Conservatives to introduce new online safety bill

The Conservative party is taking a swing at the issue of online safety, with plans to propose a new piece of legislation when the House resumes next week. As parliamentarians prepare for their return to the Hill, Tory MP Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill) announced Thursday her party intends to "do what the Liberals have not" and table legislation aimed at protecting Canadians online "while preserving their civil liberties." According to Rempel Garner, the bill would update existing laws around criminal harassment and non-consensual sharing of intimate images, including AI deepfakes. It would also impose a duty of care for online platforms to protect minors, or risk "steep fines" and lawsuits from individuals. The bill would require online platforms to "provide parents with safeguards, controls, and transparency to prevent harm to their kids," as well as "implement privacy-preserving and trustworthy age verification methods ... to restrict access to any content that is inappropriate for minors." Through existing definitions and legal precedent for what counts as criminal harassment — "applying specifically to those who repeatedly send unwanted harassing content that causes somebody to reasonably fear for their safety or well being" — the Conservative’s bill would aim to "address the ease, and particularly the anonymity, of how it happens online." Rempel Garner highlighted measures that would give victims of harassment more opportunity for recourse, including requesting a judge to order social media platforms to disclose the identity of an alleged abuser to authorities. Although certain measures expected to be in the bill — particularly those regarding the protection of children — bear some similarities to those laid out in the online harms act, introduced by the government in February, Rempel Garner insisted that her bill is "the right approach." "As opposed to Bill C-63, which pushes setting specific rules for minors’ use of social media platforms and other online operators far into the future and behind closed doors through an opaque regulatory process, our new Conservative legislation will directly legislate a duty of care for minors that online operators like social media platforms must adhere to," said the MP. Rempel Garner attacked the Liberals' legislation, criticizing the proposed online harms act for leaving its "vague" provisions to be overseen by an "expensive kangaroo court." She took particular aim at Bill C-63's measures against online hate speech, arguing that they are unnecessary and that existing laws against it need to be enforced. "The Liberals have presented Canadians with a false dichotomy, that they should have to water down their civil liberties to be protected online," she said. "It doesn't have to be this way." The Conservatives are calling on the Liberals to scrap their online harms act, which is still undergoing its second reading in the House, and pursue this newly proposed legislation instead. Rempel Garner did not respond to The Wire Report's request for comment but has previously argued that the government’s online harms bill is beyond fixing with amendments. During a second reading debate of the online harms act back in June, she described the bill as "deeply flawed," "irremediable," and "not fixable." By legislating age verification, the new bill also steps on the toes of Bill S-210, an act to restrict young persons’ online access to sexually explicit material. That piece of legislation, written by Independent Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, would mandate online services to prevent sexually explicit material from being made available to minors by implementing age verification requirements, or face hefty fines and website blocking. Bill S-210 saw one day of study by the House public safety committee before it was deemed reported without amendment, as Parliament entered its final days of sitting in the summer. With sponsorship from Karen Vecchio (Elgin—Middlesex—London), another Conservative MP, the bill now waits to be called for its third and final reading. Vecchio did not respond to The Wire Report’s request for comment on the potential clash between both bills. - Reporting by Phalen Tynes-MacDonald at pcreed@thewirereport.ca

Conservatives to introduce new online safety bill

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By Phalen Tynes-MacDonald
| September 12, 2024

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By Phalen Tynes-MacDonald
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