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.

(The House resumed at 12 p.m.)

The House resumed from June 7 consideration of the motion that 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, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Minister of Health]

Yes, Madam Speaker, by popular demand, I am back. I really missed these exchanges. Some of our great moments are on Thursdays, not just for CPAC viewers, but also for you and me personally, I know. Therefore it is wonderful to exchange and wonderful to be back. I want to wish members a good return. I hope everybody had a productive and happy time with their families and their constituents in their ridings.

This afternoon, we will resume second reading debate of Bill C-66, the military justice system modernization act.

Tomorrow, we will begin the report stage debate of Bill C-33, the strengthening the port system and railway safety in Canada act.

On Monday, we will begin second reading debate of Bill C-63, the online harms act.

Madam Speaker, you will be very happy to know that next Wednesday we will also be resuming second reading debate of Bill C-71, which would amend the Citizenship Act.

I would also like to take the opportunity to inform the House that both next Tuesday and next Thursday shall be allotted days.

Furthermore, on Monday, the Minister of Finance will table a ways and means motion on capital gains taxation that incorporates the feedback received during consultations over the summer. The vote will take place on Wednesday of next week during Government Orders.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming here and for their incredible testimony.

I want to reassure both of you, but especially you, Cait, because you said that you don't believe any of us care, that all of us on this committee care very deeply. That's why we've done so many studies on intimate partner violence. We've had testimony like yours that is very difficult to hear but has been very important to put forward recommendations. We believe you, and we believe others like you.

Our government has put in many measures to try to make sure that the things that happened to you don't happen to others. There are numerous bills: Bill C-51 is on amending sexual assault laws. Bill C-75 is on bail reforms. Bill C-48 targets repeat offenders of intimate partner violence. Bill C-28 is on intoxication not being used as a defence. Bill C-63 is on online harms.

We also have a national action plan on gender-based violence that has been signed by all the provinces. We put $539 million in budget 2022 behind that, something that the Conservatives actually voted against.

I want to start by saying that if anyone tries to say there's anyone in this room who doesn't care about this issue, I think they are playing partisan games. People in this room have spent their lives fighting on this issue and listening to that kind of testimony. I just want to reassure you of that.

I also do, with respect, want to talk a little bit about how this meeting came about.

We have had studies that we've all agreed on to talk about these issues. In fact, we're in the middle of a study right now on coercive control for which we have put forth a number of witnesses we'd like to hear from as a committee.

We know that the Leader of the Opposition has asked Conservative-chaired committees to hold as many meetings as possible during the summer to take us away from the important work we're doing by listening to our constituents. We also know that, in this case, it was a few days' notice. None of the members, except the Conservatives, were given the opportunity to put forth witness names, which is something that every committee does out of basic fairness and respect.

I personally had a number of names of witnesses I would have loved to hear from. In fact, there were witness names added an hour before the meeting, so members didn't even have a chance to plan or prepare the kinds of questions they might want to ask.

I know that, for this committee, this is something we've never done. We do not use victims' and survivors' trauma to try to score political points in this committee. This is cruel. I think it's cruel to have people relive the trauma they've endured just to be able to have a meeting so that if it's not agreed to, there are all kinds of social media posts that Liberals or others don't care about this issue, which, as we all know, we do very deeply.

I know that under the previous chair, this committee worked with great respect for one another. We made sure that we.... The vice-chairs weren't even consulted about having this meeting. Yes, it's an emergency. I would have loved to have an emergency meeting in June so that we could have gotten our red dress alert study done before the end of the session.

Honestly, we saw yesterday that Karen Vecchio, our former chair, announced that she's not running again, which I think is very sad, because I believe that this committee has important work to do. We have done it with great—

Diversity and Inclusion

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the Leader of the Opposition recognizing the divisive rhetoric and the division that is occurring in Canadian society right now. We have a problem with hatred. We have to address that problem. We know that the statistics show that hate crimes are on the rise 130% in the last five years.

That is why I was proud to stand with CIJA when we tabled Bill C-63, the online harms legislation that would improve penalties for hate crimes, provide a definition of hatred and ensure that we are keeping Canadian communities safe. The special envoy on anti-Semitism supports the bill. CIJA supports the bill. I am just wondering why the Leader of the Opposition does not.

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

In your introduction, Professor Daum Shanks, you spoke about the difficulty for victims to get specific harms recognized as such, as they're not covered by the existing jurisprudence. I'm curious to know how the digital safety commission and the digital safety ombudsperson proposed in Bill C-63 would help us better support victims and make sure they have their voices heard.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question will be for Professor Daum Shanks.

Professor, are you familiar with the proposed changes in Bill C-63 with regard to the mandatory reporting act?

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

Thank you, Professor Daum Shanks.

In your presentation, you mentioned making the two observations. You just discussed the first one. I'm going to go with the responsibility.

How is Bill C-63 addressing the notion of responsibility?

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

Thank you so much to the witnesses for being here.

I'm going to split my time with my colleague, Ms. Lattanzio.

One of the things that we have sought to do in addressing some of the concerns related to online harms, and in particular some of the issues that have been raised during the course of the study, are making sure that our legislation, Bill C-63, the online harms bill, takes on some of these challenges head-on and works.... As we have said, we are willing to work with all parties to ensure that it's the best possible bill out there.

I don't know if you had a chance to follow the deliberations of our meeting on Tuesday, but our colleague, Mrs. Thomas, raised what I would argue is a very important concern in a number of her questions. It would appear, at least from my read of it, that she was advocating—I don't want to put words in her mouth, but this is the way that I understood what she was suggesting—that we take a risk-based approach in the legislating of regulations around social media platforms. Our belief is that this is exactly what Bill C-63 proposes to do.

Do you agree, first of all, with Bill C-63 and what we're trying to do, and that the right approach to legislating regulations around social media platforms is really to take a risk-based approach, as suggested by Mrs. Thomas and others?

I would refer that question to you, Professor.

[Keita Szemok-Uto]

I would agree that potentially more could be done than what Bill C-63 presents.

I do note, at least, that there is the inclusion of the word “deepfake” in the legislation. If anything, I think it's a good step forward in trying to tackle and get up to date with the definitions that are being used.

I note that legislation that was recently passed in Pennsylvania is criminal legislation that prohibits the dissemination of an artificially generated sexual depictions of individuals. I won't read the definition out in full. It's quite broad.

Bill C-63 does refer to deepfakes, at least, though no definition is provided. I think in that respect, broadening the terminology.... As I said, the privacy law torts are restricted by their definitions and terminology to not include this new problem that we're trying to deal with. To the extent that it gets the definitions more up to date, I think it is a step in the right direction.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

The problem with having an extrajudicial bureaucratic arm, which I think Bill C-63 is, is that it can actually perpetuate harm.

We can see that because victims—some have mentioned it here today—have to come bravely forward and share their stories with a commissioner or a body that they really don't know. That has actually led to no real power. I think the victim in this case is led to hope and then hope is deferred because there are no real teeth in the legislation.

What are your thoughts on that?

I do think Bill C-63 is a bureaucratic nightmare ready to explode if it does get through the House.

[Kevin Waugh, Conservative, Saskatoon—Grasswood, SK]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Welcome to everybody here this afternoon.

Mr. Szemok-Uto, you're recently a lawyer. Thank you for that.

As you know, Bill C-63 did not expand to include the Criminal Code. It's not been updated to include deepfakes. That seems to be a concern not only around this table, but everywhere.

I don't know why, when you introduce a bill, you would not.... We've seen that since 2017 deepfakes are accelerating around the world, yet it's not in this bill. What good is the bill when you don't talk about deepfakes?

What are your thoughts?

[Monique St. Germain]

Education is always a critical component of any policy or initiative that we have. We have lots of different tools in the tool box. We have our criminal law. We have potentially Bill C-63 coming forward to provide some regulatory.... On the education side, obviously it's ensuring that young people are educated about sexual consent and understand the ramifications of sharing intimate images or creating this type of material, etc.

We can't lose sight of the fact that the reason they can do these things is because of the platforms that facilitate this kind of harm. We should have education for parents and for kids, taught through schools and available in a lot of different mediums and the places that kids go. While we can have education, we also need to make sure that we don't lose sight of the fact that there are other actors in the ecosystem who are contributing to the harm that we're all seeing.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

This type of content is easy to produce. There are even applications for that. It's quite appalling.

People are talking a great deal about Bill C‑63, which seeks to regulate hateful and inappropriate content online.

Beyond legislation, do you feel that the platforms could do more about this?

Do you think they are now able to do more technologically, contrary to what they claim?

[Dr. Heidi Tworek]

We didn't specifically discuss generative AI that much within our group, but I think that within Bill C-63 there's certainly at least an attention to the question of deepfakes. I think there's a concept of a duty to act responsibly that's certainly capacious enough to be able to deal with these kinds of updates. If we're thinking about generative AI companies, they too will have a duty to act responsibly and then I think the question becomes, what exactly should that duty to act responsibly look like in the case of generative AI? A lot of the things we've been talking about today would obviously be a very central part of that.

[Dr. Heidi Tworek]

Thank you very much.

I served with Mr. Krishnamurthy on the expert advisory group. This is something we grappled with quite a lot. Of course, major platforms like Facebook and so on have many employees and can easily staff up, but we often see these harms, particularly now with generative AI lowering the barrier to entry, that could be a couple of individuals who create complete havoc or very small firms.

I think there are two aspects to this question. One is the very important question of international co-operation on this. We've talked as if all of the individuals creating harm would be located in Canada, but the truth is that many of them may be located outside of Canada. I think we need to think about what international co-operation looks like. We have this for counterterrorism in the online space, and we need to think about this for deepfakes.

In the case of smaller companies, we can divide between those whom I think are being abused and then the question of how the new proposed online bill, Bill C-63, could have a digital safety commissioner who actually helps those smaller firms to ensure that these deepfakes are removed.

Finally, we have the question of the more nefarious smaller-firm actors and whether we need to have Bill C-63 expanded to be able to be nimble and shut down those kinds of nefarious actors more quickly—or, for example, tools that are only really being put up in order to create deepfakes of the terrible kinds that have been described by other witnesses.

I would just emphasize that the international co-operation, finally, is key. Taking things down in Canada only will potentially lead to revictimization, as something might be stored in a server in another country and then continually reuploaded.