A large majority of Canadians voiced concerns over Ottawa’s proposed “online harms” legislation, but this information was not included in the government’s report summarizing the results of the consultation, according to Canadian lawyer and academic Michael Geist.
Ninety percent of Canadians who responded to a previous federal public consultation seeking feedback on Ottawa’s proposed “online harms” legislation voiced opposition to the measures, according to internal government documents obtained from Heritage Canada by Geist through an Access to Information (ATIP) request. Geist published a portion of the information on his
website.
The documents elaborated on responses to
online consultations conducted by the Liberal government between July and September 2021. The consultations were meant to receive public feedback on a discussion guide and technical paper summarizing the basic outline of potential legislation aimed at regulating internet content
deemed harmful.
Some months after collecting the feedback, the Department of Canadian Heritage published a
report titled “What We Heard: The Government’s proposed approach to address harmful content online” that it said summarized the consultation results.
The report acknowledged that “only a small number of submissions” were supportive of the proposed legislation, but did not give exact figures showing how many individuals were in favour of or against the proposals.
It also said that a majority of respondents voiced support “for a legislative and regulatory framework, led by the federal government, to confront harmful content online.”
However, the
documents obtained by Geist through an ATIP request, titled “Online Harms Consultation Preliminary Overview of Submissions,” show that about 90 percent of the 350 individuals who submitted feedback through the online consultation were “unsupportive” of the government’s proposals to address online harms.
“Concerns most cited are those around censorship/freedom of expression,” it said of the large majority of individuals opposed to the proposal.
It added that most individual respondents also had concerns about “the role of law enforcement and fears around surveillance, and the definition of ‘hate speech,’” as well as the proposal’s “lack of definitional detail” about what will be considered harmful online content.
The documents added that just 5.4 percent of individual respondents were supportive of proposed legislation addressing online harms, while 4.6 percent of respondents were neutral.
The Epoch Times contacted Geist and Heritage Canada for comment but did not hear back by publication time.
Online Harms Legislation
The Liberal government
previously introduced legislation that was meant to address online hate speech, but it lapsed when a snap election was called in the fall of 2021.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino
said in August 2022 that the Liberal government would introduce its proposed online harms legislation “as quickly as possible,” but has not yet done so.
Cabinet said
in a response to a House of Commons committee recommendation in March that the Canadian Heritage Department is “working with other government departments” on drafting the legislation, but has not yet determined an introduction date.
“The Government of Canada is considering a risk-based approach to platform regulation, whereby online services would be compelled to identify, assess, and mitigate risks on their platforms through their own internal systems and processes,” it said.
The government also said that its new internet “regulatory structure”
could include the creation of a commission tasked with enforcing social media platforms to specifically target “harmful content” online.
