Tuesday, June 3, 2025
No Result
View All Result
  • Media
Support Us
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
        • Provincial COVID Misery Index
        • Beyond Lockdown
        • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
        • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
        • Provincial COVID Misery Index
        • Beyond Lockdown
        • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
        • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video
No Result
View All Result
Macdonald-Laurier Institute

Trudeau’s attempt to institutionalize debatable ideas of harm: Christopher Dummitt in the National Post

The left has worked for years to expand the definition of what constitutes harm. Bill C-63 will codify these ideas into law.

March 4, 2024
in Domestic Policy, Latest News, Columns, In the Media, Media and Telecoms, Defending The Marketplace of Ideas, Christopher Dummitt
Reading Time: 3 mins read
A A
Trudeau should know that Hamas is to blame: Johanna Blom for Inside Policy

This article originally appeared in the National Post.

By Christopher Dummitt, March 4, 2024

Remember the people who decided it was a good idea to ban tobogganing? Now they are coming for your internet.

That, sadly, is a realistic assessment of the Trudeau government’s new so-called online harms act. I say “so-called” because anyone who thinks the definition of harm is transparent and uncontroversial in 2024 hasn’t been online since the social media site was called “The Facebook.”

The Trudeau government’s bill could be read as well-intentioned. It targets a number of issues that a majority of Canadians would probably agree need to be tackled: child pornography, revenge porn and incitement to violence and terrorism. There is space here for sober legislation and enforcement mechanisms to update our laws for the age of social media and Pornhub.

But despite what the majority of the government’s rhetoric wants you to believe, that’s not all the bill does. Snuck in alongside these laudable aims are illiberal measures meant to fight highly contestable partisan culture wars.

The Liberals (and the New Democrats, who will support the bill) want to censor or make it illegal to state a whole host of opinions with which they disagree. And this legislation will let them do it — all the while pretending it’s simply about combating “hate” and “harm.”

The bill would force online providers to implement “measures that are adequate to mitigate the risk that users will be exposed to harmful content.” And what is harmful content? Well, there’s the rub. It’s going to be up to the online providers, under the steely gaze of a new digital safety commissioner, to decide what to ban.

If they get it wrong, the providers face significant penalties as high as eight per cent of the company’s global revenue. Does this seem like the kind of context in which a company will adopt a liberal view of free speech?

What’s more, the bill reintroduces Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Despite the government’s claims that this is in line with current hate speech laws, this is absolutely not the case.

Canada’s current hate speech laws have been interpreted very narrowly (so far) by the courts, with an emphasis on speech that is intentionally hateful, tied to likely violence or likely to lead to a breach of the peace.

The new hate speech provisions in the Canadian Human Rights Act won’t be subject to the same restraint, because unlike in the Criminal Code, truth will not be offered as a defence and because human rights law has a much lower standard of proof. It also empowers social media companies to make decisions about what content will be censored, unencumbered by the legal framework used in courts of law.

This might not matter if we agreed on what counted as hate. But we don’t.

Since the 1980s, a whole host of terms associated with harm and violence have wildly grown in scope. This is what psychologists call “concept creep.”

Concepts such as “trauma,” “abuse,” “violence” and “genocide” are now routinely used by some (but not all) to describe actions that would never have been considered harmful before. What’s more, the whole process is highly politicized, with many on the left working hard to expand notions of what counts as harmful.

Just think of some of the things that progressives have defined as hate speech or harmful over the last few years: saying biological sex is real could be considered hateful; the same is true for suggesting that hiring should be based on merit and not race. Do you think Canada is less racist than the United States? Well, you might be a white supremacist.

Do we really want to put people who think like this in charge of regulating “harm” and “hate” on the internet?

Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed the ways in which questionable ideas get written into the system so that they seem normal. This is exactly what this bill hopes to do — systematically institutionalize debatable ideas of harm.

Most of us are familiar with the overly protective school principal who thinks that picking up snow in the schoolyard is a hazard, and who requires permission forms before it’s safe for our kids to walk down the sidewalk. Now imagine giving that school principal control over the internet. That’s what the Liberals are promising. And we’re meant to think it will all be OK.

What has ever gone wrong when well-intentioned busybodies arms themselves to keep us “safe” from “harm”?

Christopher Dummitt is a historian of Canadian culture and politics at Trent University and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Source: National Post
Previous Post

Mulroney and multilateralism, a proud Canadian tradition in global affairs: Tom Keating and Robert W. Murray for Inside Policy

Next Post

Online Harms Act Is Using Child Safety as a Front to Assault Canadians’ Freedoms: Peter Menzies in the Epoch Times

Related Posts

Public service reform is only possible if the Prime Minister champions the project: Donald Savoie in the Globe and Mail
Intergovernmental Affairs

Public service reform is only possible if the Prime Minister champions the project: Donald Savoie in the Globe and Mail

June 2, 2025
Universities must intensify efforts to eradicate campus antisemitism: Sergio R. Karas for Inside Policy
The Promised Land

Universities must intensify efforts to eradicate campus antisemitism: Sergio R. Karas for Inside Policy

June 2, 2025
Systemic discrimination is legal in Canada: Christopher Dummitt in the National Post
Political Tradition

Systemic discrimination is legal in Canada: Christopher Dummitt in the National Post

June 2, 2025
Next Post
Online Harms Act Is Using Child Safety as a Front to Assault Canadians’ Freedoms: Peter Menzies in the Epoch Times

Online Harms Act Is Using Child Safety as a Front to Assault Canadians’ Freedoms: Peter Menzies in the Epoch Times

Newsletter Signup

  Thank you for Signing Up
  Please correct the marked field(s) below.
Email Address  *
1,true,6,Contact Email,2
First Name *
1,true,1,First Name,2
Last Name *
1,true,1,Last Name,2
*
*Required Fields

Follow us on

Macdonald-Laurier Institute

323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7Z2 Canada

613.482.8327

info@macdonaldlaurier.ca
MLI directory

Support Us

Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.

Support Us

  • Inside Policy Magazine
  • Annual Reports
  • Jobs
  • Privacy Policy

© 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy
      • Economic Policy
      • Justice
      • Rights and Freedoms
      • Assisted Suicide (MAID)
      • Health Care
      • COVID-19
      • Gender Identity
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • AI, Technology and Innovation
      • Media and Telecoms
      • Housing
      • Immigration
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Competition Policy
    • Energy Policy
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy
      • Israel-Hamas War
      • Ukraine
      • Taiwan
      • China
      • Europe and Russia
      • Indo-Pacific
      • Middle East and North Africa
      • North America
      • Foreign Interference
      • National Defence
      • National Security
      • Foreign Affairs
    • Indigenous Affairs
  • Projects
    • CNAPS (Center for North American Prosperity and Security)
    • The Promised Land
    • Voices that Inspire: The Macdonald-Laurier Vancouver Speaker Series
    • Dragon at the Door
    • Canada on top of the world
    • Justice Report Card
    • The Great Energy Crisis
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • Double Trouble
    • Digital Policy & Connectivity
    • Managing Indigenous Prosperity
    • Defending The Marketplace of Ideas
    • Reforming the University
    • Past Projects
      • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
      • The Transatlantic Program
      • COVID Misery Index
      • Speak for Ourselves
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
      • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
      • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
      • Straight Talk
      • Labour Market Report
      • Leading Economic Indicator
      • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Inside Policy
  • Libraries
    • Columns
    • Commentary
    • Papers
    • Books
    • Video

© 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

Lightbox image placeholder

Previous Slide

Next Slide

Share

Facebook ShareTwitter ShareLinkedin SharePinterest ShareEmail Share

TwitterTwitter
Hide Tweet (admin)

Add this ID to the plugin's Hide Specific Tweets setting: