Question Period Note: Online Harm

Online harms are increasing in complexity and scale, with significant concerns for public safety, law enforcement and societal cohesion.

• Our Government remains committed to taking action against harmful content on social media platforms, including hate speech, terrorist content, and online child sexual exploitation. These types of harmful content can undermine public safety, Canada’s national security, and social cohesion.

• We are working to introduce legislation and associated regulations to reduce the spread of illegal and harmful content, and to promote a safer and more inclusive online environment.

• Ensuring our security and law enforcement agencies are equipped to combat illegal and national security threat activity online is one of our foremost priorities.

• Our work in this area is consistent with the Government’s promise to keep Canadians safe online and align with our international commitments under the Christchurch Call to Action.

• Our approach to addressing harmful content and activity online will be balanced and targeted, and recognize the importance of freedom of expression for all Canadians.

The Government of Canada Commitments to Combat Online Harms

In 2021, an electoral commitment was to: “ Introduce legislation within its first 100 days to combat serious forms of harmful online content, specifically hate speech, terrorist content, content that incites violence, child sexual abuse material and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. This would make sure that social media platforms and other online services are held accountable for the content that they host. Our legislation will recognize the importance of freedom of expression for all Canadians and will take a balanced and targeted approach to tackle extreme and harmful speech.”

This commitment is related to the Government of Canada’s ongoing efforts to fulfill the Minister of Canadian Heritage’s 2019 mandate letter directive to: “Create new regulations for social media platforms, starting with a requirement that all platforms remove illegal content, including hate speech, within 24 hours or face significant penalties. This should include other online harms such as radicalization, incitement to violence, exploitation of children, or creation or distribution of terrorist propaganda.”

In their 2021 supplementary mandate letters, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the Minister of Canadian Heritage and the Minister of Justice were similarly instructed to work with each other to: “ …take action on combatting hate groups and online hate and harassment, ideologically motivated violent extremism, and terrorist organizations, including to ensure the RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service are equipped to combat this growing threat. You will be supported in this work by the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth, the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Rural Economic Development and the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry.”

Online Harms Regulatory and Legislative Framework

Since 2019, the Department of Canadian Heritage (PCH), in conjunction with other Government departments and agencies, has been leading efforts to develop a new statutory framework for social media platforms. Public Safety Canada and Portfolio agencies – particularly the RCMP and CSIS – are directly implicated and continue to be engaged in the ongoing development of this new framework. Given its role in supporting prevention of online forms of radicalization to violence and interaction with digital industry, the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence (Canada Centre) at Public Safety has played a central role to inform the development of the framework, as well as coordinate input from Public Safety and the Portfolio .

The draft framework targets five categories of online “harmful content” on social media platforms’ public-facing services: (1) hate speech, (2) terrorist content, (3) content that incites violence, (4) child sexual exploitation content, and (5) the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. The proposed framework sets out a requirement for platforms to take proactive, reasonable measures to make harmful content inaccessible in Canada, while also compelling removal of violating content within 24 hours of such content being flagged to the platform’s moderators. The proposal also includes a new Digital Safety Commission to support three bodies that would operationalize the new regime: the Digital Safety Commissioner; the Digital Recourse Council; and the Advisory Board.

Rapid content removal requirements would affect the ability of law enforcement and CSIS to gather evidence in identifying public safety threats and preventing violence. Removal of content may also push threat actors beyond the visibility of law enforcement and CSIS, to encrypted websites and platforms with more extremist and unmoderated harmful content.

In July 2021, the Government launched a public consultation on this proposed framework, which closed on September 25, 2021. Stakeholders expressed concerns, including: while supportive of action against online harms, but critical of approach, including limited opportunity to inform its development; potential for over-censorship, negative privacy effects, and potential impact on marginalized communities from rapid content removal; vagueness of the requirements on industry; perception that mandatory reporting to law enforcement would make social media platforms “surveillance” tools of the state; potential for over/biased reporting of harmful – but not illegal – content; and, views that the approach departs from leading models in likeminded countries.

Christchurch Call to Action

The Government of Canada is a signatory to the Christchurch Call to Eliminate Terrorist & Violent Extremist Content Online (Christchurch Call to Action). The Call is a commitment by Governments and digital industry to coordinate and collaborate in efforts to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online. As a signatory, Canada committed to considering the establishment of regulatory or policy measures to prevent the use of online services to disseminate terrorist and violent extremist content consistent with a free, open and secure internet and international human rights law. Therefore, the development of a regulatory and legislative framework to address online harms meets this commitment under the Christchurch Call to Action.

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