Carney government abandons Trudeau

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is abandoning efforts by his predecessor to reintroduce into the Canadian Human Rights Act the ability to bring forward complaints of online hate speech.

The controversial provision, known as section 13, was repealed under the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper, with efforts to revive it advanced by former prime minister Justin Trudeau as part of his government’s online harms agenda, which never passed.

The last attempt was under Bill C-63 which, besides proposing to create a new regulator for social media platforms, sought to amend federal human rights legislation to target “the communication of hate speech,” including online, allowing individuals to file complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

It proposed allowing for complaints to be brought forward without having to disclose the identity of the complainant to the individual or group whose speech was in question. Opposition Conservatives decried the change as censorship and warned that its language was overly broad and risked flooding the human rights commissions with complaints, including those that could be frivolous.

Asked whether the federal government intended to reintroduce that section into Canadian Human Rights Act, Jeremy Bellefeuille, a spokesman for Justice Minister Sean Fraser, said in a statement on Wednesday, “no.”

Fraser, who is responsible for the human rights legislation, told the parliamentary justice committee while testifying earlier this week that when it comes to the government’s upcoming online harms bill, Parliamentarians should not expect “a simple copy and paste job of the previous legislation.”

He said Canadian Heritage Minister Marc Miller, who has been tasked with responsibility for the file, was looking at the issue with a fresh set of eyes.

The government has not set a timeline on bringing forward a new online safety bill, but Miller has said it was “very seriously” considering instituting a ban on social media for minors and had convened a roundtable of digital safety and other experts to explore the idea of including AI chatbots.

Advocates across civil society, including children’s’ health organizations, have underscored the need for the government to present a new bill, arguing children in Canada were less protected than those in countries like the United Kingdom and Australia that have online regulators meant to address the spread of harmful content.

Opposition Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, whose party has been the most vocal critic in Parliament on the Liberals’ digital and privacy agenda, accusing the government of advancing censorship tactics, has said his caucus was exploring the idea of social media ban for minors, saying he did not yet have a position.

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