The Liberal government will be introducing its long-awaited bill aimed at targeting online hate speech and misinformation by this fall at the latest, says Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez.
Rodriguez told MPs on the House of Commons Standing
Committee on Canadian Heritage on May 29 that his department will be “coming up with something very shortly” on the matter, but was hesitant to give an exact deadline for when the drafting of the pending legislation will be completed.
“It’s not going to be longer than the fall of course, but I can’t give you a specific date yet,” he said.
The heritage minister later referred to the yet-to-be-introduced legislation as the “online safety bill,” which he said will play “an important role” in preventing crimes motivated by hate against certain groups.
While questioning the minister on his mandate letter, Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu asked what steps the government would take to protect faith groups. She referred to the
vandalism and arson of a number of Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, United, and Presbyterian churches, among other Christian denominations, across Canada in 2021 around the same time that suspected unmarked graves at a residential school in Kamloops, B.C., were discovered.
“I would be interested to know what actions that you have taken as part of your mandate to ensure that people can freely worship, whatever denomination they are,” Gladu said.
Rodriguez said such vandalism of churches is an example of why Canada needs an online safety bill.
“A lot of it—not everything—but a lot of it starts on the web,” he said. “A lot of these people organize on the web. A lot of people start their action organizing on the web, and that should not be there.”
“People have to be protected when they go and practice their faith, 100 percent,” he added. “And we [the government] have a role to play, and I think that the online safety bill is going to play an important role, too.”
Previous Legislation
The Liberals
previously introduced similar legislation aimed at addressing online hate speech, but it lapsed when a snap election was called in the fall of 2021.
Cabinet then said
in a response to a House of Commons committee recommendation this March that Rodriguez’s department was “working with other government departments” to re-draft similar legislation with several changes, but gave no details of an introduction date.
According to the document, the new legislation may also propose creating a commission tasked with enforcing social media platforms to specifically target “harmful content” online.
Rodriguez also previously
formed a panel of 12 experts, which held discussions from April to June 2022 and gave recommendations to cabinet about drafting a new internet regulation bill.
Among their recommendations was a call for cabinet to
tackle “disinformation” in the bill, while also acknowledging the difficulty of defining the term in legislation.
Lee Harding contributed to this report.
