Long-awaited online harms bill proposes higher sentences for spreading hate online

The Liberal government is proposing heavier sentences, new regulatory bodies and changes to a number of laws in new legislation to tackle online abuse.

The Online Harms Act, tabled Monday, proposes to police seven categories of harmful content online. Those categories include content used to bully a child and content that encourages a child to harm themselves.

They also include hate speech, content that incites violence or terrorism, content that sexualizes children or victims of sexual violence, and sexual content that is posted without consent.

“We cannot tolerate anarchy on the internet,” Justice Minister Arif Virani told a press conference Monday.

“The safety, the mental health and even the lives of our kids and our most vulnerable are at stake.”

The act would amend the Criminal Code to increase sentences for spreading hate online. It would boost the maximum sentence for advocating genocide from five years to life imprisonment.

The legislation also would make it a separate offence to carry out a crime motivated by hate.

The Canadian Human Rights Act would be amended to allow complaints about online hate speech to be filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The legislation would see the government establish a five-member digital safety commission to enforce the new rules. The commission would be empowered to order the removal of online content that sexualizes children or victims of sexual violence, and sexual content that is posted without consent.

The government is proposing to establish a digital safety ombudsperson who would offer support to victims and guidance to social media companies.

The government is also looking to amend a current law that makes it mandatory for internet services to report instances of child sex abuse images online.

It says it wants to ensure these rules apply to social-media platforms and proposes to “create authority to centralize mandatory reporting” of such offences “through a designated law enforcement body.”

Virani insisted that private message services, such as email, won’t be covered by the legislation.

“We’re doing this now in a very measured and appropriate manner that addresses the harms as we see them, but ensures that Canadians’ private communications will be exempt,” he said.

The legislation would impose new responsibilities on online platforms. Companies would be expected to assess, minimize and report risks to users, and provide tools to allow users to flag harmful content.

Platforms would be expected to remove certain content — content that sexualizes children or victims of sexual violence, and sexual content that is posted without consent — within 24 hours of a complaint being filed.

Online platforms covered by the bill include social media sites, live-streaming platforms and “user-uploaded adult content,” says the bill.

Companies that don’t follow the new regulations could face fines of up to $10 million or six per cent of their global revenues.

Meta — the parent company for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram — indicated it plans to work with the government.

“We support the federal government’s goal of helping young people have safe, positive experiences online and have spent more than a decade developing industry-leading tools and policies to protect them. We look forward to collaborating with lawmakers and industry peers on our long-standing priority to keep Canadians safe,” the company said in a media statement.

Liberals promised legislation during 2021 campaign

The Liberals pledged during the 2021 election campaign to introduce online harms legislation within the first 100 days of being re-elected.

Instead of meeting that self-imposed deadline, the government waited until March of 2022 to announce that it had created an expert advisory group “as the next step in developing legislation to address harmful online content.”

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh indicated that his party would support the bill. But he criticized the Liberals for not acting sooner.

“Their inaction has meant that kids were harmed. That kids actually were exploited online because they failed to act,” he said.

Virani defended the amount of time the government took to bring the bill forward.

“We did work on it for a long time because we had to get it right,” he said.