Bill C-63

An Act to enact the Online Harms Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act and An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service and to make consequential and related amendments to other Acts

Part 1 of this enactment enacts the Online Harms Act , whose purpose is to, among other things, promote the online safety of persons in Canada, reduce harms caused to persons in Canada as a result of harmful content online and ensure that the operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies are transparent and accountable with respect to their duties under that Act.
That Act, among other things,
(a) establishes the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, whose mandate is to administer and enforce that Act, ensure that operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies are transparent and accountable with respect to their duties under that Act and contribute to the development of standards with respect to online safety;
(b) creates the position of Digital Safety Ombudsperson of Canada, whose mandate is to provide support to users of social media services in respect of which that Act applies and advocate for the public interest in relation to online safety;
(c) establishes the Digital Safety Office of Canada, whose mandate is to support the Digital Safety Commission of Canada and the Digital Safety Ombudsperson of Canada in the fulfillment of their mandates;
(d) imposes on the operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies
(i) a duty to act responsibly in respect of the services that they operate, including by implementing measures that are adequate to mitigate the risk that users will be exposed to harmful content on the services and submitting digital safety plans to the Digital Safety Commission of Canada,
(ii) a duty to protect children in respect of the services that they operate by integrating into the services design features that are provided for by regulations,
(iii) a duty to make content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor and intimate content communicated without consent inaccessible to persons in Canada in certain circumstances, and
(iv) a duty to keep all records that are necessary to determine whether they are complying with their duties under that Act;
(e) authorizes the Digital Safety Commission of Canada to accredit certain persons that conduct research or engage in education, advocacy or awareness activities that are related to that Act for the purposes of enabling those persons to have access to inventories of electronic data and to electronic data of the operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies;
(f) provides that persons in Canada may make a complaint to the Digital Safety Commission of Canada that content on a social media service in respect of which that Act applies is content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor or intimate content communicated without consent and authorizes the Commission to make orders requiring the operators of those services to make that content inaccessible to persons in Canada;
(g) authorizes the Governor in Council to make regulations respecting the payment of charges by the operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies, for the purpose of recovering costs incurred in relation to that Act.
Part 1 also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 2 amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) create a hate crime offence of committing an offence under that Act or any other Act of Parliament that is motivated by hatred based on certain factors;
(b) create a recognizance to keep the peace relating to hate propaganda and hate crime offences;
(c) define “hatred” for the purposes of the new offence and the hate propaganda offences; and
(d) increase the maximum sentences for the hate propaganda offences.
It also makes related amendments to other Acts.
Part 3 amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to provide that it is a discriminatory practice to communicate or cause to be communicated hate speech by means of the Internet or any other means of telecommunication in a context in which the hate speech is likely to foment detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination. It authorizes the Canadian Human Rights Commission to deal with complaints alleging that discriminatory practice and authorizes the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to inquire into such complaints and order remedies.
Part 4 amends An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service to, among other things,
(a) clarify the types of Internet services covered by that Act;
(b) simplify the mandatory notification process set out in section 3 by providing that all notifications be sent to a law enforcement body designated in the regulations;
(c) require that transmission data be provided with the mandatory notice in cases where the content is manifestly child pornography;
(d) extend the period of preservation of data related to an offence;
(e) extend the limitation period for the prosecution of an offence under that Act; and
(f) add certain regulation-making powers.
Part 5 contains a coordinating amendment.

[Jamil Jivani, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have some questions for you, Professor Sérafin.

Many Canadians express great concern over Justin Trudeau's censorship agenda, and Bill C-63 is a piece of legislation that is part of that agenda. You've written about that bill for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. In particular, I'd like to ask you about one of your comments and have you just elaborate on it.

You wrote, in reference to Bill C-63:

...it is not inconceivable that remedies might be sought against other kinds of online content distributors in an effort to have them engage in proactive censorship or otherwise set general policy with little or no democratic oversight. This possibility is certainly heightened by the way in which the existing directed remedies for anti-discrimination have been used to date.

Could you elaborate on that point?

[Stéphane Sérafin, Assistant Professor, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My name is Stéphane Sérafin. I am currently an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa's faculty of law common law section, but I'm speaking here in my own personal capacity, so my views are my own and not those of my employer.

When I was first asked to speak before this committee, I found the framing somewhat odd. I was asked to contribute to a discussion, as the invitation said, “regarding the protection of freedom of expression and the means the government should have at its disposal to ensure its exercise.”

While there are always things the government can do to advance freedom of expression, most of what came to mind were instances in which government action had recently served to undermine it, sometimes significantly.

I could cite many examples, but I'll limit myself to areas within federal jurisdiction. Two come to mind here. The first relates to my own experience as a university professor, and it relates to government funding of research that increasingly prioritizes so-called equity, diversity and inclusion requirements over other concerns or to the exclusion of other concerns.

In the university context, federal funding agencies have, for some time now, created special funding categories for DEI-oriented projects, and they have increasingly, and perhaps more concerningly, mandated compliance or a commitment to DEI as a requirement of obtaining funding.

On the face of it, equity, diversity and inclusion sound neutral and incontestable, and everybody, more or less, agrees with equity in the sense of fairness. Everybody agrees more or less with the value of diversity and the value of inclusion, but beneath these labels are hidden ideological commitments to a particular understanding of what equity means, what it means to treat people fairly, what a particular understanding of diversity means and the particular types of diversity that are valued. So it goes with inclusion as well.

To the extent that these requirements are imposed in the context of funding, it's not straight up censorship, but it does incentivize research to take on particular orientations and provides a strong disincentive for research to adopt alternative orientations, including orientations that might challenge or somehow criticize the premises of the DEI commitments. That's the first area of concern.

The second is more directly pertinent to Canada's democratic culture. It relates to certain bills that are currently before Parliament, in particular, that would serve to regulate speech in a way that is not necessarily content neutral and, worse yet, may criminalize or impose sanctions on the expression of factually true statements to the extent that they are considered inconvenient for the advancement of certain political causes.

One of the two bills I have in mind here is Bill C-413, which is the private member's bill titled, tentatively, an act to amend the Criminal Code with respect to the promotion of hatred against indigenous people. Most people would oppose hate speech. There's a particular concerning aspect of this bill in that it aims to target, as hate speech, or at least it could be interpreted as such, any conduct or any public expression of views that condone, deny or downplay the effects of the Indian residential school system.

The concerning aspect here is that these words—“condones”, “denies”, “downplays” and “justifies”—are all value judgments. We are here touching on the core of political expression, the core of democratic life in this country. To the extent that we are publicly.... Anybody who might inject publicly a bit of nuance in this sense, who might suppose to raise factually true statements, could find themselves criminalized.

The last one I want to raise is the online harms act, Bill C-63, and particularly the provisions that would add jurisdiction to the Human Rights Tribunal to prosecute hate speech complaints against individuals online. This is a civil complaints process that also raises significant chilling effects, in part because here, unlike in the other bill, it's not a criminal act and it's not a criminal sanction, so it could be prosecuted at the instigation of private actors as well.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

We agree on that.

Thank you, Mr. Geist.

I'm sure I'll have another question for you about Bill C‑63, but I want to address Ms. Forest as well.

Ms. Forest, we're talking about journalism and the current climate in the world of information, in the world of traditional journalism, let's say. There was a time when the profession of journalist came with many rules, commitments, criteria of rigour and principles that framed the profession. We can see that journalism is changing enormously. There's a lot of commentary and militant journalism. What's more, the youngest journalists currently graduating from schools are much more committed and want to do more committed journalism too. So they're turning to platforms that are a little more in line with their values and commitment criteria.

Is this a risk for the journalism profession?

Are we capable of protecting traditional journalism?

You were talking earlier about CBC/Radio-Canada, which plays an essential role in this kind of news coverage.

Tell me what you think of the current trend among new journalists entering the market.

[Dr. Michael Geist]

Thanks for that. I want to preface that by making it clear that when I said legislation needs to go back to the drawing board, I was actually referring to Bill S-210, which is the age verification bill that includes the blocking I referred to and a number of other issues.

Bill C-63 needs to go to committee. In some ways, it's really two bills in one. There is the element that is the larger part, about online harms, which deals specifically with the responsibility of the Internet platforms. There is a lot that can be worked with there. I have some concerns about the enforcement mechanisms that have been established, but I think there's a lot in it.

What you are referring to, though—and I apologize and I'll be quick—is the Criminal Code provisions and in particular an attempt to create what is essentially the equivalent of a peace bond for speech in this context.

We use these kinds of things in other contexts. If we're concerned about domestic violence and it's imminent, we might get an order to ensure that it doesn't happen or to try to prevent it from taking place. This would similarly be an attempt to prevent certain kinds of potential hate from taking place. As I mentioned off the top, the Jewish community has seen an unprecedented number of shootings and targeting at synagogues and at schools. If we knew they were coming, a bond might be able to try to stop some of those kinds of activities from taking place.

I think, though—and Professor Laidlaw mentioned this before—that both the Criminal Code and the Human Rights Act provisions in the legislation run the risk of overreach. Frankly, the bill should be split. We should be focusing on the Internet stuff and leave this other stuff for a separate study.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Once again, thank you to the witnesses for being with us today.

Professor Geist, I felt a little challenged earlier when you talked about Bill C‑63. I think we'd really enjoy discussing this bill, which contains some good things, but also some atrocious elements. You talked about going back to the drawing board. I was a bit surprised. I would have expected you to say that we should rip it to shreds.

That said, from the first reading of this bill, something struck me. One section allows people to be denounced on the mere suspicion that they might intend to make hateful comments or commit hateful acts. These people would be held accountable under the law.

What do you think of the path that led to the creation of such a section in a bill? How do you think this will pass the test?

[Kathleen Mahoney]

The question is a very good one. Thank you for it. I think this is really an important area to keep in mind.

The courts were very clear that Canada has a unique way of protecting rights. We have freedom of expression, but it's not a paramount freedom. It has to be read with the others, and this is what makes Canada special.

We have section 27, which says we protect multiculturalism. That's an interpretive device. We have section 15, which has four equality guarantees: equality for and under the law, equal benefit and equal protection of the law, and we can't see freedom of expression in isolation.

That even comes up in Bill C-63, for example. There's a portion of that bill that talks about freedom of expression and says that we have to be very careful not to make unreasonable restraints on freedom of expression. It seems to me that this provision should also say we have to be very careful about protecting the equality of the people who are targeted by these hateful or very harmful expressions.

In order to maintain what the Supreme Court of Canada has taught us in a series of freedom of expression cases—that equality is as important as freedom of expression—freedom of expression cannot dominate the other rights. Otherwise, that's when you get these problems of children and women and other marginalized groups, such as indigenous peoples, suffering from their lack of access to the megaphone. They don't have the billions that are invested in media. They don't have the political sway that others do in order to express themselves. That's what's very important, it seems to me.

In my opinion, Bill C-63, although there are some laudable provisions in it, doesn't go far enough.

[Dr. Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon. My name is Michael Geist. I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where I hold the Canada research chair in Internet and e-commerce law. I appear in a personal capacity, representing only my own views.

I'd like to start by emphasizing that freedom of expression is rightly and widely recognized as foundational to robust, accountable and inclusive democracy.

That said, there's always a balance to be struck. I'm sure we would all agree that there are limits where expression is viewed as so harmful that it should be restricted or rendered unlawful. Obvious examples include child pornography, defamation and terrorism-related offences.

The difficulty generally doesn't lie with these kinds of cases. I'd like to focus on two cases that are much tougher: digital policy and the challenge of when expression chills other expression.

First I'll address digital policy.

Bill C-11, Bill C-18, Bill C-63 and Bill S-210 all intersect with expression, either directly or indirectly. The direct examples are Bill C-63 and Bill S-210. These bills, by design, have expression implications.

Bill C-63 identifies seven harms that are defined as a kind of content, but each is a form of expression. This expression can cause harm—revenge porn, inciting terror or bullying, for example. While I have some enforcement concerns, I think the bill identifies real harms and at least in part seeks to establish a balance in addressing them.

More problematic are Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act provisions that are overbroad and that may weaponize the human rights system and have a chilling effect. Bill S-210 is even more direct in limiting expression, as it literally provides for the Federal Court to order the blocking of lawful content and envisions Canadian Internet providers as doing the blocking. This is a dangerous bill that should go back to the drawing board.

I think Bill C-11 and Bill C-18 both have indirect effects on expression.

In the case of Bill C-11, supporters were far too dismissive of the implications of regulating user content, with some going so far as to deny it was in the bill, only to later issue a policy direction that confirmed its presence.

Bill C-18 not only led to the blocking of news links but also failed to recognize that linking to content is itself expression. The net effect has been to cause harm to news-related expression in Canada. We need to do better when it comes to digital policy, as we haven't always taken the protection of expression sufficiently seriously in the digital policy debate.

Second, there is expression that chills other expression. This can occur when expression includes harassment or strikes fear in some communities, invariably leading to a chill in their ability to express themselves.

My own community, the Jewish community, is a case in point. The rise in anti-Semitism, in a manner not seen in Canada in generations, has sparked safety fears and chilled expression. No group has faced and been the target of more hate crimes than the Jewish community. On campuses, this manifests itself in students and faculty concealing their identity by hiding their religion and political beliefs, or fearing to speak out in class. I'm wearing a “bring the hostages home” pin today—a form of expression. Many would be reluctant to do so on our streets and campuses.

Encampments, graffiti, vandalism, doxing, online threats, the abandonment of institutional neutrality and the exclusion of those who believe in Zionism from classes or parts of campus have become too commonplace and have had a corrosive effect on those targeted, undermining their expression rights. Universities, workplaces and other communities have long recognized the harm of expression chilling other expression. That's why we have codes designed to ensure not just physical safety but also freedom from abusive or demeaning conduct that constitutes harassment and may limit the expression of others.

In a committee focused on protecting freedom of expression, there are many things that can be done: ensuring we have clearly defined policies, such as the IHRA definition of “anti-Semitism”; active enforcement of campus policies and codes; principled implementation of institutional neutrality; and leadership in speaking out against conduct that creates fear and chills speech.

In our broader communities, time and place restrictions—such as those included in the court ruling involving the encampment at the University of Toronto—preserve both the rights of those who want to protest and those for whom the encampment created real harms and chilled their expression. Similarly, bubble-zone legislation to safeguard schools, community centres and places of worship strikes a much-needed balance.

This past year has served as a wake-up call for many.

Taking action against hate enhances expression rather than detracts from it, and we must all do our part in this fight.

Thank you for your attention. I look forward to your questions.

[Dr. Emily Laidlaw]

Yes, and I think that it's always been hard when it comes to hate speech, because the tendency is for people to look at other values and say, “Oh, well, I approve of freedom of expression when it comes to what I think.”

I will say this: I think there are some significant problems with parts 2 and 3 in Bill C-63 that do need to be addressed. The definition of hate, though, does draw from Supreme Court jurisprudence. I'd encourage everyone to read the paragraphs, because the paragraphs are actually more thorough and do set out quite a high threshold.

Could there still be problems in interpretation and application? Absolutely, because it's so contextual, but it is drawing from case law, so it is drawing from a legal framework.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

If I could interrupt, as time is short, one of the things about Bill C-63 that I find really concerning is we have in Canada right now a very objective measure of what hate speech is. I've heard from constituents who look at what the government has proposed and say that it now becomes very objective, that “offence” becomes one of the new metrics by which whether something is or is not hate speech can be measured.

When it comes to the subjective nature of what somebody feels is offensive, I'll use an example. I support the Canadian oil and gas sector. There are Liberals who have called that opinion something that is offensive and filled with hate. While I struggle to grasp that, we may share differences in opinions on that matter.

Do you find the subjective nature by which the Liberals are proposing amendments to hate speech legislation of concern, in that it could be weaponized against specific groups in this country if there's no longer that objective measure and it becomes subjective, based on somebody's opinions or, quite frankly, their feelings?

[Dr. Emily Laidlaw]

Thank you for the question.

The answer is somewhat complicated, which is that one of the reasons we have the charter right to freedom of expression is to protect us also from government overreach. I think the complicating factor is that how we enjoy freedom of expression—the right to seek, receive and impart information—is happening more and more through different sources and through private parties.

We've always had laws in those spaces, both to protect freedom of expression and to protect us from harm. In the area of technology law, Canada is woefully behind other jurisdictions on all fronts. In my opinion, we do need laws, because for the issues of technology accountability, algorithmic regulation and protection of users, we do require laws, but the type of law matters. For there to be some nervousness about what government is doing and how they do it, absolutely, we should be nervous about that.

I was not supportive of Bill C-11 and the social media rules, but I am when it comes to Bill C-63. I think it depends on the law.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

You mentioned other countries having adopted the same kind of mechanism. You mentioned Australia and other countries.

In Bill C-63, what are the similarities that you find in the proposed legislation and in legislation in other countries that have adopted the same law?

[Dr. Emily Laidlaw]

That's a great question.

Bill C-63 deserves debate and it deserves attention. No matter what we've heard today in our discussions, technology law and technology are at the centre of all of these discussions about freedom of expression, and this is the first step. Canada, again, is decades behind other jurisdictions in addressing this particular issue, so that debate needs to happen, and we want to hear from all voices on it.

I'm quite eager to see this bill get to committee, and I would encourage every elected official in the room now to encourage it to go to committee as well in order to have that important study and debate.

[Patricia Lattanzio, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Okay.

Professor Laidlaw, as you know, the Conservatives have unfortunately been stalling the debate on Bill C-63, the online harms act, in the House with their ongoing filibuster. Why is this harmful to freedom of speech?

Request for Witness to Attend at the Bar of the House

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one member across the way said “yay”, but there are other issues, and not just government issues.

The Conservatives have opposition day motions, and when they bring them forward, they like to say the motions are confidence motions. However, I think Canadians would love to see an opposition day motion that deals with the housing accelerator fund. We have 17 Conservative members across the way who are scared because the leader of the Conservative Party is saying the party opposes it. The party is going to kill that particular fund. Therefore, we have Conservative MPs who are having a difficult time trying to justify their very existence on such an important issue. We should have a vote on that particular issue, but we cannot do so. The Conservatives know full well that all they have to do is continue to put up speaker after speaker on matters of privilege, and then nothing else can take place on the floor for debate.

The housing accelerator fund is providing thousands of housing units, or homes, in every region of our country, but we have the official opposition opposing it. Actually, that is not fair to say. We have the leader of the official opposition saying that the program is bad and needs to be cut. However, a dozen or more Conservative members are saying they like the program. They are writing to the Minister of Housing to say that they want this program to be applied in our communities. We have mayors in different areas of the country saying that this is a good program. However, there is this division within the Conservative Party. In order to avoid that sort of a division, why not continue to talk about privilege? It is a privilege motion for which everyone is saying yes to having the member come before the bar, but the Conservatives have no interest in voting on it. As I have indicated very clearly, it is a fairly straightforward motion that Mr. Anderson be called before the bar to answer questions. If everyone believes that, fine, we will accept that and allow it to come to a vote. However, what is the purpose of the Conservative Party not only continuing to debate the motion but now also actually moving an amendment to the motion, which means that we could see dozens speak to it?

What happened on the previous motion? We saw over 100 Conservatives speak to it. Weeks and weeks of potential debate on other issues were left to the wayside and never dealt with, such as Bill C-71, an act to amend the Citizenship Act; Bill C-66, which would transfer issues related to sexual abuse from military courts to civil courts; Bill C-33, strengthening the port system and railway safety in Canada act, which deals with our supply lines; and Bill C-63, the proposed online harms act to protect children on the Internet. This is not to mention the fall economic statement or the many opposition days that are being lost because the Conservatives are filling the time on issues of privilege, even though the very motions they are bringing forward are ones that we are okay with actually seeing pass. The reason, as I started off by saying, is that it is a multi-million dollar game, and it is all about character assassination. This is why I posed the question to the member opposite: What is the issue?

The issue is that we have a minister representing an Edmonton riding, and there have been concerns in regard to some text messaging and how that could have had an impact on the issue at hand. As I have pointed out, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner has looked at this issue not once, not twice, but three times and cleared the minister responsible each time.

When I posed that particular question to the member, his response was that it is not true. It is true. Members of the Conservative Party know it is true, but they continue to push. Why is that? It is because, as I pointed out in my question, even when the Prime Minister was the leader of the Liberal Party in third party, the Conservative Party continued to attack the individual. Nothing has changed. The wonderful thing about Hansard is that everything said inside the chamber is actually recorded and there for people to read. People do not have to believe me; they can just read the Hansards. We can go back to the time when the leader of the Liberal Party was in third party. We will find personal attacks on the leader, especially in member statements.

We have witnessed it of other ministers inside the chamber. It is the type of thing where I could enter into that same field, talk about personalities and start to look at the leader of the Conservative Party. I referred to an interesting document. By the way, the relevance of this is in regard to the issue of attacking the character of an individual. It is some sort of a report that was published. The title is “Stephen Harper, Serial Abuser of Power: The Evidence Compiled”. Actually, not all the evidence is compiled, because there are a number of things I am aware of that are not actually included in this document. However, it is about abuse of power, scandals and corruption.

There are 70 of them listed, for anyone who is interested, but one of them that is really interesting is that Stephen Harper was actually found in contempt of Parliament. We can think about that. He is the only prime minister in the British Commonwealth, which includes Canada, to ever be found in contempt of Parliament. Can we guess who his parliamentary secretary was? It was the leader of the Conservative Party.

That is one, but I am a little off topic there. I go through this article, and the leader of the Conservative Party's name comes up on more than one occasion. Let us go to page 9, to something called the vanity video; the article reads, “The Globe and Mail revealed that Harper’s chosen Minister for Democratic Reform [the now leader of the Conservative Party] commissioned a team of public servants for overtime work on a Sunday to film him glad-handing constituents.”

It goes on, but he was promoting using civil servants and wearing his Conservative Party uniform, and of course, we cannot do that. If the Ethics Commissioner was to look into that, I suspect maybe they would have found some sort of fine or a penalty, or he would have been found offside.

However, one of the ones Harper is really well known for is the “Elections bill [that] strips power from Elections Canada”. The story says, “The Fair Elections Act also makes it harder for Canadians to vote as more ID is required. Nationwide protests in which more than 400 academics took part forced [the leader of the Conservative Party] to withdraw some measures in the bill because of their alleged anti-democratic bent.”

Anti-democratic: I think there could be some relevancy here. It goes on to say, the “Democratic Reform Minister [the leader of the Conservative Party] accused the Elections Canada CEO Marc Mayrand of being a power monger and wearing a team jersey.”

Here we have the Conservative Party now calling into question the Ethics Commissioner, but when the leader of the Conservative Party was the minister responsible for democratic reform, he labelled the chief of our electoral system, Elections Canada. That is why I do not say it lightly. We have a leader of the Conservative Party who is in borderline contempt, in terms of what we are witnessing in Parliament today. He has no qualms doing that. It is demonstrated.

Not only that, but if we take a look at the issue of security clearance, I do not know how many times I have asked the question of Conservative MP after Conservative MP: Why does the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada not get the security clearance so that he can better understand foreign interference? That is a very real issue. We have all sorts of things that are taking place in our community. An individual has been murdered; individuals are being held in many different ways for financial purposes. We have all sorts of interference in political parties, in the leader of the Conservative Party's own leadership.

When he was elected as leader, there were issues related to foreign interference and how that influenced the leadership that he ultimately won. The Bloc, the Green, the NDP and the Prime Minister all have the security clearance. He is the only leader who does not. Why will the leader of the Conservative Party not do likewise? The arguments he uses are bogus. He knows that. We have experts clearly indicating that the leader of the Conservative Party has nothing to worry about in terms of being able to get the security clearance, from a perspective of being able to listen and talk about the issue of the day. That is not the concern. However, it does raise an issue. What is in the background of the leader of the Conservative Party regarding which, ultimately, he is scared to get that security clearance? I believe there is something there.

There is something that the leader of the Conservative Party does not want Canadians to know. I think we should find that out. That is why, whether it is me or other members of the government, we will continue to call upon the leader of the Conservative Party to get that security clearance.

Instead of playing this multi-million dollar game, let us start dealing with the issues that are important to Canadians. Let us talk about the fall economic statement and the legislation before the House that the Conservatives do not want to have discussions on. Let us have opposition days and private members' bills. We should allow the chamber to do the work that Canadians want us to do.

As the Conservative Party, and the leader of the Conservative Party in particular, is so focused on them, I can assure people following the debate that the Government of Canada and the Prime Minister will always continue to be focused on Canadians first and foremost. Unfortunately, we have to participate in this game; however, at the end of the day, we will continue to push a Canadian agenda, an agenda that reflects what we believe Canadians want.

That is something we will continue to advocate for. I would ask that, if Conservatives across the way understand the cost of the game they are playing, they stop with the character assassination they began back in 2011. Let us get down to business and do some good things for Canadians. We can do so much more if we start working together. Not only were all the other parties given a responsibility to do some good things inside the chamber, but the Conservative Party was too.

[Dr. Emily Laidlaw]

Yes, when it comes to the social media, I strongly recommend that social media be regulated.

However, let me be clear. There's content regulation whereby the state puts obligations on social media to act on specific content, like a individual post. That's much more complicated and tends to be more ineffective to deal with some of these problems.

That systemic approach I was talking about for Bill C-63 is crucial, and that is the approach being taken by other jurisdictions, like Europe, Australia and the U.K. There's now a global online harms network whereby they're basically trying to create coherence, because these are global companies.

The one thing I want to flag is that it's not necessarily going to address everything to do with something like falsity and some of the challenges we're facing when it comes to more of the misinformation and disinformation space. What is proposed in Canada addresses more the areas of hate speech, terrorist propaganda and incitement to violence. Europe has directly taken on misinformation and disinformation, like election information and discourse. That's really challenging to take on. The role of the government, in trying to improve the general health of the ecosystem in this murkier area, is much more risky and complicated.

I don't want to take up too much time, so I won't dive too deeply into that, but I want to flag that it wouldn't necessarily be solved.