Poilievre Reacts to Liberals’ Online Harms Bill

Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre rises during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 13, 2023. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says his party supports criminalizing online bullying and sexual exploitation, but is not in favour of punishing Canadians for their opinions.

Mr. Poilievre’s comments come a day after the Liberals introduced the long-awaited Bill C-63, the Online Harms legislation described by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a way to protect Canadians online.

In a Feb. 27 press release, the Tory leader expressed support  for enforcing laws against the online victimization of children or re-victimization of abuse survivors.

“We believe that these serious acts should be criminalized, investigated by police, tried in court and punished with jail, not pushed off to new bureaucracy that does nothing to prevent crimes and provides no justice to victims,” Mr. Poilievre said.

The Tory leader, however, disapproves of efforts to control speech. “We do not believe that the government should be banning opinions that contradict the prime minister’s radical ideology,” he said in the statement.

Mr. Poilievre said criminal bans on intimate content communicated without consent, such as deepfakes, must also be enforced and expanded.

Mr. Poilievre’s office declined to elaborate on the party’s specific stance on Bill C-63. The Tory leader previously said his party would oppose the government bill before it was tabled, claiming it would lead to criminalization of speech the prime minister does not like.

Details of Bill C-63

Bill C-63 seeks to address “online harms” by, in part, amending the Canadian Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act to regulate online content involving sexual exploitation, bullying, deepfakes, and “hateful conduct.”

The legislation would add a new form of hate crime to the Criminal Code, punishable by up to life in jail, and give up to $20,000 in compensation to victims of online “hate speech.” The bill would also add a new standalone hate crime offence to the Criminal Code, which would apply to existing offences.

Violators of this new crime could face life imprisonment as a way to “deter this hateful conduct as a crime in itself, rather than as an aggravating factor.” Length of sentences will be considered during sentencing. The maximum punishments for hate propaganda offences in Sections 318 and 319 would also be raised to life imprisonment, from the current five years if the offender advocated genocide.

The legislation will apply to three categories of online content: social media services, live-streaming websites, and user-generated adult content services, according to a technical briefing from Feb. 26. Social media and live-streaming services would include platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, LinkedIn, and Twitch, while user-generated adult content services would include pornographic websites like Pornhub or XVideos.

Private communications will be excluded from the legislation, which includes correspondence through email and direct messaging on social media. But groups that are made public on social media that have “an unlimited number of people” who can join will be included under the legislation. This would likely apply to Facebook and Telegram groups.