A surprise announcement from the Liberal government. They are going to split their censorship bill, C-63, into two parts. Is it a substantial backing down of the Liberals, or is it a trick? I'll give you my point of view.
00:02:13.580The Trudeau liberals have blinked on their censorship law, Bill C-63.
00:02:18.220Now, they haven't canceled it, but they've decided to split it into two parts.
00:02:22.800They're proceeding quickly on the first part, which includes things like banning revenge porn and child pornography.
00:02:29.000By the way, revenge porn was already banned by Stephen Harper 10 years ago, and of course, child pornography was banned decades ago.
00:02:36.440Those were obviously added to the censorship bill as a distraction from the real purpose, stopping political criticism of the government.
00:02:43.780But they say they're now going to split off the censorship provisions and go slower on those and faster on the pornography part, which is a win for freedom of speech and a win for the 75,267 Canadians who signed our petition at StopTheCensorship.ca.
00:03:03.900Today, one of our largest petitions ever.
00:03:06.040But as you can see in this video clip here, the liberals still say they are committed to bringing in those censorship provisions.
00:03:13.240So this could be a trick to make us lower our guard.
00:03:27.640So I'm here to talk about Bill C-63, the online harms bill.
00:03:31.620And what I'm saying to you and to Canadians is that we as a government are making the determination to divide this bill into two parts.
00:03:40.600The first part of the bill will deal with the parts that target children and combating child sex predators and issues that relate to revenge porn.
00:03:50.640That is parts one and parts four of the bill.
00:03:52.940Parts one deals with the Digital Safety Commission.
00:03:55.860Part four deals with how you prosecute child sex predators under new tools under the Mandatory Reporting Act.
00:04:03.480Part two of the bill will be the Criminal Code Amendments and the Canadian Human Rights Act Amendments that deal with the important combat against hatred.
00:04:12.740These bills will proceed on different tracks.
00:04:15.620We are putting our emphasis and prioritization and our time and efforts on the first portion of the bill, which deals with child sex predators.
00:04:22.800Yeah, if you heard him, he says he's going to go faster on the pornography provisions, but he still will go on the censorship provisions.
00:04:30.560Now, I have personally heard C-63 referred to by several journalists as the kill rebel bill.
00:04:37.860Of course it is, because we're one of the few news outlets in Canada that does not take money from Trudeau.
00:04:43.800So we're one of the few news outlets in Canada that cannot be controlled by Trudeau.
00:04:48.460If Trudeau can't use the carrot with us, he'll use the stick with us.
00:12:51.740But as you know, there's a new sheriff in town and the Democracy Fund, a registered CRA charity that we are happy to give publicity to and crowdfund for.
00:13:02.800Well, they've done a major paper on C-63.
00:13:06.780And joining me now to talk about the latest news is our friend from the Democracy Fund, Mark Joseph, Senior Litigation Counsel.
00:13:50.200So I'm here to talk about Bill C-63, the online harms bill.
00:13:54.080And what I'm saying to you and to Canadians is that we as a government are making the determination to divide this bill into two parts.
00:14:02.760The first part of the bill will deal with the parts that target children and combating child sex predators and issues that relate to revenge porn.
00:14:12.980That is parts one and parts four of the bill.
00:14:15.480Parts one deals with the Digital Safety Commission.
00:14:18.220Part four deals with how you prosecute child sex predators under new tools under the Mandatory Reporting Act.
00:14:25.440Part two of the bill will be the Criminal Code Amendments and the Canadian Human Rights Act Amendments that deal with the important combat against hatred.
00:14:35.100These bills will proceed on different tracks.
00:14:37.980We are putting our emphasis and prioritization and our time and efforts on the first portion of the bill, which deals with child sex predators.
00:14:45.340So he's saying that he's emphasizing and prioritizing and resourcing the pornography aspects here.
00:14:52.520And frankly, I read them and many of them, like I said, appear to be in law already.
00:14:57.060Stephen Hopper banned revenge porn a decade ago.
00:15:00.920I don't really think that's what this bill was about.
00:15:03.280And frankly, I don't have a lot of objections to that part of the bill.
00:15:07.820He's a little bit unclear what he's going to do with the censorship provisions.
00:15:19.980Well, I mean, it's good that he's recognized, as most civil libertarians do, that this bill always needed to be split.
00:15:29.440Most civil libertarian groups, particularly TDF, had no problem with the child protection provisions under the bill.
00:15:36.440But the problem is it's a Trojan horse because he's a bit cagey.
00:15:41.000Part one includes seven types of harms, and four of those deal with child protection, non-consensual disclosure, intimate individuals, not problematic.
00:15:49.480But three involve incitement to violence, incitement to violent extremism and terrorism, and content that foments harm, foments hatred, rather.
00:16:04.120So maybe I'm wrong then when I say he split off the hate speech stuff.
00:16:10.300You're saying it's actually going to continue on.
00:16:13.420Like I said, he's being very cagey about it because those types of harms, the seven types, are in part one, the definition section.
00:16:21.060So unless he's saying, in some reporting, I see that he's still proceeding with the harm that deals with hatred.
00:16:32.340And that's so overbroad that it's going to capture a lot of online content, and there's no exemption for reporting or journalism, I might add.
00:16:41.160So if you were doing an interview with someone who was saying some very harmful things, as a journalist, you want to report that, you might be caught under that type of harm that's in part one that he says he's proceeding forward with.
00:16:57.000Well, then I may have already been tricked by him because I thought, okay, we've got a bit of a reprieve.
00:17:02.100I'm guessing the Human Rights Commission stuff, that's part of the second track.
00:17:10.280One of the things I have talked about before, and it's in the bill, is you can go to a court to have a judge give sort of a preemptive restraining order against someone who you think is going to engage in a hate incident.
00:17:25.600You could even get them under house arrest.
00:18:02.000And I don't mean to put you on the spot.
00:18:03.560We're both reacting to this, and there's not a lot of meat here.
00:18:06.580He just, you know, it was really a one-minute statement.
00:18:09.880So when you say fomenting hate, and again, hate is a human emotion, to foment hate.
00:18:14.760If you could stop hate by passing a bill, I always say we would just pass the Love Each Other Act of 2024, and we would be, you just can't compel people to be happy.
00:18:24.880People have feelings of hate when they have a grievance that they feel is unmet and unsatisfied.
00:18:33.300And there's two ways to deal with a grievance.
00:19:25.540The Supreme Court, in a case called Watcott, tried to move away from what they thought was a subjective problem in the definition of hatred.
00:19:33.620And they said, well, we have to look at the effect that that hatred will have on possible discrimination against the targeted group.
00:19:44.280But that's a sociological analysis that relies on looking at the dynamic of how and why people discriminate.
00:19:54.320So it's not just a unitary causal analysis that you can do.
00:19:59.580I heard some hate speech, so I'm going to go discriminate against this group.
00:20:03.280It pushes the problem back a little bit, I think, but it doesn't get rid of it.
00:20:07.920You know, there is a concept of getting paid for pain and suffering if you're in a car accident, for example.
00:20:23.400There is some sort of scientific test.
00:20:25.340And over the years, you know, the amount you get for this injury or that injury is actually fairly settled law now.
00:20:33.920I think the pure subjectivity of this is a danger.
00:20:38.460And the fact that, obviously, it's like Lavrenti Beria, the Russian secret police chief, who said, show me the man, I'll find you the crime.
00:20:48.920Really, we're all guilty of causing a hard feeling if you look long enough.
00:20:54.860It's just a matter of who gets prosecuted.
00:20:57.280And if the liberals are in power, it'll be the enemy of the liberals.
00:21:00.880I hope that conservatives wouldn't support this bill.
00:21:26.820I mean, I look at the news, obviously, to see if if there's been any comments by the conservatives.
00:21:33.120You would think because they have a more conservative approach, the things they they're for small government, that they would not grant a government such a huge remit to govern speech.
00:21:43.840Because the bill, as it's written, basically allows for full spectrums online surveillance.
00:21:50.740And it unleashes an army of bureaucrats and and citizen informers to report speech to on mass to this Digital Safety Commission.
00:23:57.880And I think I've mentioned this on the show before.
00:23:59.980Way back when Stephen Harper was prime minister, I had been an activist for removing the hate speech provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act because I had been hit with that when I was a publisher.
00:24:10.760I was hit under the Alberta version of that law.
00:24:13.260So Harper, when he was PM, called me into his office.
00:24:17.260He was worried that if he were to abolish the hate speech provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act, frankly, his worry was what would the Jewish community say?
00:24:25.700Because it perversely, it was the Jewish community who had lobbied for that.
00:24:31.580And I say it's perversely because now if you criticize radical Islam, you get hit with the hate speech charge.
00:24:38.420So be careful of what you wish for in terms of censorship laws, because what you put in there today to get your enemies can be used against you in the future.
00:24:47.380So I did my best to convince Prime Minister Harper that the only people who liked the censorship law were maybe some lawyers or some pundits, that regular members of the Jewish community were not into censorship.
00:25:02.800And he sort of took a leap of faith, and the government supported that bill.
00:25:07.600It was a private member's bill that the government got behind.
00:25:10.140They repealed that section, and not a single person lamented its loss.
00:25:15.180Like, there was no outrage by people saying, hey, bring back the censorship law.
00:25:19.520It was just the grievance industry that lost one tool.
00:25:23.500So I would hope that the conservatives show some cultural courage, like Stephen Harper did.
00:25:28.900It was amazing to me that he was so nervous about it, but he did the right thing.
00:25:32.280Hey, listen, I want to, while I've got you here, I want to talk to you about one other thing.
00:25:37.540And to be honest, we don't have a lot to go on.
00:25:39.860It was just that sort of blurting out there by a refrain.
00:25:42.860But I want to talk to you about the case of the Amish.
00:25:46.720We've done some stories about the Amish community that got hit with those huge fines because they didn't download the ArriveCat app on their smartphone.
00:25:55.220These are people who do not use modern technology, so that was an impossible feat for them to accomplish.
00:26:04.820So we have some good news and bad news.
00:26:06.500So the good news is we've had some success in getting some of the tickets reopened.
00:26:11.360Some of those tickets have liens pertaining to them.
00:26:14.780But we just found out, I think, last week that the Welland Court denied a reopening application for four Amish individuals.
00:26:23.140There are liens involved in pertaining to some of those tickets.
00:26:26.480The reasons given varied, but it seemed to be the age of the tickets that were a problem for the court and that the Amish, the court suggested, had to take steps to apprise themselves of various court dates.
00:26:46.720Now, we have some problems with that interpretation.
00:26:50.000We think there are grounds to appeal that denial.
00:26:53.220And so subject to instructions from our clients, we're going to look hard at that.
00:27:37.480Children, obviously, themselves, but other people who may not be in a certain state.
00:27:41.460And I'm not saying that Amish people are mentally limited.
00:27:44.840I'm just saying culturally, they do not engage with smartphone apps.
00:27:49.380And I don't know what kind of notice of a trial they received, but I think that the law, if you want to prosecute the Amish very, very bravely picking on the Amish, you should have to go the extra amount to make sure the Amish know what's happening.
00:30:30.260I don't know how extensive their records are, but people – more Amish clients keep coming in as we go along.
00:30:35.700You know, and you've just got to imagine how hard that is because in the age of social media, a tweet can go viral, and a lot of people can see it, and they can all connect together.
00:30:54.280Mouth the ear, or handwritten letters, or every Sunday when they get together at church.
00:31:02.760So it takes a while – and, of course, to contact us, there's a friendly neighbor named Grant who is not Amish, and he helps set things up.
00:31:13.820It's very difficult logistically to do journalism about the Amish or to do lawyering for the Amish because they're just not built for the modern world.
00:31:23.040And I really think that it's an important project because these folks have slipped through the cracks, and it drives me nuts that the government of Ontario – I think it's the government of Ontario or would it be the federal government?
00:31:38.360I think it's the provincial government that's handling these tickets.
00:31:44.000It bugs me that not a single bureaucrat or lawyer over the years said, guys, is this the right thing to do to prosecute the Amish because they didn't download an app on their phone?
00:31:55.640Like, not a single person had enough humanity to say, you know, let's use some discretion here.
00:32:01.760We can bend the rules because this is – like, no.