“Imagine opening your email or direct messages to find explicit messages about how someone is going to kill or rape you. Or, maybe it’s a message threatening some form of blackmail — like releasing deepfaked nude photos — if you don’t comply with the abuser’s demands.”
That is how Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner began a recently published Substack article introducing her new private member’s bill, Bill C-412. Rempel Garner says the bill would combat online harassment and exploitation in a less intrusive fashion than the Liberals’ controversial online harms bill, Bill C-63.
While civil liberty experts predict Rempel Garner’s bill is unlikely to have much impact, they remain worried that the Liberals’ bill — which could pass with the support of either the Bloc Québécois or NDP — will stifle free speech.
“To be frank, private member’s bills do not often pass,” said Christine Van Geyn, litigation director at the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
But the civil liberty organization “remains deeply concerned about the impact that [the Liberals’] C-63 would have on the right to freedom of expression.”
‘Policing each other’
Rempel Garner, who said in her Substack article that she has been the target of “criminal, violent online threats,” introduced Bill C-412 to protect victims of harassment and minors’ online safety —while avoiding government overreach and broad definitions of hateful content.
“Canadians are paying the price from a failure of the Liberals to provide necessary protection from online threats while they create costly censorship bureaucracies,” Rempel Garner said when introducing the bill in the House of Commons on Sept. 16.
But Matt Hatfield, executive director of the internet advocacy organization OpenMedia, says the Conservatives’ attempt to regulate online harms without expanding governmental oversight could render the bill powerless to hold tech companies to account.
“Would C-412 do nearly as much [as C-63] to hold the Metas and Googles of the world to a high standard?” said Hatfield, referring to the fact that the Liberals’ online harms bill would require large social media companies to address harmful content on their platforms. “No, I don’t think it would.”
But the Liberals’ bill does not stop there.
It also proposes amending the Criminal Code to create a new hate offence with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Civil liberty groups worry the bill’s definition of hate speech — defined as communication that expresses “detestation or vilification” of individuals or groups based on certain personal characteristics — is too broad and could result in hate charges being laid too readily.
“We know that this is a very subjective definition that is difficult on the ground to work with,” said Van Geyn. “Most members of the public do not understand what constitutes hate speech.”
The Liberals’ Bill C-63 also proposes amendments to the Canadian Human Rights Act that would encourage people to direct online hate speech complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, says Hatfield.
“There is, I think, a grave risk that … the government will be really encouraging people [to] … sort of police each other and watch for the moment, ‘Oh, I think this thing you said might qualify taking you to the tribunal’,” he said.
What is more, the bill creates a financial incentive to file complaints, says Van Geyn. Under Bill C-63, hate speech complaints are investigated by members of the commission at no cost to the complainant. And complainants can be awarded as much as $20,000 if a person is found to have used hate speech.
Meanwhile, the individuals accused of committing online hate speech will face expensive legal fees and up to $70,000 in penalties. These potentially hefty repercussions risk effectively stifling free expression, Van Geyn says.
“Do you bear all those costs and those risks of up to $70,000 in penalties, or do you just take the content down?” said Van Geyn. “If you take it down, the human rights commission can say, ‘Well, we didn’t censor anything’.”
New regulator
The Liberals’ Bill C-63 proposes creating a new regulator, the Digital Safety Commissioner, to enforce online harms laws. Conservatives say the creation of another regulatory body will only add to an already bloated bureaucracy.
Rempel Garner’s bill proposes instead requiring the courts and Canada’s existing telecommunications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), to enforce online harms laws.
In Hatfield’s view, a dedicated online harms regulator is necessary to effectively regulate hateful online content. Both the courts and CRTC suffer from severe processing delays, which could mean online harms laws would take years to enforce.
“It’s actually quite difficult to regulate some of the areas … effectively with no regulator,” said Hatfield. “I think [C-412 proposes] second-rate solutions to having a dedicated regulator: the CRTC is famously slow and backlogged … courts will be even slower and quite expensive.”
According to the Department of Justice, Rempel Garner’s proposed bill does not do enough to involve the government in addressing harmful online activity.
“The Conservative[s’] supposed plan to protect Canadians online is unserious,” said Chantalle Aubertin, a spokesperson for Justice Minister Arif Virani, in an e-mailed statement.
“Their narrow focus on tweaking criminal harassment won’t address the deeper issues of online exploitation and hate. They’re putting the burden on victims and parents, while harmful content spreads unchecked online.”
But Rempel Garner’s bill may offer a peek into the approach that an elected Conservative government would take to regulating online harassment and exploitation.
Bill C-412 “might give some insight into what potentially the Conservatives might be more interested in focusing on if they were to form government,” said Van Geyn.
Last week, the Conservatives tabled its second non-confidence motion this parliamentary session in an effort to trigger a federal election this fall. Polling currently indicates the Conservatives would win a sizable majority if an election were held today.
