Justice Minister Arif Virani yesterday finally bowed to public pressure by agreeing to split Bill C-63, the Online Harms bill. The move brings to an end the ill-conceived attempt to wedge together Internet platform responsibility with Criminal Code provisions and the potential weaponization of the Canada Human Rights Act that had rightly sparked concerns from a wide range of groups. I wrote about the need to drop those provisions two days after the bill was introduced last February. By the time the fall had rolled around, it was hard to find anyone who supported the bill in its current form.
Post Tagged with: "human rights act"
Why the Criminal Code and Human Rights Act Provisions Should Be Removed from the Online Harms Act
Having a spent virtually the entire day yesterday talking with media and colleagues about Bill C-63, one thing has become increasingly clear: the Criminal Code and Human Rights Act provisions found in the Online Harms Act should be removed. In my initial post on the bill, I identified the provisions as one of three red flags, warning that they “feature penalties that go as high as life in prison and open the door to a tidal wave of hate speech related complaints.” There is no obvious need or rationale for penalties of life in prison for offences motivated by hatred, nor the need to weaponize human rights complaints by reviving Human Rights Act provisions on communication of hate speech. As more Canadians review the bill, there is a real risk that these provisions will overwhelm the Online Harms Act and become a primary area of focus despite not being central to the law’s core objective of mitigating harms on Internet platforms.
