Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Arif Virani speaks about the Online Harms Act during a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 26. Virani is in charge of shepherding Bill C-63 through Parliament.BLAIR GABLE/Reuters
The federal Justice Department is looking at making major changes to its online harms bill to improve its chances of becoming law before the next election, according to a senior government source.
The source told The Globe and Mail that Justice Minister Arif Virani, who is in charge of shepherding the bill through Parliament, is prepared to amend clauses that would have brought in new criminal offences that civil liberties groups and lawyers have warned are heavy-handed and threaten freedom of speech.
The Globe is not identifying the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.
The source said that as soon as the bill reaches the stage where amendments can be tabled, there will be a push from Mr. Virani’s office to strike out several measures that would have changed the Criminal Code.
Also known as Bill C-63, the online-harms bill is opposed by the Conservatives. The government has been relying on NDP support to push it through.
The mammoth bill is still at an early stage in the House of Commons and has yet to be brought to a committee, either in the Commons and the Senate, where it would face clause-by-clause scrutiny and amendments.
The next election is scheduled for the fall of 2025, but the NDP’s ditching of its supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals makes the prospect of an earlier election more likely.
“With the NDP exiting its deal with the government, the path for Bill C-63 to make its way through the full legislative process is becoming increasingly challenging,” said Michael Geist, the University of Ottawa’s Canada Research Chair in Internet Law.
The federal government has faced sharp criticism for making controversial changes to the Criminal Code in the bill, which threaten to slow its passage through Parliament. They could lead to months of discussion and debate by MPs, senators, and scrutiny by expert witnesses called to committee in Parliament.
The bill includes a new penalty of life imprisonment for promoting genocide, and sentences of up to five years in prison for other hate propaganda offences. The bill would also bring in a “peace bond” to deter people feared to be planning to carry out hate crimes and hate propaganda offences, with penalties such as house arrest.
Bill C-63 also creates a new hate-crime offence with a penalty of life imprisonment in the most egregious cases.
The government has also faced criticism for using Bill C-63 to reinstate Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act on hate speech and discrimination, which was removed in 2013 by prime minister Stephen Harper.
Cases under the Canadian Human Rights Act do not have the same standard of proof as in a court of law. Civil liberties groups and lawyers have raised fears that the move could be used to stifle freedom of expression.
Rachael Thomas, Conservative heritage critic, said the bill “has received significant criticism from concerned Canadians and raised alarm amongst legal experts and civil rights advocates.”
“This broad opposition to Trudeau’s omnibus censorship bill has only grown since it was first tabled,” she added in a statement.
Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, director of the fundamental freedoms program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, renewed her call on the government on Thursday to split the bill in two. She said new Criminal Code measures, and those under the Human Rights Act, raised serious questions, and needed to be set aside from other parts of the bill and scrutinized separately.
But Chantalle Aubertin, spokesperson for the Justice Minister, said, “C-63 is a package.”
“While it may have four parts, it is deliberately designed to address the full range of challenges we face in addressing online harms. That includes the hate that we see both online and in the real world because, in many respects, they are inseparable.”
She said that the government is open to amendments that strengthen the bill, adding she hoped it would pass “expeditiously.”
There is broad support in the House of Commons for measures in the bill to make online platforms swiftly take down child sexual abuse material, as well as content that bullies or sexually victimizes children or induces a child to self harm.
The NDP has said in the past that it supports the bill, but it has also signalled it wants improvements in return for their backing, including measures to make Big Tech platforms take down online hate more swiftly.
Peter Julian, the NDP critic on the bill, earlier told The Globe that the party also wants measures in the bill to make Big Tech platforms’ algorithms more transparent. Some big platforms have been criticized, including by the Anti-Defamation League, for allegedly amplifying online hate through their algorithms.
The Bloc Québécois is also seeking changes to the bill, including adding a clause to ensure that people viewing pornography online are over the age of 18, with compulsory age-verification checks. Rhéal Fortin, the Bloc’s justice critic, has called on the government to also amend the bill to stop religion being used as a defence for hate speech.