Trudeau’s Online Harms Act includes life imprisonment for ‘hate crime offense,’ creates censorship czar

However, the bill targets a cornucopia of free speech issues and seeks to “protect all people in Canada from hatred.” The legislation would create a definition of “hatred,” increase existing penalties for “hate propaganda offenses” and promulgate a unique Criminal Code entry for a “hate crime offense” while offering new “remedies” for violating online hate speech within the Canadian Human Rights Act.

The “new standalone hate crime offense … would apply to every offense 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,” according to a technical briefing that preceded the news conference.

A human rights tribunal could also impose fines of up to $70,000 for posting “hate speech,” according to the bill.

The legislation would include an online censorship czar, dubbed a “digital safety ombudsperson,” within a new government agency called the Digital Safety Commission of Canada. This bureaucracy would be given the authority to target anyone seen to be violating the Online Harms Act and to “enforce legislative and regulatory obligations and hold online services accountable for their responsibilities through auditing for compliance, issuing compliance orders and penalizing services that fail to comply.”

Social media, live-streaming and adult content services are all targets of the potential law.

According to a Justice Department backgrounder, the Online Harms Act would be aimed at seven categories of “harmful content”:

“Content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor; intimate content communicated without consent; content that foments hatred; content that incites violent extremism or terrorism; content that incites violence; content used to bully a child; and content that induces a child to harm themselves.”

Virani issued a veiled threat to those who might object to the potential law: “My message to these people and these organizations is very simple. It is now the time to work directly with us. Profit cannot be prioritized over safety right now. It is too easy for social media companies to look the other way as hate and exploitation festers on their platforms,” Virani said.