A new Canadian law, the Online Harms Act, which is backed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government, is facing widespread criticism for alleged government overreach.
The bill was first introduced last month and is also known as Bill C-63 which would allow judges to imprison adults for life if they are found advocating for genocide. The measure would also allow judges to impose house arrest as well as a fine if there were reasonable grounds to believe that a defendant "will commit" an offense.
Canada's Online Harms Act
This was a provision that Wall Street Journal columnist Michael Taube compared with the 2002 film, "The Minority Report." Additionally, the author of "The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood, criticized the new Canadian bill as "Orwellian."
In a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Atwood said that if the account of the bill is accurate, it is Lettres de Cachet all over again. She argued that the possibilities for revenge false accusations and thoughtcrime stuff would be too inviting, according to Fox News.
Conservative author Stephen Moore also called the Online Harms Act the "most shocking of all the totalitarian, illiberal, and anti-Enlightenment pieces of legislation that have been introduced in the Western world in decades."
A government spokesperson said that the new bill would increase the maximum penalty specifically for advocating genocide from five years to lifetime imprisonment. It would also increase the maximum penalty from two years to five years, on indictment, for the willful promotion of hatred.
Justice Minister Arif Virani was the one who introduced the bill and he said that as a father, he was "terrified of the dangers that lurk on the internet for our children." He argued that current laws regulate the safety of toys that his kids play with but not the "screen that is in our children's faces."
A University of Ottawa legal scholar, Michael Geist, said that Bill C-63 would effectively bring back Section 13. It would give anyone the ability to file a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) alleging online hate speech, said the Wall Street Journal.
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Potential Life Imprisonment
Under the new law, the commission will have the authority to levy fines of up to $15,000, which is payable to the complainant, not the treasury. Geist added that that would provide opportunities for a massive influx of complaints.
Additionally, the Online Harms Act would subject non-compliant social media companies to draconian fines of up to 6% of global gross revenue. The new bill also introduces not one, but three new bureaucracies.
These are a Digital Safety Commission of Canada, a Digital Safety Ombudsperson of Canada, and a Digital Safety Office of Canada. The first will work to make sure that operators of social media services are transparent and accountable. The second will provide support to users while the third will support the first two in the fulfillment of their mandates.
The bill has seven categories of harm that are defined as 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, according to Aljazeera.
