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The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has warned that the Trudeau government’s Online Harms bill would ’empower judges to preemptively punish Canadians for speech crimes somebody ‘fears’ they may commit.’
(LifeSiteNews) –– One of Canada’s foremost constitutional rights groups, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, has warned that the federal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s proposed “Online Harms Act” is a serious threat to freedom of “expression” and could lead to “preemptive punishment for crimes not committed.”
“The Online Harms Act will harm freedom of expression in Canada if it is passed into law. Many Canadians will self-censor to avoid being prosecuted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission,” said the JCCF in a press release on Thursday.
“Canadians who do not self-censor, by practicing courage and by continuing to exercise their Charter-protected freedom of expression, will still see their online expression removed from the internet by the operators of social media websites and platforms. These operators will seek to avoid running afoul of Mr. Trudeau’s new regulations. Everyone will live in fear of the Digital Safety Commission.”
Bill C-63, or the Online Harms Act, was introduced by Justice Minister Arif Virani in the House of Commons Monday and passed its first reading.
The bill calls for the creation of a Digital Safety Commission, a digital safety ombudsperson, and the Digital Safety Office.
Earlier in the week, Marty Moore, who serves as the litigation director for the JCCF-funded Charter Advocates Canada, told LifeSiteNews that Bill C-63 will allow a new digital safety commission to conduct “secret commission hearings” against those found to have violated the new law, raising “serious concerns for the freedom of expression” of Canadians online.
“The use of the term ‘safety’ is misleading, when the government through Bill C-63 is clearly seeking to censor expression simply based on its content, and not on its actual effect,” he told LifeSiteNews.
The ombudsperson and other offices will be charged with dealing with public complaints regarding online content as well as put forth a regulatory function in a five-person panel “appointed by the government.” This panel will monitor internet platform behaviors to hold people “accountable.”
Bill C-63 will modify existing laws, amending the Criminal Code as well as the Canadian Human Rights Act, in what the Liberals under Trudeau claim will target certain cases of internet content removal, notably those involving child sexual abuse and pornography.