that has experienced the most fatal attacks against Muslims in the G7. There have been 11. Those were 11 preventable deaths. I say “preventable” because in the trials of both the Quebec mosque shooter, who murdered six men on January 29, 2017, and the man who murdered four members of the Afzaal family in London, Ontario, the attackers admitted, in open court, to having been radicalized online. They admitted what so many of us have always known to be the case: Online hatred has real-world consequences.
Yesterday was the third anniversary of the attack on the Afzaal family, an attack described by the presiding judge as “a terrorist act”. In memory of Talat, Salman, Yumna and Madiha, who lost their lives to an act of hatred on June 6, 2021, we are taking action.
Bill C-63, the online harms act, is a critical piece of that action. This bill is the product of years of work.
We held consultations for over four years. We talked to victims' groups, advocacy groups, international partners, people from the technology industry and the general public. We organized a nationwide consultation and held 19 national and regional round tables. We published a report about what we learned. We listened to the recommendations of our expert advisory group on online safety, a diverse think tank made up of experts who are respected across Canada. We were given valuable advice and gained a great deal of knowledge thanks to those consultations, and all of that informed the development of Bill C-63.
Many of our international partners, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, France and the European Union, have already done considerable legislative work to try to limit the risks of harmful content online. We learned from their experience and adapted the best parts of their most effective plans to the Canadian context.
We have also learned what did not work abroad, like the immediate takedown of all types of harmful content, originally done in Germany; or like the overbroad restriction on freedom of speech that was struck as unconstitutional in France. We are not repeating those errors here. Our approach is much more measured and reflects the critical importance of constitutionally protected free expression in Canada's democracy. What we learned from this extensive consultation was that the Internet and social media platforms can be a force for good in Canada and around the world. They have been a tool for activists to defend democracy. They are platforms for critical expression and for critical civic discourse. They make learning more accessible to everyone.
The Internet has made people across our vast world feel more connected to one another, but the internet also has a dark side. Last December, the RCMP warned of an alarming spike in online extremism among young people in Canada and the radicalization of youth online. We know that the online environment is especially dangerous for our most vulnerable. A recent study by Plan International found that 58% of girls have experienced harassment online.
Social media platforms are used to exploit and disseminate devastating messages with tragic consequences. This is because of one simple truth. For too long, the profits of platforms have come before the safety of users. Self-regulation has failed to keep our kids safe. Stories of tragedy have become far too common. There are tragic consequences, like the death of Amanda Todd, a 15-year-old Port Coquitlam student who died by suicide on October 10, 2012, after being exploited and extorted by more than 20 social media accounts. This relentless harassment started when Amanda was just 12 years old, in grade 7.
There was Carson Cleland last fall. He was the same age as my son at the time: 12 years old. Carson made a mistake. He shared an intimate image with someone whom he thought was a friend online, only to find himself caught up in a web of sextortion from which he could not extricate himself. Unable to turn to his parents, too ashamed to turn to his friends, Carson turned on himself. Carson is no longer with us, but he should be with us.
We need to do more to protect the Amanda Todds and the Carson Clelands of this country, and with this bill, we will. I met with the incredible people at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection earlier this year, and they told me that they receive 70 calls every single week from scared kids across Canada in situations like Amanda's and like Carson's.
As the father of two youngsters, this is very personal for me. As they grow up, my 10-year-old and 13-year-old boys spend more and more time on screens. I know that my wife and I are not alone in this parenting struggle. It is the same struggle that parents are facing around the country.
At this point, there is no turning back. Our children and teens are being exposed to literally everything online, and I feel a desperate need, Canadians feel a desperate need, to do a better job of protecting those kids online. That is precisely what we are going to do with this bill.
Bill C-63 is guided by four important objectives. It aims to reduce exposure to harmful content online, to empower and support users. Second, it would address and denounce the rise in hatred and hate crimes. Third, it would ensure that victims of hate have recourse to improved remedies, and fourth, it would strengthen the reporting of child sexual abuse material to enhance the criminal justice response to this heinous crime.
The online harms act will address seven types of harmful content based on categories established over more than four years of consultation.
Not all harms will be treated the same. Services will be required to quickly remove content that sexually victimizes a child or that revictimizes a survivor, as well as to remove what we call “revenge porn”, including sexual deepfakes. There is no place for this material on the Internet whatsoever.
For other types of content, like content that induces a child to self-harm or material that bullies a child, we are placing a duty on platforms to protect children. This means a new legislative and regulatory framework to ensure that social media platforms reduce exposure to harmful, exploitative content on their platforms. This means putting in place special protections for children. It also means that platforms will have to make sure that users have the tools and the resources they need to report harmful content.
To fulfill the duty to protect children, social media platforms will have to integrate age-appropriate design features to make their platforms safer for children to use. This could mean defaults for parental controls and warning labels for children. It could mean security settings for instant messaging for children, or it could mean safe-search settings.
Protecting our children is one of our most important duties that we undertake as lawmakers in this place. As a parent, it literally terrifies me that the most dangerous toys in my home, my children's screens, are not subject to any safety standards right now. This needs to change, and it would change with the passage of Bill C-63.
It is not only that children are subject to horrible sexual abuse and bullying online, but also that they are exposed to hate and hateful content, as are Internet users of all ages and all backgrounds, which is why Bill C-63 targets content that foments hatred and incitements to violence as well as incitements to terrorism. This bill would not require social media companies to take down this kind of harmful content; instead, the platforms would have to reduce exposure to it by creating a digital safety plan, disclosing to the digital safety commissioner what steps they are putting in place to reduce risk and reporting back on their progress.
The platforms would also be required to give users practical options for recourse, like tools to either flag or block certain harmful material from their own feeds. This is key to ensuring community safety, all the more so because they are backed by significant penalties for noncompliance. When I say “significant”, the penalties would be 6% of global revenue or $10 million, whichever is higher, and in the instance of a contravention of an order from the digital safety commission, those would rise to 8% of global revenue or $25 million, again, whichever is higher.
The online harms act is an important step towards a safer, more inclusive online environment, where social media platforms actively work to reduce the risk of user exposure to harmful content on their platforms and help to prevent its spread, and where, as a result, everyone in Canada can feel safer to express themselves openly. This is critical, because at the heart of this initiative, it is about promoting expression and participation in civic discourse that occurs online. We can think about Carla Beauvais and the sentiments she expressed when she stood right beside me when we tabled this legislation in February, and the amount of abuse she faced for voicing her concerns about the George Floyd incident in the United States, which cowered her and prevented her from participating online. We want her voice added to the civic discourse. Right now, it has been removed.
The online harms act will regulate social media services, the primary purpose of which is to enable users to share publicly accessible content, services that pose the greatest risk of exposing the greatest number of people to harmful content.
This means that the act would apply to social media platforms, such as Facebook, X and Instagram; user-uploaded adult content services, such as Pornhub; and livestreaming services, such as Twitch. However, it would not apply to any private communications, meaning private texts or direct private messaging on social media apps, such as Instagram or Facebook Messenger. It is critical to underscore, again, that this is a measured approach that does not follow the overreach seen in other countries we have studied, in terms of how they embarked upon this endeavour. The goal is to target the largest social media platforms, the places where the most people in Canada are spending their time online.
Some ask why Bill C-63 addresses both online harms and hate crimes, which can happen both on and off-line. I will explain this. Online dangers do not remain online. We are seeing a dramatic rise in hate crime across our country. According to Statistics Canada, the number of police-reported hate crimes increased by 83% between 2019 and 2022. B'nai Brith Canada reports an alarming 109% increase in anti-Semitic incidents from 2022 to 2023. In the wake of October 7, 2023, I have been hearing frequently from Jewish and Muslim groups, which are openly questioning whether it is safe to be openly Jewish or Muslim in Canada right now. This is not tenable. It should never be tolerated, yet hate-motivated violence keeps happening. People in Canada are telling us to act. It is up to us, as lawmakers, to do exactly that.
We must take concrete action to better protect all people in Canada from harms, both online and in our communities. We need better tools to deal with harmful content online that foments violence and destruction. Bill C-63 gives law enforcement these much-needed tools.
The Toronto Police Service has expressed their open support of Bill C-63 because they know it will make our communities safer. Members of the Afzaal family have expressed their open support for Bill C-63 because they know the Islamophobic hate that causes someone to kill starts somewhere, and it is often online.
However, we know there is no single solution to the spread of hatred on and off-line. That is why the bill proposes a number of different tools to help stop the hate. It starts with the Criminal Code of Canada. Bill C-63 would amend the Criminal Code to better target hate crime and hate propaganda. It would do this in four important ways.
First, it would create a new hate crime offence. Law enforcement has asked us for this tool, so they can call a hate crime a hate crime when laying a charge, rather than as an afterthought at sentencing. This new offence will also help law enforcement track the actual number of hate-motivated crimes in Canada. That is why they have appealed to me to create a free-standing hate crime offence in a manner that replicates what already exists in 47 of the 50 states south of the border. A hate-motivated assault is not just an assault. It is a hate crime and should be recognized as such on the front end of a prosecution.
Second, Bill C‑63 would increase sentences for the four existing hate speech offences. These are serious offences, and the sentences should reflect that.
Third, Bill C-63 would create a recognizance to keep the peace, which is specifically designed to prevent any of the four hate propaganda offences and the new hate crime offence from being committed.
This would be modelled on existing peace bonds, such as those used in domestic violence cases, and would require someone to have a reasonable fear that these offences would be committed. The threshold of “reasonable fear” is common to almost all peace bonds.
In addition, as some but not all peace bonds do, this would require the relevant attorney general to give consent before an application is made to a judge to impose a peace bond on a person. This ensures an extra layer of scrutiny in the process.
Finally, the bill would codify a definition of hatred for hate propaganda offences and for the new hate crime offence, based on the definition the Supreme Court of Canada created in its seminal decisions in R. v. Keegstra and in Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission v. Whatcott. The definition sets out not only what hatred is but also what it is not, thereby helping Canadians and law enforcement to better understand the scope of these offences.
The court has defined hate speech as content that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group on the basis of grounds such as race, national or ethnic origin, religion and sex. It only captures the most extreme and marginal type of expression, leaving the entirety of political and other discourse almost untouched. That is where one will find the category of content that some have called “awful but lawful”. This is the stuff that is offensive and ugly but is still permitted as constitutionally protected free expression under charter section 2(b). This category of content is not hate speech under the Supreme Court's definition.
I want to make clear what Bill C‑63 does not do. It does not undermine freedom of expression. It strengthens freedom of expression by allowing all people to participate safely in online discussions.
Bill C-63 would provide another tool as well. It would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to define a new discriminatory practice of communicating hate speech online. The legislation makes clear that hate does not encompass content that merely discredits, humiliates, hurts or offends, but where hate speech does occur, there would be a mechanism through which an individual could ask that those expressions of hate be removed. The CHRA amendments are not designed to punish anyone. They would simply give Canadians a tool to get hate speech removed.
Finally, Bill C-63 would modernize and close loopholes in the mandatory reporting act. This would help law enforcement more effectively investigate child sex abuse and exploitation and bring perpetrators to justice, retaining information longer and ensuring that social media companies report CSAM to the RCMP.
There is broad support for the online harms act. When I introduced the legislation in February, I was proud to have at my side the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and the National Council of Canadian Muslims. Those two groups have had vast differences in recent months, but on the need to fight hatred online, they are united. The same unity has been expressed by both Deborah Lyons, the special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting anti-Semitism, and Amira Elghawaby, the special representative on combatting Islamophobia.
The time to combat all forms of online hate is now. Hatred that festers online can result in real-world violence. I am always open to good-faith suggestions on how to improve the bill. I look forward to following along with the study of the legislation at the committee stage. I have a fundamental duty to uphold the charter protection of free expression and to protect all Canadians from harm. I take both duties very seriously.
Some have urged me to split Bill C-63 in two, dealing only with the provisions that stop sexually exploitative material from spreading and throwing away measures that combat hate. To these people, I say that I would not be doing my job as minister if I failed to address the rampant hatred on online platforms. It is my job to protect all Canadians from harm. That means kids and adults. People are pleading for relief from the spread of hate. It is time we acted.
Bill C-63 is a comprehensive response to online harms and the dangerous hate we are seeing spreading in our communities. We have a duty to protect our children in the real world. We must take decisive action to protect them online as well, where the dangers can be just as pernicious, if not more so. Such action starts with passing Bill C-63.
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Mr. Speaker, that is why we would like the bill to go to committee for a thorough study, because it is important in the context of this bill.
That said, we know that hate crimes are on the rise. We are seeing more and more anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and so on. That is why it is important to have clear definitions in the bill.
At this stage of the bill's consideration, we are being asked to vote on the principle of the bill. The bill seeks to reduce online harm, and we agree with that principle. However, there are still many questions and details to be studied. We will have the opportunity to amend the bill in committee to remove certain parts or add others. There is still a lot of work to be done. The NDP wants to refer the bill to committee so that we can begin that work.
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