Exposing the Liberal plan to censor the internet
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169.6124
Summary
Online hate is a growing concern in Canada and there is no longer a legal protection for online hate speech under the Canadian Human Rights Act. In order to deal with this growing problem, the government needs to reinstate Section 13, which was struck down under the previous Conservative government.
Transcript
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After two months of meeting and testimony from nearly five dozen witnesses, the House of Commons
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Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights has tabled its report in the House of Commons
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on how to deal with the problem of online hate. Now the very premise of this study was that online
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hate is a growing concern and that there's a void in law in Canada whereas once government had the
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ability to prosecute online hate and now it no longer does. Among the report's nine recommendations
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are some that should make any freedom-loving Canadian concerned. Specifically number seven
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which says the report calls on the Government of Canada to develop a working group comprised of
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relevant stakeholders to establish a civil remedy for those who assert that their human rights have
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been violated under the Canadian Human Rights Act irrespective of whether that violation happens
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online in person or in traditional print format. This remedy could take the form of reinstating the
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former Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act or implementing a provision analogous to the
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previous Section 13 within the Canadian Human Rights Act which accounts for the prevalence of
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hatred on social media. The Section 13 reference there has been dead for about six years. It was killed
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off under the previous Conservative government and I hope that it would be dead and buried forever.
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It's a section of the Canadian Human Rights Act that allowed the Canadian Human Rights Commission
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to prosecute supposed online hate speech but not speech that meets the high threshold set out in the
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criminal code. Speech that was at a much lower threshold one that the Canadian Human Rights Commission
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would decide on its own and if you were defending yourself against a complaint by the Canadian Human
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Rights Commission you didn't have the right to legal representation, you had to cover all your costs,
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you didn't have the right to the presumption of innocence, you didn't have the ability to make truth
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a defense and the complainant who didn't even have to be impacted directly by what you said
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would have all the resources of the federal government at their disposal. Section 13 for over three
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decades had a 100% conviction rate. 100% conviction rate for a provision that encompassed the very design
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of censorship. That's what it did. In the later years of Section 13 it was used to prosecute bloggers
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except the Canadian Human Rights Commission was actually going on to forums and posting content that was
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itself offensive to try to bait other people into responding with something that might have been
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equally offensive so that they could prosecute. This was an absolute sham, it was the very portrait
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of injustice yet it purported to be standing up for human rights and now the liberals want to bring Section 13 back
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except it's not enough just to bring it back the way it was. The liberals on the Justice Committee have
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actually invested in it a desire to see even more power put into Section 13, specifically turning
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social media companies into state enforcers. Here's another recommendation from the report.
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That government establish requirements for online platforms and internet service providers
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with regards to how they monitor and address incidents of hate speech and the need to remove
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all posts that would constitute online hatred in a timely manner. This means that what the government
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wants to do is actually empower social media companies and not just empower force them to make
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determinations of what apparent hate speech is and purge it from their platform. So it's not even like
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there is an adjudication panel that's taking place, shambolic as it may be, the government wants to make big
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tech into state enforcers. Now there are a few different outcomes in this. Either government
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will be able to go to tech companies and say delete that, delete that, delete that, or what's more likely
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to happen is companies will decide we don't want to deal with the hassle of the Canadian Human Rights
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Kangaroo Court so we're going to delete content on our own preemptively. And all of a sudden it is users,
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people in Canada who want to post online, that are now dealing with state censorship enforced by
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supposedly private tech companies. That's what's at stake in this proposed supercharged version of
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Section 13. Now to make one point clear, with only a few sitting days left in the House of Commons
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calendar, it's unlikely this will turn into any proposed, let alone passed law prior to the election.
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But this does prove itself to be a precursor to something the Liberals may do if they are re-elected,
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which is to take aim at free speech under the guise of hate speech. Except this report contains
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no definition of hate speech. It says the government will have to figure that out down the road. The
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fact is we already have a definition of hate speech on the books in Canada. The Criminal Code of Canada
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is very clear on it. The Human Rights Commission can only fill a void if we want to lower the bar and
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have a sub-criminal level of hate speech, in which case, speech is no longer free in Canada.
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Unfortunately, this is a very real problem. The Chief Commissioner of the Saskatchewan Human
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Rights Commission testified before this online hate study and he said unequivocally that there is
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no unbridled right to free speech in Canada. Dean Stacey, formerly of the Canadian Human Rights
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Commission, famously said during one case that freedom of speech is an American concept,
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and something that he's not going to bother importing into Canada. The Human Rights Commission,
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and by extension the Human Rights Tribunal, ingrained in their DNA is a fundamental desire
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for censorship and a desire for speech to not be free. The Liberals want to give this body more power.
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This is why it's never been more paramount to stand up for free speech, to fight back
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against cultural political correctness before it becomes legally mandated political correctness.
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True North is doing this when the mainstream media isn't. We can't do it alone though,
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we don't get the government funding, we don't get CBC's $1.3 billion. If you can give us a few
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dollars a month by joining my Heritage Club, please do. There's a link in the description box and you get
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some goodies there as well as being able to stand up for what's right. For True North, I'm Andrew Lawton.