When Attorney General and Justice Minister Arif Virani introduced the Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63, on Feb. 26, I expected this legislation to be the focus of the first query during question period in the House of Commons the next day.
I was disappointed.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said very little about the legislation. He issued a very vaguely worded statement the next day, without even referring to the bill by name, that there should be no redundant bureaucracy and people shouldn’t be punished for their opinions, while saying that people exploiting children or women should be punished by the justice system.
A “digital safety ombudsperson”—which I have already dubbed the online censorship czar—would be charged with liaising between this new government department or agency and the public.
Similar laws with identical names were passed by Britain and Australia. The European Union has also gone down this road.
Well, my opprobrium and that of other concerned journalists was apparently noted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Virani because the bill has undergone a complete makeover; the government is now opting to pretend it is all about punishing child pornographers and banishing “hate propaganda offences” from the internet.
The problem of course is what constitutes “hate,” and we should be very worried when Virani assures us that the government is going to define what that is for us based on previous decisions by the Supreme Court of Canada. Great. You know this is going to be so broad a definition that hate speech will become what Poilievre has always said it was to this Liberal government: “speech that Justin Trudeau hates.”
So why isn’t Poilievre tearing this bill apart? Why is he looking at it like another example of the Liberals not getting tough on crime?
The Official Opposition needs to oppose this bill and emphatically declare that they will vote against it and repeal it if it becomes law and they become the next government. Bill C-63 will very likely be passed with the support of both the NDP and the Bloc before the next federal election.
I believe that is a realistic assessment of a bill that at first reading looks like a parody of legislation inspired by George Orwell’s “1984.”
It seeks to establish the sort of self-censorship that exists in every totalitarian state, where people consciously stop themselves from stating any views or even saying anything that might offend the official censors. The victims of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship famously recalled how they only felt safe when they were lying in bed at midnight.
No, the cops won’t be at your doorstep after your first hate speech infraction. The digital safety police will tell you to get with the program, adopt the accepted narrative, and start reading the talking points.
Okay, so why aren’t the Conservatives mad as hell over this legislation that makes a mockery of free speech? Could it be that they don’t want to appear hateful or somehow soft on child porn? If so, that is ridiculous because Poilievre wants to jail exploiters of children as much as the car thieves that he is always condemning in question period.
When Poilievre stated that the wanted the Conservative Party of Canada to be the “mind your own business” party, he achieved political excellence by unifying small-c conservatives with libertarians—both of whom really want to get government out of our lives. He should be repeating that slogan—and God knows he insists his caucus members remember the slogan of the week—when discussing the Online Harms Act.
This is a sordid, totalitarian mess of a bill that needs to be condemned at every level. And the official Opposition should do its job.
